Data centralization is a curse. Arkiv wants to break the spell.

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After the recent 15-hour AWS outage exposed the risks of centralized data control, Arkiv is emerging as a new decentralized data layer that blends web2 usability with web3 security.

Summary

• Arkiv gives developers a blockchain-backed database layer for transparent, verifiable, and queryable data.
• Built on Ethereum and powered by the GLM token, it expands the Golem Network’s mission to make data a first-class citizen in web3.
• Developers pay only for the data they store and duration used, ensuring scalability, affordability, and trustless access.

Just a few days ago, the internet came to a standstill for 15 hours when Amazon’s AWS, a cloud-based computing giant, crashed, halting everything from travel bookings to financial transactions. Organizations, both big and small, were forced to confront the dangers of data centralization and the perils of concentrating power in the hands of a few tech moguls. 

But developers in the crypto space felt vindicated. They’ve been warning about this dangerous trend for years. By pooling data control within the hands of a few centralized players, we are exposing ourselves to immense operational and security risks.

Why are developers worried?

Developers have long expressed concerns about relying on centralized data providers. But these concerns have often been brushed aside by management executives in pursuit of convenience, speed, or cost efficiency. Yet, the consequences remain: high operational costs, limited transparency, and the constant risk of censorship. This is the price of hosting data on someone else’s servers.

So, can web3 solve this problem? Could decentralization be the solution? Despite its trustlessness, verifiability, and decentralization, web3 was not built for complex data. When handling large data, it becomes slow, expensive, and difficult to scale. Web3 was designed for value storage and ownership transfer, not for real-time, queryable data.

Developers across sectors like AI, DeFi, and IoT all face this challenge. These industries depend on live, accessible, and queryable data. Until now, developers have had to choose between convenience and control. But new, emerging platforms like Arkiv offer a third option.

What is Arkiv?

Arkiv functions as a data layer. It acts like a database enhanced with blockchain-grade features and guarantees. Essentially, Arkiv brings the usability and familiarity of web2 databases together with the trust, integrity, and verification that web3 promises.

The project grew out of Golem DB and will continue developing what Golem DB started. It is aligned with Ethereum and powered by the GLM token, expanding its utility. 

Paweł Burgchardt, Chief Product Officer at Golem Network and co-founder of Arkiv, explains: With its permissionless and trustless design, anyone can use Arkiv as their data layer, whether through a block explorer, a user-friendly API, or by querying it just like a traditional database. Arkiv is a developer’s gateway to the future of data, whether they are building a DePIN project, a web2 or web3 application, or represent an organization seeking transparent data operations.

How is Arkiv better?

Arkiv aims to make data a first-class citizen within web3, not an afterthought. It is queryable by design, meaning developers can easily access the data they store. It is time-scoped. This means that users pay only for the amount of data they store and for how long they store it.

Additionally, it is deterministic, which means that identical queries always produce the same results for a given block number. It offers flexibility: deployments can be permissioned or permissionless, trusted or trustless, depending on the use case. In this way, Arkiv contributes to the overall utility of the Ethereum ecosystem by introducing a truly data-centric approach through an affordable Data Availability Layer.

From an economic standpoint, Arkiv’s model is built for efficiency. Data costs increase based on storage volume and duration, but Arkiv mitigates this through data expiration and pruning. Developers only pay for what they actually use.

Arkiv not just benefits developers but also the whole Ethereum ecosystem. Built on Ethereum principles and proven frameworks, it’s not just built on Ethereum but for Ethereum. Its mission is to strengthen the ecosystem by addressing one of its most concerning limitations: data.

What’s next for Arkiv?

Earlier this year, Arkiv unveiled operations in Singapore at Token2049. Next, the Arkiv team will be attending several events in Argentina at Devconnect, including being platinum sponsors of Sub0 https://sub0.gg/, which is a major event with 2000 developers present. 

Arkiv is now onboarding developers and actively looking to build the community. Interested developers can check out Arkiv on its official website or socials. As Arkiv emerged within the Golem Network Ecosystem, Golem Ecosystem Fund will support developers and contributors building on Arkiv.

To sum up

Developers have always expressed their concerns about the centralization of data, but were also not satisfied with web3 because of its limitations. Arkiv aims to solve this deep-rooted problem. Arkiv is a fast-growing platform that redefines web3 with a data-centric architecture designed for real-world applications. It is the web3 counterpart to traditional web2 databases. Each database runs as its own DB-Chain – an L3 network built on Arkiv, which operates as an L2 on Ethereum and inherits its security. The platform uses blockchain to secure data commitments, with the data itself stored in a database on each node tightly coupled with a blockchain component. This way, Arkiv bridges the gap between web2 efficiency and web3 integrity, finally giving developers true control over their data.

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