Author: Kyle、Marshal Orange

Translator: Kyle、Marshal Orange

Reviewer: Sandy、Webb、0xmiddle

7. SocialFi

Arweave Name Service (ANS)

The Arweave Name Service (ANS), launched by Decent.land, is a decentralized social protocol built on Arweave, serving as Arweave's Domain Name System. Similar to the ENS, ANS maps and binds Arweave addresses to concise names (format: xxx.ar), allowing combinations of numbers, letters, and emojis. Currently, there are 1,615 ANS domains minted, generating 6,585 AR in treasury revenue.

NameSpace

NameSpace, launched by Decent.Land, is built on MEM and everPay, providing a framework for deploying custom Web3 identities, facilitating the establishment of permanent decentralized identity systems for DAOs, protocols, dApps, or public blockchains.

Metaweave

Metaweave is a decentralized social media platform built on Arweave, where any posts made on the platform are permanently stored and not subject to censorship. Users can tag their tweets with corresponding hashtags (#save, #archive, or #permaweb) on X, and the tweets will be automatically indexed on the Metaweave platform.

Stamp Protocol

Stamp is a content curation protocol built on Arweave, aiming to provide new ways for interactive content engagement on Permaweb. Users can "STAMP" quality content, similar to clicking the "Like" button on social media platforms. This action not only rewards content creators with $STAMP tokens but also helps establish a reputation system to filter high-quality content on Permaweb.

ECHO

ECHO is the first decentralized social interaction protocol built on Arweave, aiming to provide infrastructure for Web3 social interactions. ECHO can be embedded into any website through a Widget, enabling users to freely express their opinions in a decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant environment, as ECHO's slogan says — Long live our opinion.

AFTR Work

AFTR Market is an on-chain asset management and governance platform in the Arweave ecosystem, allowing users to create their code repositories and store Arweave assets on the blockchain through AFTR's multi-signature functionality.

Mask Network

Mask Network is a gateway to help users seamlessly transition from Web2 to Web3, connecting Web3 and Web2 mainstream media (such as Facebook, X, etc.) through an open-source browser extension. It supports setting NFTs as social media avatars and uploading files to Arweave via Mask Network.

Metaforo

Metaforo is a Web3-native forum platform, providing social, voting governance, and tipping features for the Web3 community. All generated data is permanently stored on Arweave, serving as a bridge for startup projects to migrate from Web2 to Web3.

VouchDAO

VouchDAO is a decentralized verification layer built on top of the Vouch (based on ANS-109 data protocol) standard, used to verify users' or developers' real identities on Permaweb, providing credit guarantees for interactive applications.

Ella

Ella is a storage platform on Arweave focused on backing up Instagram photos. Users can permanently store photos by linking their Instagram accounts, with 50 free upload credits.

CommunityXYZ

CommunityXYZ is a profit-sharing community management platform built on Arweave, where users can view and create profit-sharing communities on the platform.

Capsl8

Capsl8 is a data storage platform in the Arweave ecosystem, focusing on storing users' cherished personal or public historical data. It allows users to freely upload personal collections and provides tools for archiving X tweets.

Orbis Protocol

Orbis is a Web3 social protocol built on Ceramic (decentralized content calculation network), aiming to provide open and user-friendly social infrastructure for developers. Anyone can develop their own decentralized, high-performance, and composable social applications or features based on Orbis.

ReadON

ReadON is a Web3 content aggregation and distribution platform, providing valuable content to users by aggregating and filtering massive content. Meanwhile, ReadON reshapes users' reading behavior by introducing the GameFi reading reward mechanism. Users can earn $READ tokens while reading by holding Catto NFTs. In addition, there is a decentralized content recommendation system to help creators monetize their content.

Lens

Lens is a Web3 social graph protocol on the Polygon ecosystem, aiming to facilitate connections between creators and communities, forming a fully composable, user-centric social graph. Whether it's text, video, or music, everything can be minted as NFTs, with all generated data stored on Arweave. Users not only own the data but also generate income from it.

