Following Vitalik’s December blog post, “Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again” I’ve seen more conversations online about crypto getting back to its cypherpunk roots. Over the years, the crypto community has strayed from its initial motivation to pioneer a fairer, more secure era of the web, a vision originally revolutionized by the cypherpunk community in the 90s and 2000s.
Until now, crypto has struggled to fulfill its initial promises, facing challenges such as scalability issues, over-centralization, and the emergence of a casino-like industry. These obstacles create challenges for those genuinely passionate about building a better web.
The Arweave ecosystem on the other hand is unique in this space because the protocol is complete, scalable, and decentralized. Arweave is still cypherpunk.
In this post I write about how the close-knit Arweave ecosystem can make an impact on Web3 by staying true to its cypherpunk roots.
History of Arweave
Arweave emerged in response to the potential loss of human information on the web. Anyone familiar with George Orwell's 1984 is aware of the concept of the memory hole, a mechanism that alters and removes documents, photos, transcripts, and more. Memory holes are not just confined to literature; they exist in real life as well.
Books read by Arweave co-founder Sam Williams, such as Gulag Archipelago, Man's Search for Meaning, and The Aquariums of Pyongyang, narrate stories of some of the worst human atrocities in the 20th century. Authoritarian regimes executed such measures by tightly controlling information. The events of the past century and the current trajectory of the web inspired the creation of the Arweave protocol.
The Arweave mainnet was launched in 2018 and has witnessed widespread adoption across various domains seeking permanent, immutable storage. This includes activists storing news articles during the 2021 Hong Kong protests, archives of digital content free from censorship related to the Russia-Ukraine War, and personal archives of digital content enabling individuals to preserve their valuable information.
The permaweb
A trustworthy digital realm to store information and access applications is becoming increasingly important as humans live online. Arweave has an opportunity to support a fairer version of the web, through its permanent, decentralized and composable data.
The permanent repository of pages and applications uploaded onto Arweave, dubbed the "permaweb," can forever be accessible. Users have unbounded rights to this new cyberspace without centralized control through principles imbedded in the network.
I am involved in a few permaweb projects, including the Alex. Archive and BazAR Marketplace, which provide anyone with access to upload data and use the applications without any centralized gatekeeping. The data uploaded to Arweave through these applications becomes part of Arweave's composable data lake, accessible to any permaweb application.
Through this data lake, information is no longer siloed into inoperable applications. For example, music uploaded on BazAR can be listened to on the permaweb native music streaming application, Arcadia, and vice versa. No more cold start problem for new platforms.
Moreover, users retain ownership of their data and can decide how their data is used by other users and applications through the Universal Data License (UDL). By incorporating UDL tags into data uploaded onto the permaweb, creators set the terms for how their data is used. Below is UDL in action.
Through composability and giving users control of their data, the permaweb stays true to cypherpunk ideals. As more applications enter the ecosystem and social experiences become more accessible, I predict that more people will begin to appreciate and adopt the permaweb.
Make cypherpunk cool in crypto again
Bitcoin and early Ethereum were heavily influenced by cypherpunk ideals, incorporating concepts such as empowering privacy, decentralization, anonymity, censorship resistance, all supported by an overall techno-optimism.
Today, crypto moved away from those foundational ideas. Ethereum hasn’t proved it can scale and offer any viable non-financial solutions besides ENS. Additionally, due to transaction costs and the complexities of web3 infrastructures, many applications remain only partially decentralized at best.
Building scalable decentralized technology with a friendly UX is not easy. It is much easier to cut corners and say, “Trust me, we’ll decentralize later.”
I hope that the permaweb can someday serve both as an example and inspiration that by staying true to the mission, we can build a better web that is fairer for all.
🤝
--
Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter with any feedback or questions about the permaweb.
--
Recommended reading for those new to the permaweb. Guide written by Jonny Ringo.
Disclaimer
The information presented in this post is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as financial advice, and any decisions made based on the content are at the reader's own risk.