November 19, 2021

Polygon Adds Permanent Data Storage With Arweave Integration

Arweave’s permanent storage is now available on Polygon, allowing our users to pay for data uploads with the native $MATIC token and opening new possibilities for smart contracts on the permaweb.

Developers can make decentralized storage available natively inside Polygon apps via Arweave’s Bundlr Network. The next step is bringing this capability directly to end-users by integrating it into all of the wallets in the Polygon ecosystem. To speed things along, Arweave, Polygon and Bundlr are jointly offering a $9,000 developer grant to build these features.

The recent explosion of activity around decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens on Ethereum resulted in network congestion and exorbitant transaction costs. Polygon's low transaction fees and a broad range of scaling options have gotten noticed. The number of decentralized applications building on Polygon grew 100-fold in the past year to 3,000 as of October, according to Alchemy.

Also read: Why Web3 Developers Are Choosing Polygon Over Other Solutions

The frenzy of digital art collecting has also raised questions around long-term data storage: how can we ensure that the assets associated with NFTs are never lost? Arweave’s answer is a scalable, endowment-backed storage, available forever, for a single fee. The network saw its transaction volume skyrocket in recent months and is on track to process 15 times as many data uploads in November as it did in August.

Beyond NFT projects, this integration makes Polygon’s smart contracts readily available for developers building on the permaweb -- a decentralized web of permanent web apps, exposed by the Arweave network to browsers. With everything from fully-decentralized social media applications to a community-owned metaverse, the scope of applications buildable on Polygon just massively expanded.

Traditional centralized data storage is the cornerstone of Web 2.0 and a huge industry. A number of projects including FileCoin, Storj and Sia have sprung up to develop a crypto-native pay-as-you-go storage alternative. What sets Arweave apart is that its users pay a one-time upfront fee to store the data in perpetuity, a feat made possible with a new economic model that incentivizes miners to replicate data and blockchain innovations such as Blockweave and Proof of Access.

We invite the developers to check out the grant to build these features. Click here to find out about the technology that powers Arweave and learn how Bundlr Network works here. Keep up with the latest news on Polygon Developers twitter channel, take a deep dive into the available blockchain technology resources or say hi on Discord.

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