Relation

Relation is a multi-chain social application middleware, aiming to be an explorer of Web3 social relationship data. Through standardized protocols, Relation provides rich data and services to ecosystem users and social dApps.

8. Creator Economy

Permacast

Permacast is a decentralized podcasting protocol built on Arweave, supporting the upload of audio or video podcasts, with each podcast episode being an Atomic NFT. Users can use RSS feeds to transmit Permacast episodes to mainstream platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, and Fountain, or use the Permacast CLI tool to bulk upload podcasts from other platforms to Permacast. In the future, Permacast plans to integrate Livepeer to launch live streaming capabilities.

Alex

Alex is a decentralized archive platform built on Arweave, allowing users to create thematic archive pools to collect relevant information from social media platforms. Anyone can sponsor archive pools they are interested in as storage fees, and the data stored in the archive pools will also be distributed as assets to sponsors. Alex is also known as the "fireproof Library of Alexandria" due to its storage of data as "artifacts" on the Arweave.

Permafacts

Permafacts is an on-chain prediction platform built on Arweave, currently in alpha version. It allows anyone to initiate topics based on news or events for free voting, aiming to restore objective, authentic, and accurate facts.

Permanotes

Permanotes is a decentralized note-taking platform, currently in alpha version, allowing users to create, store, and share their notes, with all notes permanently stored on Arweave.

PermaPages

PermaPages supports creating and managing permanent web3 personal pages and Permaweb pages built on Arweave.

RSS3

RSS3 is an open information distribution protocol designed to promote the free flow of information on the open network, providing structured and standardized formats for effective information dissemination and communication. Moreover, RSS3, carefully planned, can power a wide range of applications from AI training, social media to search engines.

Wordcel Club

Wordcel is a blogging platform on the Solana ecosystem, using Arweave for permanent content storage. Creators can publish, distribute, and monetize their works freely.

Mirror

Mirror is a decentralized content publishing platform, aiming to make creators and readers co-owners of the platform, providing momentum for a new writing ecosystem. Creators on Mirror can not only publish articles but also build communities based on their works, and fund their creations through selling or auctioning Writing NFTs.

LikeCoin

LikeCoin is a decentralized publishing protocol built on Cosmos SDK (for the LikeCoin chain), aiming to be the infrastructure for decentralized publishing to assist creators in publishing content to the blockchain. Moreover, the protocol is governed in the form of a DAO, with a community consisting of creators and consumers. Furthermore, LikeCoin integrates Arweave to support the permanent storage of content and minting works into Writing NFTs for monetization.

Hey (formerly lenster)

Hey is a decentralized social media application in the Lens ecosystem, akin to Web3's X platform.

Tape (formerly lenstube)

Lenstube is a decentralized video sharing platform in the Lens ecosystem, akin to Web3's Youtube or Vimeo platform.

9. Email

Weavemail

Weavemail is a decentralized email protocol built on Arweave, characterized by being open-source, privacy-focused, censorship-resistant, and never-losing. It works by encrypting messages using RSA-OAEP (Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding) and the recipient's public key in .crypto.js, packaging the sent messages into Arweave transactions, then tagging and submitting them to the network. Receiving involves using ArQL to retrieve messages from the network and decrypting the content using private keys.

MyMail

MyMail is a decentralized email protocol in the Arweave ecosystem, which is an implementation of Weavemail, aiming to accelerate the world's transition from centralized email to decentralized messaging. Users no longer worry about privacy leaks, as MyMail supports end-to-end encrypted email messages. Furthermore, MyMail plans to introduce tokens in the future and supports payment using various tokens (such as SOL and ETH).

Wevemail

Wevemail is a decentralized, private, open-source email protocol built on Arweave and Weavemail, aiming to be the first email network with an immutable privacy policy, ensuring users' data is never sold, emails are never read or deleted.

PermaMail

PermaMail is a decentralized email protocol built on Arweave, which connects with Arweave wallets for use, featuring decentralization, high privacy, etc.

