What is Arweave? – Darlinez News.

Meta recently announced their plans to bring minting and trading NFTs into the company’s social media platforms like Instagram. Along with Polygon, Meta chose a relatively less-known decentralized storage service called Arweave. Arweave’s native token AR has seen a 60% surge in price over the past day after it was revealed that Meta is planning to integrate the project’s services into Instagram.

What is Arweave and How Meta Plans to Use it?

Arweave is a Web3 project that offers blockchain-based data storage solutions. The protocol achieves this by matching people who need storage with those who have extra space, creating a decentralized network of devices that offer data storage.

“Arweave is a new type of storage that backs data with sustainable and perpetual endowments, allowing users and developers to truly store data forever,” the project’s website claims, adding that it allows preserving valuable information, apps, and history “indefinitely.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to use the Web3 project to archive their creators’ digital collectibles. Stephane Kasriel, head of commerce and financial technologies at Meta, announced the news in a late Thursday tweet, saying:

“We’re rolling this out on Polygon blockchain to start. We’re also expanding the types of collectibles you can display on Instagram to include videos & adding support for Solana and Phantom. Plus new integrations with OpenSea and Arweave!”

As part of the integration, Arweave will store the digital assets issued by Instagram users, the Web3 platform’s CEO and co-founder Sam Williams tweeted. Notably, just yesterday Instagram will allow creators to mint and sell NFTs directly from the social media platform.

Following the news, Arweave’s native token AR surged by more than 60%. As of now, the token is trading at around $16.02, up by 59.2% over the past 24 hours. However, it is still down by more than 80% compared to its all-time high of $89.24 recorded in November 2021.

What Makes Arweave Different From Web2 Storage Solutions

In its essence, Arweave enables users to save data and information forever, although it technically guarantees 200 years of storage. Moreover, once the data is entered, it cannot be altered. This is in contrast to centralized data solutions that are not censorship-resistant.

Designed to provide scalable, cost-effective, and permanent data storage, the protocol can archive data or even the transaction history of another blockchain. Users need to purchase the storage space by paying the AR token.

Earlier this year, the platform revealed that it had “archived over 5 million documents from Ukraine in order to generate a permanent and immutable record of the events there,” the project’s founder and CEO Sam Williams said.

Other decentralized data storage solutions include Filecoin and Storj, which have also benefitted from the recent announcement around Arweave. Filecoin’s native token FIL is up by more than 15% over the past day while Storj’s native token STORJ has gained around 10%.

Meanwhile, Meta shares ended the latest trading down in the red despite the news around Instagram NFT integration. The tech giant’s shares closed the day around $90, down by approximately 5%.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist