Author: 0XNATALIE
Recently, the dispute between the decentralized storage protocol Arweave and its main ecosystem project Irys has attracted attention from the community and the industry.
Arweave is a decentralized data storage protocol. Irys (formerly Bundlr Network) is one of the flagship projects in the Arweave ecosystem, serving as an extension solution for Arweave. Irys bundler batches multiple transactions to help Arweave increase throughput. Data uploaded to Irys is permanent and resistant to censorship, with each piece of data having a high-precision timestamp. Users can always read and write data of any scale and accurately determine its source.
Dispute Begins
Arweave founder Sam Williams stated on X on December 18 that Irys plans to fork Arweave in a way that is detrimental to the ecosystem. Irys plans to abandon the existing dataset and reset the token supply. On the blockchain, data is stored in the form of blocks, each containing transactions and state updates over a period of time. Abandoning the existing dataset means the new network will no longer have the transaction history and smart contract state of the original network. Resetting the token supply means the project will recreate tokens in the new forked network and redistribute them to network participants. Token holders in the original network will no longer have the same amount of tokens and will need to participate in the token allocation of the new network.
Sam stated that this approach violates Arweave's protocol evolution principles, which consist of three points:
Anyone can fork at any time: The protocol evolution principle allows anyone to create a fork at any time, encouraging community participation in the development and improvement of the network.
Forks should inherit the network's dataset and token supply: Effective forks should retain the current state of the network, including the dataset and token supply, to ensure the preservation of information permanence.
Forks can mint new tokens: To encourage innovation and reward fork builders, the protocol evolution principle allows new forks to mint any number of new tokens, creating an incentive mechanism to encourage people to propose improvements and competitively develop the protocol.
Sam accused Irys of not intending to maintain the dataset, being short-sighted and greedy. In response to Irys's forking plan, they will remove the Irys bundler from the trusted set of Arweave gateways. This action will cause delays in content uploaded through Irys on the network. Additionally, Sam stated that Irys may stop uploading user data to Arweave, so users are advised to use other free bundlers. There is a new 100% and Irys-compatible free bundler available at up.arweave.net, where users only need to change the URL of the Irys node to the new URL.
Irys quickly responded, stating that Sam Williams' actions were "tragically ironic." They stated that Sam is attempting to remove Irys from Arweave, contradicting the idea of commitment to open-source and permissionless software. Irys emphasized that they have never and will never deprive users of the choice of data storage location and have always been committed to censorship resistance, open-source, and permissionless technology.
Community Response
Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, expressed: "Sam threatens to sue the middleware that supports 90% of the Arweave network, just like Vitalik suing L2. Suing to expand the network's builders is completely insane. I hope this is not the future of Arweave or every protocol built on Arweave." Mardeni, CEO of Weave, countered, "I haven't heard of any lawsuit, but your comparison is absolutely wrong. Resetting Arweave with new tokens and datasets means directly competing with Arweave, not just L2."
Paolo Diomede from The Graph speculated that Irys's actions are to please VCs. He believes that the attention Irys has received is due to Arweave, and now, by pleasing VCs, loyalty and trust are being destroyed.
Articlagoon from the community stated that resetting the chain, data, and tokens, if true, is very malicious and has no effect on expanding the chain. Apart from the ecosystem, everyone's wallets will shrink.
Silanael from the community believes that the current situation is exactly what Irys sees Arweave as a trendy money-making toy rather than for the purpose of data preservation. Irys is not the only project with this mindset; this phenomenon is quite common.
Ongoing Controversy
On the morning of the 19th, Sam tweeted again, updating and supplementing some information. He stated that over 97% of the transaction volume transmitted through Irys has begun to transition to the new bundler. Most of the data will transition to the new bundler in the next day or two, and more data will begin transitioning and integrating every hour. In this tweet, Sam also pointed out that when they first heard about Irys's plan, they proposed funding the fork and emphasized following fair protocol evolution principles within the ecosystem. However, Irys repeatedly rejected this proposal.
Although there are also many in the community who criticize Sam for being too centralized, due to Irys's previous response having the suspicion of evading the main issue and not directly addressing Sam's accusation of "malicious fork," the community's response seems to lean more towards Arweave. Additionally, with the information added by Sam in his subsequent post hinting at the vested interests of the fork, Irys couldn't sit still and issued another clarification on the morning of the 19th, further pointing out that their goal is to enrich the traceability of world data. In some scenarios, such as data availability or temporary data storage, it is not suitable to store in Arweave. Therefore, Irys is exploring the possibility of forking Arweave.
Furthermore, the exploration of the fork is still in the early stages, and there has not even been a discussion with the community, developers, or investors about this possibility, and the final solution has not been determined. Irys emphasized that they will continue to support the Arweave ecosystem and will fully consider the community's opinions regardless of the future path taken. Regarding Sam's decision to remove the Irys bundler, Irys urges the community to still be able to restore application performance by using Irys's own gateway.
In short, Irys's response to Arweave's accusations can be summarized as: "I didn't, I don't have, don't talk nonsense, I'm just exploring possibilities."
The entire event is still unfolding, and the Arweave community is actively seeking solutions. This debate about forking, data permanence, and open-source principles reveals conflicts in the visions of infrastructure developers and project parties' interests. It is hoped that the issues can be properly resolved to ensure the long-term stability and development of the Arweave ecosystem.
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