From 'affordable to store' to 'affordable to use': How does Irys become the 'cloud computing infrastructure' of Web3?

Kyle of Multicoin once had a “crazy theory” that, with the development of technology, gas fees will approach 0 indefinitely—this point has gradually been accepted by the market as new Consensus with the rise of high-performance public chains and L2s such as Solana, SUI, etc.

In the field of on-chain data, a similar scene is also being replayed: AI, memecoin, DePIN, IP, and even NFT have brought completely different demands for the storage and processing of on-chain data. If blockchain is only used for accounting or simple token transfers, there is no need for a large data throughput; but once it involves massive metadata, complex verification, or high-frequency read and write operations, the old infrastructure will be as inadequate as ‘dial-up Internet’.

Ethereum is a typical example. Some people have calculated that storing a few hundred KB of data on Ethereum could cost tens of thousands of dollars; if you want to put large-scale data sources on it, the real cost is almost impossible for people to accept. Even though Blob space was added through EIP-4844 later, allowing Rollups to store transaction data in a ‘dedicated lane,’ the data still cannot be stored for a long time and will be automatically ‘cleaned up’ in a few weeks. Although it can temporarily alleviate the congestion of Ethereum, this ‘temporary availability’ is simply impossible to meet the needs of scenarios that truly need to store important files on the chain, build large databases, or support AI training.

Current plan, each fights on their own

Each public chain is trying to cope with the challenge of ‘data expansion.’ Solana’s approach is State Compression, which means moving large blocks of data off-chain, storing only fingerprint information on-chain, significantly reducing the burden on the chain. However, it also means that once external storage fails, the original data is difficult to reproduce. Filecoin tends to provide temporary storage through a ‘market mechanism,’ but the retrieval time may be long, lasting several days, which is not friendly to applications that require real-time calls. Arweave has pioneered a permanent storage model, but it is difficult to achieve perfection in terms of performance and verifiability, and it is not closely integrated with smart contract platforms. In this patchwork state, developers often have to combine ‘on-chain + off-chain’ into a complex system, increasing reliance on third parties and reducing composability and speed.

In summary, today’s solutions can be roughly divided into two categories:

• One type is the short-term “data availability layer” (Ethereum’s blob, Celestia), which ensures that data can be accessed by all nodes when packaging blocks, but does not provide permanent storage;

• Another type is off-chain storage solutions (Solana’s compression method, IPFS/Filecoin/Arweave), which map off-chain data through ‘on-chain tags’, effectively reducing on-chain costs, but heavily relying on external networks, limiting composability, and preventing smart contracts from being called directly.

In other words, there is currently no solution that can provide a scalable, persistent, and composable data layer on the chain, allowing data to naturally be stored on the blockchain and be directly called by the execution environment at any time.

At the same time, AI, DePIN, NFT, and more and more Web3 applications require a large amount of verifiable data in daily operation - but high costs, fragmented on-chain and off-chain connections, and the lack of structured and persistent pain points make countless projects hesitate.

What has changed with the emergence of Irys?

At this point, Irys debuts with a ‘data + execution integration’ concept. It is not simply aiming to be a ‘storage network,’ but by incorporating an EVM-compatible execution environment, it allows data to be read, used, and combined directly on the same chain, eliminating the need for additional cross-chain or offline operations.

Imagine that in the past, if we wanted to store a picture of an NFT on the blockchain, we would need to use IPFS or a centralized server, worrying that someone might not ‘Pin’ it properly and lose it; now, if the creator uploads the picture to the Irys network, it can stay permanently on the chain, and access rights and revenue distribution are determined by smart contracts, developers do not need to prepare additional gateways or cross-chain bridges. It’s like in the past when you bought various hard drives and servers to store data, but now you can do it all on a single machine in the cloud.

Irys’ ‘double ledger’ architecture is also quite interesting: newly submitted data will first be processed quickly (Submit Ledger), and after verification, it will enter the final permanent storage (Publish Ledger). It’s a bit like a logistics process, first using a high-speed express to transport goods to the transit station, and then safely moving the goods into a long-term warehouse. In this way, it not only takes into account the upload speed but also ensures that the data can truly be retained, instead of automatically evaporating like Ethereum in the ‘temporary lane’ after a few weeks.

More importantly, Irys not only needs to be “capable of storing”, but also needs to be “usable”. It directly embeds an executable environment in the chain, compatible with EVM, and developers can still use familiar tools or languages (such as Solidity) to develop “on-chain logic”. In terms of performance, it is introduced that Irys’s throughput can far exceed the level of traditional public chains, which is very attractive for businesses that require high concurrency or frequent data reading and writing. If you are a company that wants to conduct large-scale AI training on the chain or deeply integrate with the NFT ecosystem, you don’t need to worry about cross-chain, high Gas costs, or slow retrieval. Just hand the data directly to Irys, which is like renting all the servers in the same cloud platform. On-chain contracts want to retrieve data, and they can do so at any time.