Part IV: Key Events

First Quarter: Strong Start

Solana Labs' subsidiary, Solana Mobile, launched an Android phone—Saga, and the Solana dApp Store is a Web3 app store designed specifically for Saga phones. Unlike the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, the Solana dApp Store does not charge any fees. Additionally, all Android installation packages of apps in the Solana dApp Store are permanently stored on Arweave, meaning they are resistant to censorship, avoiding scenarios where dApps are removed due to censorship regulations.

decent.land, a decentralized social protocol built on Arweave, introduced the Arweave Name Service (ANS) at the beginning of 2023. ANS maps and binds Arweave addresses to concise names (format: xxx. ar), allowing combinations of numbers, letters, and emojis. Similar to ENS, ANS can be used for on-chain transfers, transactions, and identity verification, with the difference being that ANS ownership is permanent after a one-time purchase.

Before Ledger, Keystone arrived. Keystone Wallet is an offline hardware wallet that announced support for AR tokens in February 2023, becoming the first hardware wallet to integrate AR tokens. Keystone's code is open-source, supports PSBT multisig, and can be used with smartphones, lowering the user's operational barriers. Keystone Wallet uses bank-level security chips, allowing users to securely interact via QR codes and store their AR tokens.

Arweave 2.6 was completed on March 6, 2023, with the hard fork activated at block height 1,132,210. Arweave is already a relatively mature protocol, and the Arweave 2.6 upgrade further optimizes the protocol. Specific changes brought by Arweave 2.6 include:

Arweave in Denver is an Arweave community event at ETH Denver (one of the world's largest Ethereum events), organized by ar.io, Forward Research, Community Labs, and Lattice. Arweave in Denver provides the Arweave community with the opportunity to deeply understand the internal and external blockchain worlds. The event includes various formats such as keynote speeches, group discussions, and group meetings. Participants include project founders, investors, and developers from the Arweave community, who gather to discuss the role of Arweave in infrastructure, dApps, communities, growth, and funding.

Permaswap, a cross-chain DEX built on Arweave, and currently the only DEX in the ecosystem, launched its first PST token $ARDRIVE on March 14, 2023. $ARDRIVE is the native token of the decentralized cloud storage ArDrive, allowing users to exchange $ARDRIVE on Permaswap or add liquidity for the ARDRIVE/AR trading pair.

Second Quarter: Building Momentum

PermaDAO, a co-building DAO in the Arweave ecosystem, jointly hosted the Web3 Hong Kong Night event with MoleDAO and BuilderDAO. PermaDAO has always been about collaboration among strangers, and this was its first offline meetup. On April 14, 2023, contributors of PermaDAO gathered at the Unity Building on Connaught Road, Hong Kong, meeting familiar strangers for the first time.

Web3 Hong Kong Night event consisted of three sections: keynote speeches, panel discussions, and games/social sessions. The event had over 20 speakers from various tracks or project backgrounds, and attracted over 400 friends from around the world, providing a dense information output and a flat communication environment for everyone, creating a splendid feast of ideas.

everPay, a multi-chain financial protocol in the Arweave ecosystem, announced a partnership with Legend Trading, a US-compliant crypto asset trading company, on May 22, 2023. Through integration with Legend Trading, everPay established compliant fiat-to-crypto services, allowing users to easily use various global payment methods supported by Legend Trading, including bank cards, Swift, ACH, SEPA, FPS, Visa, and MasterCard, to directly exchange cryptocurrencies for USD, GBP, CHF, EUR, JPY, and more than 40 other fiat currencies.

WeaveDB Fellows, starting on June 9, 2023, is a 6-week online hackathon jointly organized by Arweave, Fleek, Lens protocol, Intmax, Lit protocol, and Mask Network. The hackathon offers multiple awards with a total prize pool of $22,000, aiming to encourage developers to build dApps based on WeaveDB.

Following Keystone Wallet, the popular hardware wallet Ledger announced on June 5, 2023, that its Nano S and Nano S Plus devices will support AR tokens. Users can create an Arweave account in the Ledger wallet using the Arweave web wallet, connecting to the Arweave network to store AR tokens. Currently, the most advanced device from Ledger is the Ledger Nano X, a product with Bluetooth functionality, which will also support AR tokens in the future.

