Ferrying to Eternity with Real Data: An Overview of Web3 Permanent Web Storage Projects

With the emergence of the DePIN concept, decentralized storage has once again captured widespread market attention. Decentralized storage is an important infrastructure in the Web3 field, but for ordinary users, it may be difficult to grasp its charm intuitively. However, cloud storage products have always been one of the best choices for the public to enjoy storage services.

The earliest cloud storage project on the traditional internet, Xdrive, was born in 2002, and the most popular cloud storage, Google Drive, has been around for nearly 12 years, with over 3 billion users. Cloud storage products have already “entered the homes of thousands of households,” but meanwhile, incidents of data loss or misuse due to centralized cloud storage in the real world continue to occur. Data has gradually become an important asset for people, and decentralized storage is playing a new role in safeguarding private property. Among the many decentralized storage solutions, people often first notice the higher market value of FIL, but the author wants to explore the more unique Arweave and its ecosystem of cloud storage projects.

Since the launch of its mainnet in 2018, Arweave has been running smoothly for nearly 6 years. It is designed for permanent storage, providing a unique Blockweave data structure, a simple and elegant SPoRA consensus mechanism, and a mature economic incentive mechanism. At the same time, Arweave has also launched the native smart contract standard—SmartWeave, allowing developers to build applications on it. In addition, Arweave is also an open protocol that supports integration with any application to achieve permanent storage functionality.

At the beginning of 2024, according to incomplete statistics, there were already over 130 projects built around Arweave, which can be divided into 12 tracks. Arweave has become a huge and active ecosystem. This article will focus on introducing web storage projects, including WeWeave, ArDrive, Akord, and Moss, within the Arweave ecosystem, providing a multidimensional comparative analysis of the four.

WeWeave

WeWeave is a lightweight and easy-to-use cloud storage. Though designed simply, this website allows users to seamlessly store files upon entering the official website, making it particularly suitable for users who value storage usability. WeWeave is built on Arseeding (Arweave light node gateway) and uses ANS104 (Arweave’s transaction scaling protocol) for storage applications, especially suitable for storage scenarios with a small number of files.

Currently, WeWeave only supports the MetaMask wallet, and users can choose assets from three public chains to pay for storage fees, including Ethereum chain (USDT, AR, ETH), BSC chain (BNB), and Moonbeam (GLMR). Users can enjoy a smooth storage experience on WeWeave, and when storing files, they can add tags to them. In addition, WeWeave also supports indexing functionality, allowing users to search by entering keywords or tags. The search scope includes all files stored on the chain through WeWeave. This means that currently, uploads to WeWeave are publicly visible, and users can access their stored files online or access files uploaded by others through downloading.

ArDrive

Founded in 2020, ArDrive is a relatively mature web storage project. From the perspective of web interface and product experience, it is closer to the traditional Internet storage projects, and can be compared to the Web3 version of Dropbox or Baidu Cloud.

Users only need to pay once to easily store their data permanently. Besides, it also supports data encryption, making data only visible to themselves. Users can also create folders to manage classified data. Developers can upload data, monitor network health and transaction status through the ArDrive CLI tool.

Currently, ArDrive only supports login with the Arconnect wallet (the native wallet of Arweave), and requires the wallet to hold AR tokens to pay for storage fees. New users are given a free upload quota of 500KB. Considering that users may be unfamiliar with the Arconnect wallet, ArDrive has been optimized to support one-stop creation of new Arconnect wallets within the application, greatly reducing user entry costs.

Additionally, by cooperating with payment provider Stripe, ArDrive has launched ArDrive Turbo, allowing users to pay for storage fees using fiat currency (credit or debit cards). Furthermore, in 2023, ArDrive issued its native token ARDRIVE, with which users can trade within the decentralized exchange Permaswap.

Akord

Akord is a collaborative cloud storage platform that provides end-to-end encrypted storage and supports features such as collaborative work and private messaging. However, accurately speaking, Akord’s project is actually positioned as a decentralized digital vault, but its product functionality aligns closely with cloud storage. Especially after rebranding, Akord has shifted from one-time payments to a subscription model, focusing the product direction on secure storage and content publishing. This is also an extension based on the cloud storage business.