Plug-and-play on-chain AWS

Why is Irys’ approach likened to “AWS on the chain”? We can draw an analogy from the history of Web2. The reason why AWS was able to rise rapidly back then was because it packaged all “common requirements” such as computing, storage, databases, access management, etc., into cloud services, allowing enterprises and developers to not have to build and maintain servers themselves, but to hand over these tedious tasks to a specialized platform. This not only greatly improved efficiency but also unlocked many previously unimaginable scenarios.

Irys wants to do in Web3 is similar - to allow developers to solve large-scale on-chain storage and computing ‘one-stop’ with lower barriers and better performance. If you are a team that wants to build an on-chain game, you need to upload massive game assets and scene information to the chain, and quickly execute contracts to verify item ownership or player achievements. If you use Irys, game data and contract logic can interact on the same network, eliminating the tedious operation of ‘storing some on Arweave, executing logic on Ethereum, and introducing a centralized oracle to retrieve data’. Developers can focus more on gameplay and user experience, rather than spending time on various infrastructure assemblies.

This kind of composability will create a positive feedback loop: when more data, more protocols, and more services converge on Irys, everyone can call each other, like building blocks in the cloud, to derive more innovative applications. Web3 has long been criticized for its high development costs and the difficulty of interoperability between different chains. One of the reasons behind this is the lack of a ‘general platform’ that can store and execute at the same time. If this problem is overcome by Irys or similar solutions, then the prosperity of the on-chain ecosystem is expected to experience a new wave of explosion, just like the internet after the emergence of cloud computing.

Now is the perfect time for Irys

Looking back at the current development of the blockchain industry, we will find that the call for ‘big data + blockchain’ is becoming increasingly louder. While the Layer-2 expansion has alleviated transaction congestion, it has prompted more projects to start thinking about how to process data in a cheaper and more flexible way. The AI training datasets are getting larger, and creators’ demands for on-chain rights confirmation and revenue sharing are increasingly strong, sending a signal to the market: existing data infrastructure is no longer sufficient to support the next stage of growth.

Projects such as Celestia and Story Protocol have each raised over 1 billion US dollars in funding. Their post-TGE valuations also rank high on the leaderboard, proving capital’s particular attention to the “on-chain data layer.” Ethereum’s progress on scalability improvements like EIP-4844 also indirectly confirms that the entire network is seeking alternative or complementary persistent storage solutions, aiming to prevent ‘insufficient temporary space’ from becoming a bottleneck for further development.

As a strong competitor, Irys is not Nobody either. If you are not very familiar with Irys, then you must have heard of the team’s former star project Bundlr. As an L2 of Arweave, Bundlr successfully expanded the daily transaction volume of the Arweave network from 10,000 to over 15 million transactions, supporting 98% of the network’s activity volume, and successfully helping over 300 projects access the ecosystem. Starting from Bundlr in '21 to today’s Irys, the team’s technology and industry understanding have made a qualitative leap.

Meanwhile, Irys has raised about $10 million in the seed round, and the Series A financing is still ongoing. Among its early investors are well-known VCs such as Lemniscap, Primitive, and Framework, as well as Permanent from Arweave and the co-founder of Bear Chain. The support from both capital and projects proves that Irys not only has the money and technology but also has strong experience and industry resources. Compared to projects that are still in the ‘concept verification’ stage, Irys already has the elements to truly move towards large-scale applications.

The moment when Web3’s AWS is about to arrive

History tells us that whenever the underlying infrastructure undergoes a major upgrade, it will lead the next wave of innovation.

The answer given by Irys is to truly place the most underestimated sector, ‘data,’ at the center of the chain and seamlessly integrate it with the execution environment. Developers can write, retrieve, and process large-scale data on Irys at any time, just like using cloud services, without encountering outrageously expensive gas fees or worrying about data being cleared in a few weeks.

In Web2, AWS has almost monopolized the market with its comprehensive cloud service ecosystem. However, this also means that developers face the risk of being ‘locked in’ once they encounter platform price increases or policy changes while enjoying the convenience. On the other hand, Irys operates in a different dimension - in its decentralized network, you can build verifiable AI, flexible on-chain automation, and globally shared states without worrying about being kicked out of the platform or paying high rents. In other words, Irys does not directly compete with AWS, but does what AWS cannot achieve: provide developers with an on-chain environment that is independent of centralization, operates on a cost basis, and allows various applications to be freely combined, enabling the Internet to return to its open and composable nature.

Of course, whether all of this can truly become the “on-chain AWS” remains to be seen based on the ecological landing. Only when enough projects and protocols are willing to settle in Irys, can the true composability magic be unleashed. Just like AWS only initially provided support for Amazon’s own business, and later gradually grew into a global leading cloud computing platform through a series of developer services and word-of-mouth spread. Perhaps Irys also needs a “from 0 to 1, and then from 1 to N” process. But at this critical moment of large-scale blockchain upgrade, its vision is ambitious enough and also sufficiently in line with the demand. Whoever can solve a series of pain points such as cross-chain, offline, and inability to combine at once will have the opportunity to become the underlying cornerstone of the next era.

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