Inside the minds of 4 permaweb founders

GM fellow Arweaver!

Merdi Kim’s debut season of The Archive added an extra gift for everyone over the holidays: in-depth discussions all about Arweave with the founders of Forward Research, Community Labs, Permanent Data Solutions, and Longview Labs. Through these conversations, Merdi captured several first-hand accounts of defining moments from the permaweb’s first era and the philosophies driving its future.

Let’s dive into the insights from Season 1.

Key insights from four permaweb founders 🧠

What an impressive debut by Merdi Kim, capturing deep insights from four influential permaweb founders. You’d need several hours to get through every minute of these conversations, so if you’re short on time, here are some of the most interesting talking points from Season 1.

Sam Williams (Forward Research)

Arweave inventor Sam Williams touched on numerous topics in his interview with Merdi, ranging from the concept of a trustless and ownerless cyberspace to the scale of AO’s codebase compared to Arweave’s.

Here are a few nuggets that caught our attention:

• A permanent information storage system is a simple, open primitive with profound implications. Dozens of projects and applications have been built on Arweave that the original creators never could have imagined.
• Autonomous agents will be necessary for the content economy to thrive, alongside the massive horizontal scalability that AO Computer provides.
• AO can avoid hard forks thanks to its flexible and modular design of basic primitive utilities. Sam describes AO-Core’s mechanism as “deterministically ordered and available data as inputs to computations”.

You can watch the full interview with Sam here.

Tate Berenbaum (Community Labs)

It’s been a wild ride for Tate Berenbaum, who discovered Arweave by chance through a Brave browser ad. Tate’s interview highlights his philosophical thinking as he leads Community Labs through a transformative phase.

Here are a few insights worth highlighting:

• Wander wallet (formerly ArConnect) was created by Tate’s co-founder, Marton Lederer, in a single weekend. Marton wanted to solve the security risks and user frustration associated with dragging and dropping private keys into applications.
• Tate views Arweave’s current state through the lens of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series, seeing present challenges as necessary “crises” that will eventually lead to a more prosperous and trust-filled society.
• AI is inevitable, with powerful algorithms leading to job displacement and other disruptions. Arweave offers a critical layer of accountability, providing a location to store logs of actions that AI itself can never delete or alter.

You can watch the full interview with Tate here.

Phil Mataras (Permanent Data Solutions)

It’s always fun to watch a Phil Mataras interview and catch a glimpse of his impressive guitar collection. His talk with Merdi was the longest of the series, going deep into aspects of his personal journey and his outlook on future developments. Here are a few insights we picked up on:

• ArDrive ran into significant “middleman” issues when trying to launch on Apple’s App Store. These payment-related challenges only surfaced once the app was ready to be published.
• Permanent storage should encourage conscious curation over automatic syncing. Phil believes users should make intentional decisions about what’s truly worth keeping permanently.
• Quantum-proof encryption is something that ArDrive needs to focus development on, to ensure that private data stored today remains secure for decades to come.

You can watch the full interview with Phil here.

Greg Albritton (Longview Labs)

Our very own Longview Labs insider Greg Albritton was a guest on Merdi’s show.

Here’s what we learned about his worldview:

• Expanding the mind to centuries is an anomaly in the physical and digital form; Arweave unlocks this if you allow it to do so.
• Greg sees Arweave as a relentless “relationship protocol”, offering the most respectful experience possible between a user and their data.
• Arweave serves as a digital augmentation of the ancient human desire to preserve heritage and information for future generations.

You can watch the full interview with Greg here.

Follow Merdi (and his lead)

Congratulations to Merdi Kim on a fantastic first season. By documenting these conversations, Merdi has provided a massive service to the community, preserving the "why" behind the "how" of the permaweb.

We highly recommend following Merdi on YouTube and X to keep up with his future projects.

But beyond just following his work, we encourage you to follow his lead too. Merdi’s initiative reminds us that the permaweb is an open canvas for everyone. If you have a story to tell, a project to document, or a unique perspective to share with the world, now is always the best time to start.

ICYMI 👀

Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s been unfolding across Arweave and AO.

• Load S3 explorer goes live
• Holiday Jam Challenge winners revealed
• RTFKT safe on Arweave despite Nike sale
• RandAO shares ambitious 2026 roadmap

This week's community feature 📝

Pierre Stein Claysky’s latest article dives into the economics of ownership versus cloud rental for running permaweb hardware.

This well-researched piece paints a stark contrast between the cost of self-hosting and the solutions offered by cloud providers. Check it out on the Permaweb Journal.

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.