July 06 2021

Arweave – Store Data Forever With A New Type Of Storage That Backs Data With Perpetual Endowments

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Arweave – Store Data Forever With A New Type Of Storage That Backs Data With Perpetual Endowments

Arweave – Store Data Forever With A New Type Of Storage That Backs Data With Perpetual Endowments

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About the episode

Kevin chats with Sam Williams, Founder of Arweave. Arweave is a new type of storage that backs data with sustainable and perpetual endowments, allowing users and developers to truly store data forever – for the very first time.

About our guest
Sam Williams

Sam Williams

Founder @ Arweave. Hacker, CEO, PhD drop-out.

Show notes

What is Arweave, and how does it improve upon the various forms of data storage we’ve been using all along?[00:26]

How did Sam get involved in the world of crypto, and what lapsed promises in that world was he looking to fulfill with what eventually became Arweave?[03:05]

Two fundamental issues that needed to be solved for a data storage system and the records residing there to be truly censorship-proof, and the steps Sam and the Arweave team took to find those solutions.[07:27]

How does Arweave incentivize participation in its network and guard against inflation?[09:22]

What factors into the calculation of future storage costs?[11:55]

How is redundancy handled?[12:56]

Why Arweave isn’t really comparable to other existing storage solutions, and what makes it especially appealing to NFT collectors who want to ensure their investments are around for the long haul.[14:52]

Finding a needle in a haystack is difficult. Arweave makes it easier by replicating that needle.[19:36]

Wouldn’t a centralized index be a faster and more efficient way to find those needles? What’s the advantage of Arweave here?[22:22]

How fast are searches right now?[24:55]

What does minting and storing an NFT look like from Arweave’s perspective? Can the parts of this process be paid for in one transaction?[25:24]

At the time of this interview, what does it cost to store a megabyte on Arweave for 200 years? How about 17,000 years?[28:53]

What current use cases for Arweave does Sam find surprising or especially rewarding?[29:41]

How Arweave and Weve (an Arweave-built, decentralized email network) give the user more control over their own data than Gmail, Facebook, or any of the other entities that habitually update privacy policies to be more invasive than they were at signup.[32:10]

How did Weve come about, and how does it put the power in the hands of the user rather than the developer?[33:43]

How a profit-sharing model might be built by a DAO on Arweave.[37:07]

Why Arweave’s most interesting implementations and measures of success are rooted in its community.[39:54]

A pleasant surprise for Sam: Beeple’s new NFT platform is built on Arweave.[41:35]

Looking back to the promising uses of Web 2.0 and their subsequent abuses, how do Sam and his team try to navigate around the unforeseen issues Arweave might allow bad actors to exploit?[42:43]

How might “bad” data get flagged in a decentralized, censorship-free system like Arweave and then removed from the haystack?[45:56]

What keeps bad actors from inappropriately flagging data — such as someone in the Chinese government trying to scrub records pertaining to the Hong Kong protests?[47:11]

Has anyone tried to attack Arweave’s network with any success?[49:28]

Could Tor be used on top of Arweave?[51:01]

Could (or should) someone inside China host data on Arweave?[51:13]

Arweave-based projects that Sam finds exciting at the moment.[52:41]

What projects in the overall crypto world have captured Sam’s attention lately?[54:45]

Does Sam see a future in which Bitcoin will be as easy and affordable to use as cash for small transactions?[56:04]

Might centralized banks evolve rather than going entirely extinct, and would this be such a bad thing? In the world of decentralization, as in anything else, be careful what you wish for.[57:03]

What does Sam see happening to Bitcoin if the US government is forced to react to the dollar slipping from its place as a reserve currency? Why don’t competing governments like Russia and China encourage Bitcoin adoption to hasten the process?[58:39]

How anyone interested can get involved in Arweave today, and Parting thoughts.[01:00:53]

People mentioned

Kyle Beckles

Satoshi Nakamoto

Lev Berman

Anish Agnihotri

Ros McMahon

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