What is Arweave?
Arweave is a decentralized storage network designed to preserve data permanently. It powers Long Drive — here is how it works in plain language.
Store on ArweavePay once, stored forever
Storage is prepaid into an endowment that funds miners to keep your data available over the long term.
Decentralized
No single company controls the network. Data is replicated across independent miners worldwide.
Public and verifiable
Every piece of data lives on a public ledger with a unique transaction ID anyone can check.
01The permanent web
Arweave calls itself "the permanent web" — an infrastructure where information does not rot, get taken down, or disappear when a company shuts down. It achieves this with a blockweave, a structure where each new block references the previous one and older data.
Users pay a one-time fee that goes into a storage endowment. The network invests these funds and uses the yield to reward miners for storing data — the same idea as a university endowment funding research forever.
02How Long Drive uses Arweave
Long Drive is a gateway to Arweave designed for normal people: upload a file in your browser, optionally encrypt it, and Long Drive packs it into a permanent data transaction on the network.
You receive a transaction ID and a permanent URL. Files under 100 KB are stored free forever through the free tier; larger files cost a one-time fee based on the current network rate.
03Arweave vs. IPFS vs. Filecoin
IPFS is great for content distribution but does not guarantee persistence — files can disappear if nobody pins them. Filecoin introduces storage deals with time limits that need renewing.
Arweave is designed specifically for permanence: one payment, no renewal, century-scale preservation. That makes it the natural base for a permanent personal archive like Long Drive.
Arweave FAQ
Is Arweave really permanent?
Arweave is engineered for century-scale storage through a prepaid endowment and ongoing mining incentives. No technology can guarantee absolute forever, but permanence is the network's core design goal.
Do I need to understand blockchain to use it?
No. Long Drive hides the complexity — you upload a file like any other cloud drive. The blockchain happens underneath.
Who runs the network?
Arweave is run by a decentralized network of independent miners around the world, coordinated by open protocol rules rather than any single organization.