Arweave

Arweave is a network for permanent data storage: users pay once in AR, and miners are paid over time to keep the data forever.

Arweave is a decentralised network for storing data permanently. Instead of renting storage month by month, a user pays a single fee in AR. Most of that fee goes into a storage endowment, which pays miners over time to keep replicating the data. Miners prove they hold old data through Proof of Access: to mine a new block they must show access to a random earlier block.

The network launched on 8 June 2018 with 55 million AR. Another 11 million AR is released gradually as mining rewards, so supply is capped at 66 million; by 1 October 2026 about 65.65 million AR was in circulation.

Arweave was founded by Sam Williams and was backed in 2019 by a $5 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Its stored data, sites and apps are called the 'permaweb', and it is used for archives, NFT media and publishing. AO, a computation layer, runs on top of it.