Arweave is in turmoil, with founder accusing eco-project Irys of being "too greedy"

Forks are nothing new, but many projects have debated how to fork them. This debate has also come to Arweave, an established decentralized data storage protocol.

On December 18, Arweave founder Sam Williams (@samecwilliams) posted on social media that trusted sources had learned that Irys (formerly Bundlr Network), a Web3 storage solution for the Arweave ecosystem, was considering forking Arweave in an “insecure and anti-community form.”

The reason why the Irys fork is not supported by Sam is that it wants to fork in a way that harms rather than helps the Arweave ecosystem.

Arweave Founder: Irys forked in an “anti-community” manner, and the project team was “too greedy and short-sighted”

Arweave and Irys, who are on both sides of the dispute, are players in the decentralized storage track.

Among them, Arweave is a decentralized data storage protocol based on blockweave technology, and the mainnet was launched in June 2018, which leverages BlockWeave’s data structure and SPoRA’s consensus mechanism to provide a new solution to the problem of permanent storage. Arweave’s one-time, life-long use format also solves the tedious process of users needing to subscribe over and over again. Arweave has also promised to provide users with storage for at least 200 years.

Irys (formerly known as Bundlr Network) is one of the leading projects in the Arweave ecosystem and has long been known as Arweave’s scaling solution, processing more than 10, 000, 000 transactions in its first month of launch, compared to only 1, 000, 000 transactions processed by Arweave. It is reported that Irys processes about 95% of Arweave transactions, and when it changed its name from Bundlr Network to Irys in October this year, Irys said it had completed more than 1 billion transactions.

According to CoinGecko data, after Arweave founder Sam Williams posted, the AR price of the Arweave token fell slightly, down 0.6% in 1 hour and 12.3% in 24 hours, and was quoted at $9.28 as of press time.

And in Sam’s long article, there are four key points worth noting.

First, about the proper way to fork Arweave. **

For a persistent storage network, forking needs to be done the right way: preserving and building the state, not destroying it. When forked in this way, they enable the network to continuously improve itself and resolve issues over time, keeping datasets secure. When forks don’t go this way, they won’t be able to achieve information permanence - because all data will be deleted on a regular basis.

This system allows for forked competition and improves protocols in a pro-social way: datasets remain secure, create a market for new ideas, and reward innovators. It also allows token holders to accumulate a range of tokens in a set of forks of the network, or to actively trade those tokens if they believe a particular fork is preferable: “It’s a win-win for everyone.”

The Arweave network itself has a mechanism called protocol evolution, which allows projects to securely fork and upgrade the network.

Second, about how Irys chose to fork. **

Unlike the proper fork, Irys intends to delete the dataset and reset the token supply, which Sam believes “appears to be motivated by greed” because users have placed their trust in Irys and uploaded the data to Arweave: "Forks have pro-social and anti-community ways, and Irys is pursuing an anti-community way to fork Arweave. 」

Sam also noted that after communicating with Irys, Irys said they “don’t want to support existing data and give out tokens to a bunch of bastards.” Sam defines Irys’ move as “greedy” and says that this approach is a short-sighted hindrance to the development of their own permanent storage project. If datasets and token supply are constantly being reset, no fork will be successful in the long run.

"We still want them to figure it out and structure their fork the right way. If their experiments contribute to the ecosystem, we are always open to communication and support. 」

Thirdly, about how Irys users can solve the problem. **

Since Irys may stop uploading users’ data to Arweave at any time, Arweave has announced that there is a new, completely free, and 100% Irys-compatible bundler that Irys users can use by simply replacing the node’s URL with this URL.

Fourth, about how Arweave is fighting back. **

If Irys doesn’t intend to fork the right way, Arweave plans to remove the Irys bundler from the main Arweave gateway, but this will result in a noticeable delay in the network before user data is available. As a result, Arweave will soon organize a Space of X to respond to more follow-ups.

Irys’ response: Arweave founder’s behavior was “disappointing” and a “tragic irony”

Irys quickly responded in a social media post, saying that Sam’s actions were a “tragic irony.” As someone who is committed to building technology that can protect humanity from tyranny, it’s “really disappointing” to see him behave like a tyrant and try to remove Irys from Arweave, a software that aims to be open source and permissionless.

At the same time, Irys notes that he has never and will never deprive users of choices about where their data is stored, and is committed to resisting censorship, open source, and permissionless technologies: "If a user can’t retrieve data due to Arweave’s active censorship, a user can point the application to an Irys-hosted gateway.

In addition, Irys said that he is working on new traceability technologies and is considering many powerful new features.

Community: Sam accuses Irys of “Vitalik sues L2”

Vance Spencer (@pythianism), co-founder of Framework Ventures, commented on the incident: "Sam threatens to sue the middleware that powers 90% of the Arweave network, imagine Vitalik suing L2. 」

Overall, however, Irys did not respond positively to Sam’s question about the fork approach, which has led to questions from the community, with many users pointing out that they want Irys to respond positively to the fork-related issues.

Behind this fork farce, how will Arweave and Irys end up?