Third Quarter: Progressive Stage

Universal Data License (UDL) is one of the pioneering protocols in the Arweave ecosystem in 2023, allowing creators to set personalized terms of use for their content (atomic assets) uploaded to Arweave. Simply put, UDL not only enables creators to monetize their content but also allows them to customize their content usage rights flexibly.

The operation mechanism of UDL is very clever. Through predefined tags, creators can programmatically define license terms and attach these tags to atomic assets as "licenses". These tags cover many aspects, including whether adaptation and derivative works are allowed, whether commercial use is permitted, and the duration of the license.

Universal Content Marketplace (UCM) is another groundbreaking protocol after UDL, serving as an on-chain order book contract for Arweave, allowing atomic assets to be traded on Permaweb without trust. Unlike traditional NFT markets, UCM is not limited to specific types of assets but can also trade papers, domain names, components, and even applications.

UCM not only creates a decentralized and secure transparent trading environment for creators and users but also provides a broad development space for developers. Anyone with programming knowledge can build a front-end UI based on the UCM protocol. BazAR is the first atomic asset exchange built based on the UCM protocol.

BazAR is a decentralized atomic asset exchange built on Permaweb, providing an intuitive and user-friendly platform for buying and selling various types of atomic assets, including images, videos, audio, web pages, and applications.

The decentralized cloud storage ArDrive experienced three version updates in 2023, releasing the ArDrive 2.6 version in July 2023. ArDrive 2.6 is also its most innovative update of the year, with the following updates:

Of course, ArDrive later also launched tools such as ArDrive Pins and ArDrive CLI, further improving the product experience for developers and ordinary users.

EverID is an account management system introduced by everPay, aimed at lowering the entry barrier for users into Web3. With the introduction of EverID, users can choose common Crypto wallet addresses or Web2 user-friendly email addresses and biometrics to create everPay accounts. In addition, EverID is based on the WebAuthn user identity verification standard, solving the burden of user private key management, and allowing users to experience the smooth transactions of everPay more securely and conveniently.

Currently, EverID is still in the BETA stage, and its plans include expanding account types (such as social media accounts, phone numbers, etc.), improving account cancellation and retrieval mechanisms, providing SDK services, and implementing cross-platform sharing, etc.

Pianity is an NFT music platform on Arweave, and its development team has developed an Arweave wallet and released it on MetaMask Snap, similar to accessing a secondary Arweave sub-wallet through Snap of MetaMask, thus connecting millions of MetaMask wallet users to Arweave. MetaMask users only need to install Arweave Wallet on the Snap Directory to seamlessly access the Arweave network to experience the charm of permanent storage. In addition, they can also use various functions and services provided by Arweave ecosystem dApps.

ArConnect finally got a facelift in August 2023, launching the ArConnect 1.0 version, and the source code was audited and penetration tested by the Spearbit audit agency, becoming the first audited wallet in the Arweave ecosystem. ArConnect is a browser extension program similar to the MetaMask wallet. The 1.0 version has undergone a comprehensive redesign of UI/UX, which is more concise and beautiful than previous versions. At the same time, an Explore page has been added, which integrates the entrances of ecological projects and embeds ecological news. In addition, ArConnect 1.0 also launched two developer tools, ArConnect Devtools and ArLocal Devtools, to optimize the workflow of developers.

This year's Arweave Day in Asia event is the second edition, with over a hundred Arweave ecosystem builders and investors participating, making it the largest offline event in the Arweave ecosystem. Co-hosted by PermaDAO and Forward Research, the Arweave Day in Asia 2023 event was held at The Arts House, Old Parliament House in Singapore on September 12th. The event was divided into morning and afternoon sessions, including ecosystem report releases, keynote speeches, roundtable discussions, and Q&A interactive sessions, and the event was live-streamed on Bilibili and YouTube platforms throughout. It is worth noting that Sam, the founder of Arweave, introduced the Universal Content Marketplace (UCM) and Universal Data License (UDL) protocols for the first time at the event, and also previewed the content about Arweave 2.7.

