As more and more developers and organizations look to start to take advantage of Web3, they have many options of blockchains they can decide to build on.  Depending on their use case and solution they are trying to develop, there could be one or more options to pick from.  Each blockchain option comes with pros and cons, but for the majority of them, once a blockchain is decided on, there is generally a steep learning curve to start building, unless the developer or organization already has experience building on that blockchain.  

For example, Ethereum’s smart contracts have been an amazing innovation, but the need to know the coding language, solidity, is a prerequisite before any coding can begin.  Solana aimed to solve transaction velocity problems that occur on other blockchains, but it’s a centralized blockchain with recurring outages, which means, if an outage occurs on Solana, it’s an outage of all Solana dApps as well.

Furthermore, almost all blockchain ecosystems are pretty siloed, so once the building begins you are committed to that blockchain ecosystem unless a decision is made to tear down and start again on a different blockchain.  Needless to say, this is directly and indirectly costly to a developer and organization.  While interoperability between blockchains is advancing, it is not quite there yet and also can come with security issues as seen with hacks on bridges.     

Arweave, on the other hand, helps solve these problems.  The Arweave end user benefits have been covered, so let’s dive into the benefits for developers and organizations that decide to build on Arweave.

Smart contracts in any language

Smart contracts may go down as one of the great innovations of our time, but even as great of an innovation they are, for developers, to start using them, it generally means learning a new language.  As mentioned above, to write a smart contract on Ethereum, a developer needs to learn solidity.  To write a smart contract on Cardano, knowing Plutus is necessary.  This is the case for many blockchains that support smart contracts.  It goes without saying, having to learn a new programming language delays even beginning to build.     

This is not the case with Arweave.  Smart contracts on Arweave, known as SmartWeave, can be written in Solidity, Rust, C, JavaScript and many more languages.  Not needing to learn a specific language to start using Arweave smart contracts allows developers and organizations to start building immediately.  

Use Arweave for all or part of your dApp

One of the biggest advantages of Arweave is that developers and organizations can use part of the tech stack or all of it.  Leveraging Arweave is not an all or nothing decision. 

Maybe the need is just for a database.  With Arweave, it can be used to just store data, not just Arweave transaction data.  Everything from videos, documents, metadata, encrypted data, and much, much more can be stored on Arweave.  This means, Web2 apps and Web3 dApps can both use Arweave as a database only.  There is no need to build an app or dApp completely on Arweave just to take advantage of Arweave’s data storage.    

Storing data on Arweave also comes along with permanent and tamper-resistant storage for. By leveraging the blockweave structure, data stored on Arweave remains accessible indefinitely, ensuring the long-term availability of apps and dApps critical information.

More cost effective storage than AWS and other blockchains…

Arweave offers a cost-effective approach to data storage. Unlike some other blockchain networks that charge high fees for data storage and transactions, Arweave's pricing model is designed to provide affordable and sustainable storage options for developers and organizations. This can be advantageous, especially for apps and dApps with large amounts of data to store.  

The fee itself is just a very low cost, one-time fee to upload (not cost to download), instead of a monthly recurring fee charged by well-known cloud hosting services like Amazon Web Services or other data storage blockchains.  Additionally, the cost to store on Arweave is not tied to the price of the AR Token, like Filecoin’s solution is.

… And energy efficient too  

Arweave is more energy-efficient compared to traditional blockchains. This aspect is becoming increasingly important in the context of sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint of blockchain technology.  The community has been committed to keep Arweave energy efficient and has made improvements in lowering energy consumption with each new upgrade made to the network.  

Ready to start building on Arweave?

It’s obvious, building your dApp on the Arweave blockchain or storing your apps or dApps data on Arweave offers numerous benefits.  Now that you are ready to start building, the simplest and easiest way to get started is by using ArweaveKit, a one-stop Arweave library for developers or organizations.

If you have any questions or need some guidance, please don't hesitate to contact us here at Community Labs!  Happy building!