GM fellow Arweaver!
Arweave turns 8 today. Eight years of uptime, an untouched endowment, a permanent record that keeps growing, and a core philosophy that’s held since day one. Few blockchain projects can claim a similar track record.
Here’s a look back at the journey so far.
Arweave turns 8 🎂
With each passing year, Arweave’s Lindy effect grows stronger. The network is secure, its core principles deeply philosophical. The ecosystem is far more than the sum of its nodes.
Here are a few milestones worth celebrating as Arweave enters its ninth year.
Origin and launch
Sometimes an idea arrives seemingly from nowhere and propels you on a drastically different course in life. That’s what happened to Sam Williams during a hike in the Scottish mountains almost a decade ago, when the concept for Archain was conceived.
Archain rebranded to Arweave in February 2018. Fast forward to June 8, 2018 (sixty-nine years after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four), and the very first transactions were etched onto the blockweave.
The Genesis Block holds an extraordinary trove of messages from that moment, including hundreds of notes of hope and goodwill from the earliest community members. The block has since made history in another sense, having literally been sent to the moon in 2025.
Enter the permaweb
The permaweb emerged in early 2019, as it became clear that the blockweave could support far more than static archives. A true alternative to the traditional web took shape, one where applications could live permanently, without the risk of censorship or deletion.
What followed was a steady evolution through SmartWeave, Warp contracts, and now AO Computer. Each innovation pushed technical boundaries, with Arweave consistently providing the permanent foundation underneath.
Along the way, the permaweb has earned recognition from established companies like Meta, adjacent ecosystems such as Solana, and even a direct mention from a US Senator. Some individuals found in Arweave a home for digital art. Others discovered a playground for hidden treasure. Archiving became a defining use case, with significant artifacts dating as far back as the Kerch Strait incident in 2018. The network has also become a well-used resource for other blockchains and crypto projects looking to secure their historical data.
Key Arweave statistics
The Arweave network has processed almost 25 billion transactions to date. Over 350 TiB of unique data has been secured on the weave, with a total network size of 21 PiB including replications. The storage endowment has surpassed 330,000 $AR and remains untouched, gradually adding to the scarcity of $AR supply with each new upload. A new block is added to the weave roughly every two minutes.
You can dive deeper into the stats and test your knowledge against five specific Viewblock charts in this recent issue: Can you guess these 5 Arweave charts?
A flourishing community and ecosystem
The open creativity enabled by the permaweb has allowed an ecosystem of developers and creators to flourish. Words, both old and new, have a home onchain through platforms such as the Gutenberg archive, Hackernoon, and Paragraph. Digital art collectors are building culture onchain. Creators find empowerment through the Universal Data License. Musicians have a reliable place to store and share their work.
Countless meetups, hackathons, conferences, and events have brought the permaweb community together, both online and offline. From Delhi to Denver, the Arweave population is as diverse as the nodes that make up the network. Our 2025 review goes deeper into some of the standout community events.
Keep building
Eight years in, and the mission holds strong. Hype cycles come and go, but the goal has never changed: build meaningful technology that provides lasting utility to humanity.
The community deserves this moment to celebrate and reflect on its success. It’s also worth considering this moment through the lens of permanence: eight years is just the beginning. As a timely reminder, just build.
Happy birthday, Arweave! Here’s to the next eight years and beyond.
ICYMI 👀
Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s been unfolding across Arweave and AO.
- The future is bright on the Permaweb
- First phase of Permaweb Names is live
- Anyone Protocol continues Hyperbeam migration progress
This week's community feature 🌷
Forever Garden, a permanent gardening game built on Arweave that's been running for over two months, has been selected for a game art exhibition in Pori, Finland (June 13 - July 31).
You can explore the garden for yourself and enjoy the tranquil sounds at forevergarden.xyz
Thanks for reading!
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Follow us on X at @onlyarweave to stay updated on all things Arweave. Want to dive deeper into AO? Check out @aoComputerClub.
The Longview Team
This is not investment advice. No profit guarantees. If in the U.S., ensure compliance with U.S. laws and seek professional advice.