2023 Arweave Asia Summer Hackathon

The Arweave Asia Summer Hackathon, jointly organized by PermaDAO, Arweave SCP Ventures, and TinTinLand, lasted for two and a half months. During the registration period, participating developers attended ecological project introduction courses, code practical courses, and multiple ecological mentor-sharing sessions from June 15 to September 1. In the end, after screening and judging the submitted projects, 14 projects were completed and delivered. After DemoDAY and multiple evaluations by professional judges and media reviewers, 8 excellent projects were finally selected, namely:

Fourth Quarter: Comprehensive Outbreak

As of the end of 2023, the Arweave mainnet has been running smoothly for 2000 days, making it a relatively mature protocol. At the same time, the network's transaction volume in 2023 experienced explosive growth, which began to show in October, with weekly transaction volume breaking through the previous high. The momentum of network transaction volume in November and December was even more rapid, and on December 18-20, it set the top three historical highs for daily transaction volume. With the huge increase in transaction volume on December 19th, the total transaction volume of the Arweave network exceeded 2 billion, and it only took five months to go from 1 billion to 2 billion. In addition, with the rapid development of the Arweave network, there are already over 200 gateways providing data for it.

After version 2.6, the Arweave protocol completed the upgrade to version 2.7 on October 5, 2023, with the hard fork activated at block height 1,275,480. The 2.7 version upgrade made some minor improvements to the core protocol, mainly including:

Permahacks is a 14-day hackathon event jointly organized by PermaDAO, Community Labs, everVision, Decent Land Labs, Forward Research, and Permaweb News, aiming to inject fresh blood into the Arweave developer team. Permahacks hackathon set up six awards with a total prize pool of $20,000. During the developer team formation stage, daily seminars will be held and mentor guidance will be provided through Discord. In the end, after screening and judging the submitted projects, 6 finalists were selected, namely:

The cleverness of the Bundlr name was similar to Bundle (bundle trading technology), and they have achieved their original vision, with over 80% of transactions being processed on Bundlr, fulfilling the mission of expanding Arweave's data throughput. However, as Arweave's total network transaction volume reached 1 billion, Bundlr had a new vision and rebranded the brand as Irys, dedicated to becoming the traceability layer of the Web3 field. They want to establish a lighthouse of truth and use Irys' traceability technology to combat the crisis of information lack of accountability, laying the foundation for building a future dominated by trust and transparency.

Shortly after the rebranding of the Irys brand, its traceability technology was adopted by Solana Mobile. Traceability technology allows data to be permanently stored and accurately determined as the source, solving the problems of composability, security, and ownership of data in Solana Mobile's Web3 app store.

The themed online seminar of BTC&Arweave is an excellent external communication activity for the Arweave ecosystem, jointly hosted by PermaDAO and Layer Two Labs, and held continuously for two days from October 23rd to 24th, 2023. The event includes theme-sharing and roundtable discussions. Sam, the founder of Arweave, and most of the founders of head projects in the ecosystem participated, and the Bitcoin ecosystem invited six outstanding builders such as Paul Sztorc, founder of LayerTwoLabs, and Andre Serrano, product manager of sBTC. Gathered together to share and explore the concepts and technical applications of decentralization, better promoting the development of BTC and Arweave.

The oracle project RedStone previously launched the Expedition activity, and the entire Expedition activity was based on the on-chain points system - RSG. RedStone's RSG points system is established in its Discord community, and Warp Contracts developed the Warpy tool for the RSG points system, which can be integrated into Discord as a bot. In addition, users can view their points situation through the Dashboard to ensure that their ranking is at the forefront to receive additional points rewards. The launch of the RSG on-chain points system helps the Expedition activity to proceed in an orderly manner, cleverly condensing the RedStone community to promote the community and project's common development, thus forming a win-win situation.