Akord is very user-friendly for Web3 beginners, requiring only simple account registration to log in. It automatically generates a mnemonic phrase for each successfully registered account, which is used to recover account information. Additionally, Akord allows users to directly import files from Dropbox and Google Drive for storage.

Furthermore, Akord not only supports permanent storage services but has also recently introduced temporary storage functionality. This feature allows users to store files on traditional cloud storage platforms and delete this temporary storage data at any time, providing more flexible options. Additionally, Akord has introduced token-gated access, allowing users to set access rules for stored files, expanding its application scenarios.

Moss

Moss is a social cloud storage platform launched by the 4EVERLAND (Web3 cloud computing platform) team, combining both centralized and decentralized storage methods. According to the current product design of Moss, it adopts a model similar to Friend.tech, encouraging creators to build communities for value exchange. Storage functionality may be just a “side dish”; Moss’s social features are the “main course”.

In terms of basic cloud storage functionality, Moss offers a variety of options. Regarding storage services, users can choose from traditional cloud storage, IPFS decentralized temporary storage, and Arweave permanent storage services. In terms of data sharing, users can open access to data or set access passwords.

The core components of Moss include Personal Folders, Mystery of Moss Origins NFT, Moss Stone, Key, and Mossyland.

• Mystery of Moss Origins NFT: Holders have the right to create Moss Stone.
• Moss Stone: A shared space for creators on the Moss platform, storing valuable data, and equipped with a built-in chat room.
• Key: Each Moss Stone has its corresponding Key. Users need to purchase the key to join Moss Stone.
• Mossyland: The grand square that gathers all Moss Stones, facilitating user exploration and participation.

For ordinary users, Moss can store data or join interesting Moss Stones. For creators, the economic model of Key will encourage them to continuously provide high-value content to the community, realizing a positive economic cycle.

Comparisons among Cloud Storage Products

The functions and characteristics of the four cloud storage projects are listed as follows:

Considering the characteristics of the projects, the following analysis will be conducted on WeWeave, ArDrive, Akord, and Moss from multiple aspects:

• Data Security: All four projects support Arweave to achieve permanent and tamper-proof data storage, ensuring data security.
• Compatible Storage Methods: Akord also supports traditional cloud storage services; Moss supports both traditional cloud storage and decentralized IPFS temporary storage services.
• Multi-Chain Support: Only WeWeave supports multi-chain cloud storage, allowing users to pay storage fees using assets from multiple public chains while storing data on Arweave.
• Storage Costs: Currently, the storage cost of Arweave is approximately $9/GB for permanent storage (theoretically 200 years), requiring only a one-time payment, and a monthly fee of $0.00375/GB. Additionally, ArDrive provides a 500 KB free upload quota, and Akord provides a 100MB free upload quota.
• User Threshold: Akord has the lowest user threshold, with simple registration required for login; WeWeave and Moss support a wider audience with MetaMask wallets, while ArDrive requires login with an Arconnect wallet, involving user education costs.
• Basic Features: All four projects have batch upload, online preview, sharing, and downloading functions.
• Data Search: Among them, only ArDrive does not currently support search/filtering functionality. WeWeave integrates Adot (a Web3 search engine based on large models) for full-chain data indexing, allowing users to directly retrieve mainstream content on the Arweave network through WeWeave.
• Collaborative Sharing: Moss has a chat room feature for community communication and interaction; Akord performs better in collaborative sharing, with built-in chat rooms, support for setting access management permissions, and log query usage records, making it especially suitable for multi-person collaboration.

Conclusion

Web3 is more than just hype; it has now produced a batch of real and usable products. Although Arweave dominates the permanent storage track, it is often underestimated by the market due to its weak financial attributes. As a storage infrastructure dedicated to solving problems, Arweave focuses more on long-term stable development rather than pursuing short-term wealth effects.

Currently, there are a series of cloud storage projects such as WeWeave, ArDrive, Akord, and Moss in the Arweave ecosystem, each with different features that directly address users’ real needs. Decentralized cloud storage, as a familiar yet unfamiliar product, has the potential to become an entry point for people to explore decentralization as more application scenarios are explored.

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