There are many, many different types of blockchains and cryptocurrencies.  Bitcoin or Ethereum are probably two that you have heard of before.  Each blockchain and cryptocurrency has its own use case and value proposition.  For new people just starting to learn about blockchain technology, the amount needed to learn just to understand the basics can be a steep learning curve and intimidating.  Here at Community Labs, we want to try to make blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and all of Web3 more approachable to everyone, regardless of technical skill level. 

This blog post will cover the basics of Arweave, the blockchain that Community Labs builds solutions on.  This will not be a technical deep dive into how Arweave works.  In fact, the “how” is not going to be covered very much in this blog post.  What will be covered is the “why” and the “what” of Arweave.  Hopefully, explained in a way that does not leave you with more questions than answers.  Let’s dive in!

Where all your photos are stored

If you are reading this, you probably have a phone in your pocket.  You might even be reading this blog post from your phone.  Whether it’s an iPhone, Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, or one of the numerous other smartphones on the market, chances are, you are storing some type of data or information on your phone.  Think photos, videos, documents, notes.  In order to save space on their phone, a lot of people use cloud storage to store data so they can have more space on.  For iPhone users, it’s most likely iCloud.  For Pixel or Samsung Galaxy users, It’s probably Google Drive or Google Photos.  

Solutions like iCloud or Google Drive are known as cloud storage.  Apple and Google are offering their users the ability to save data on their servers instead of the user’s personal smartphones.  In many cases, once a user hits a certain amount of data stored, a user needs to pay a monthly fee to store that extra data.  For some, that’s less than $50 a year.  For others with a lot of data, that can be $100 a year or more.  

There is a high likelihood, the business you work for also uses cloud storage as well.  They may use services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud to store data.  Corporate cloud storage is big business.  The cost for this data storage is probably one of the most expensive bills the company you work for pays for every month.  To get an understanding of how much revenue is generated from these cloud data storage solutions, 74% of Amazon’s operating profit comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS)!     

Arweave is like cloud storage but better

Arweave is like iCloud, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud.  Users can upload whatever type of data they like to Arweave but there are a couple of major differences.  

One-time payment

When a user or company uploads data to iCloud, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud, they are at the mercy of those companies if the user or company fails to make their monthly payment.  This means, a user or company access to their own data can be blocked, temporarily or forever, until a payment is made.

Now with Arweave, when a user uploads data onto Arweave, they pay a one-time, low cost fee.  There is no monthly payment like traditional cloud storage solutions.  That one-time fee to upload data can be as low as $0.01 and there is never any cost to download data.  

Permanent Storage

If a user or company uploads data to iCloud, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud, they are at the mercy of those organizations.  Fail to make a monthly payment, access can be blocked to the uploaded data until a payment is made.  If one of those organizations has an outage, users and companies need to wait for those services to come back online so data can be accessed.  Lastly, those organizations have access to the data since it is stored on their servers.  An employee of one of those organizations can, intentionally or unintentionally, delete or alter data stored on their servers.  

With Arweave, any data stored on Arweave is permanent and cannot be altered once uploaded.  Since there is not a monthly fee to pay, users and companies storing data on Arweave will always have access to their data.  

Ready to try Arweave?

If you read this blog post, that means you were curious about Arweave.  Hopefully, after reading everything above, you are wanting to try Arweave.  If you want to get started, here are some easy ways.  

If you use gmail, Othent and Weave Transfer will be a great starting point for your Arweave journey.  If you don’t use gmail, then jump in with ArConnect.  With any of those products, you can start your Arweave journey in a matter of minutes.  If you have any questions or need some guidance, please don't hesitate to contact us here at Community Labs!  Happy uploading!