Onramper is a leading trading service provider in the industry, which has integrated more than 15 trading channel providers and supports over 180 payment methods. ArConnect reached cooperation with Onramper at the end of 2023, allowing users to use various fiat currencies and payment methods to purchase cryptocurrencies through ArConnect, reducing the entry barrier for users into Web3, and also allowing everyone to seamlessly participate in the Arweave ecosystem.

Part V: Summary 

The Arweave ecosystem experienced a milestone year in 2023 marked by remarkable performance and breakthroughs in various aspects such as network data, protocol upgrades, technological innovations, and ecosystem development.

Regarding network data, the most prominent aspect was the transaction volume, which totaled 1,759,817,766 for the entire year, representing a staggering fourfold increase compared to 2022.

Additionally, other key network indicators also demonstrated significant growth. Somewhat unexpectedly, amidst overall positive metrics, the network storage volume in 2023 experienced a decline of 55.78% compared to 2022. The signal suggests that Arweave is undergoing a transformation repositioning.

Arweave is no longer merely an infrastructure focused on storage, it has evolved into a vast and dynamic ecosystem. Against the backdrop of a bear market, the demand for storing large files has diminished, thus the decline in Arweave's network storage volume was foreseeable. However, transaction volume saw an upsurge, attributed to Arweave's increasing adoption by other blockchains or projects.

Furthermore, development activities on the Arweave network have been remarkably vibrant, with smart contract growth in 2023 surpassing that of 2022 by 1063.43%, indicating a significant boost in the overall ecosystem's vitality.

In terms of protocol upgrades, Arweave completed versions 2.6 and 2.7, making Arweave more environmentally friendly, stable, and secure. In terms of technological innovation, Arweave introduced two groundbreaking protocols in 2023 — the Universal Data License (UDL) and the Universal Content Market (UCM) protocols — allowing users to customize and trade atomic assets.

In terms of ecosystem events, Arweave hosted multiple hackathons and large-scale offline gatherings, while also witnessing the emergence of many outstanding new projects spanning various sectors such as NFTs, AI, and inscriptions.

In terms of ecosystem project development, irys continues to maintain its leading position, handling nearly 80% of the upload data volume in the Arweave ecosystem. The oracle project RedStone relentlessly integrates and expands its ecosystem, providing power to Web3 from Arweave. Permaswap and everPay are moving towards compliance and simplification, gradually establishing a multi-chain financial system for Arweave. ArConnect wallet has welcomed a long-awaited version upgrade, becoming more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. The representative gateway project ar.io has seen an increasing number of nodes joining, evolving into a vast and decentralized network. The social protocol Decent. Land has launched products such as ANS domain names, providing a comprehensive social system for the ecosystem. Storage projects ArDrive and Akord continued to iterate and optimize products, exploring more application scenarios. Database projects WeaveDB and Kwil have successfully released new tools, providing developers with a good development experience. With the promotion of atomic assets, new NFT markets like BazAR, RareWeave, and Fair Protocol emerged. Of course, we cannot overlook the contributions made by the PermaDAO community over the past year, with over 400 contributors participating in collaboration and jointly promoting the development of the Arweave ecosystem.

Overall, while some projects in the ecosystem may have stagnated, new projects continue to emerge. The Arweave ecosystem remains vibrant! Emerging projects are developing rapidly, while flagship projects are striving for breakthroughs, pursuing compliance, simplicity, and applicability, thereby driving the process of mass adoption.

DePIN is likely to become a trillion-dollar market in the near future, and Arweave, as the leader of the permanent storage sector, entered a phase of rapid growth in 2023. From the early data metrics of 2024, the momentum of growth continues. Arweave is not only an important infrastructure for Web3, but also a thriving ecosystem. With the favorable factors of the upcoming Bitcoin halving and the warming investment environment, Arweave will gradually manifest due to past accumulation!

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 💡 Initiated by everVision and sponsored by Forward Research (Arweave Official), PermaDAO is a "Cobuilding Community" focus on the theme of Arweave consensus storage. All contributions from PermaDAO contributors form the bedrock of data consensus. Let's embark on a journey starting with data consensus and delve into a novel paradigm for decentralized collaboration - Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)!