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AR Token (Arweave)

AR Token (Arweave)

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AR is Arweave’s native token.

What Is AR Token?

Arweave is a decentralized permanent storage platform where AR is its native token.
The maximum supply of the AR token is 66 million, out of which 55 million tokens were minted when the genesis block was created at the mainnet launch. The remaining 11 million AR tokens are set to be rewarded to miners.  

Once all of the 66 million AR tokens are minted, this cryptocurrency will become deflationary. One of the impressive aspects of AR token is 600% growth in its value after the first half of 2021.

Being the native token of Arweave, it has wide utility across the Arweave ecosystem. Some of the use cases of AR include the following:

  • To be used as the cryptocurrency for all sorts of transactions fees pertaining to storage and retrieval of data.

  • To be used for interacting with multiple decentralized apps (dApps) built on Arweave. 

  • To acquire data storage on Arweave, users need to pay distributed storage fees in AR. 

  • Arweave pays incentives to storage providers in AR only. 

What Is Arweave?

Arweave is a new type of decentralized storage that allows users to store data permanently by leveraging novel technologies, such as blockweave, permaweb, and proof of access.

Blockweave and Proof of Access (PoA) sit at the core of the Arweave network.

Unlike blockchain which is typically used to build crypto projects, blockweave stores both transactional and data information. Another difference is in terms of how blocks on blockweave are connected to their previous blocks. In blockchain, each block refers to the previous one. On the other hand, a previous block in a blockweave is connected to the recall block (a randomly selected block).  

Another component of Arweave is permaweb, which is a layer built on top of Arweave blockchain. Permaweb is where all the decentralized apps are stored, meaning it’s completely decentralized as well.

Arweave uses Proof of Access, an alternative to the standard blockchain consensus mechanism. Miners on Arweave don’t need to store all blocks that helps prevent extensive electricity consumption. 

Arweave may seem to operate on a complex mechanism, but all of the complicated technicalities are on its back-end. Its front-end is what makes it an easy-to-use platform, which is intuitively designed keeping in mind the user. All it takes is an Arweave browser extension to store website pages on the network. 

One key feature is its immutability when it comes to the data stored on the network. Immutability is found in every aspect as the applications are permanent. Even the creators can’t alter the rules – making Arweave an immutable decentralized web. 

The future may seem bright for Arweave, but it’ll face some challenges pertaining to scalability.

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