Solana and Arweave formed a partnership to build SOLAR Bridge, which Arweave uses in its pursuit of being the data layer for public blockchains. The SOLAR Bridge partnership is mutually beneficial for both parties, as well as end-users from retail traders to enterprises. The end result is a decentralized, censorship-resistant public data layer that is faster than Ethereum despite more blocks than Polkadot or even Bitcoin. In addition to many other benefits, this partnership saves Solana time that they would spend in-house designing a bridge akin to the one they’ve received from Arweave.

Accumulate can further enhance data in this type of partnership with secure identity and key management across any Web 2 or Web 3 address– from blockchains, to enterprise tech stacks, to websites. Furthermore, Accumulate can enhance data on protocols like Arweave through pruning, validating, scaling, and integration, thus making layer 1’s more interoperable. 

Some of the topics covered in this blog include: 

• What is Solana?
• What is Arweave?
• Why the Solana and Arweave partnership is mutually beneficial 
• How Accumulate can enhance data in a partnership like this 

What is Solana?

As one of the fastest growing blockchains in the world, over 400 Web 3, DeFi, and NFT projects are building in the Solana ecosystem. It was founded in 2017 with the Solana Foundation headquarters based in Geneva, Switzerland. The consensus mechanism combines the underlying Proof-of-Stake infrastructure that is prevalent across many crypto projects, with a unique consensus known as Proof-of-History. 

Solana was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko who started his professional career at Qualcomm. In just a few years, Yakovenko became a senior engineer with the company before leaving it for Dropbox. Then in 2017, Yakovenko began building what became Solana with fellow Qualcomm alum Greg Fitzgeral. The pair founded Solana which eventually attracted other former Qualcomm employees. In 2020, SOL token was publicly released, and the Solana Protocol was officially born. 

(Image taken from DeFi Llama) 

Solana has short processing and lower block validation times compared to other blockchains. The speed and efficiency of the Solana blockchain have also garnered attention from institutions and enterprises as well. However, it’s not too big for main street retail investors to use either, a greatly-desired target segment within the industry that Solana has fallen in favor with. Particularly, Solana’s burgeoning DeFi ecosystem, which has $11.5B locked into it (as of December 2021), has one of the highest totals locked in smart contracts across all active projects in the entire world. Additionally, almost $2B worth of NFT transactions daily on Solana. 

What is Arweave? 

Arweave is a permanent, censorship-resistant data storage system used by the likes of SKALE and Blockswap due to Arweave’s ability to offload costs and complexity for public data storage. SOLAR Bridge can adopt sustainable data while addressing scalability. Solana was the first bridge built to Arweave.

In Web 2, over 30% of web links break on the internet within two years. However, Arewave introduced a solution to this: a global, community-driven, permanent data layer called the permaweb that is built on top of Arweave. The native AR token pays an up-front fee for data storage then earns interest to cover the cost over time. The permaweb allows any person to contribute or add images across any distance or period of time. On the permaweb, there aren’t any 404 errors or quick edits.

Arweave has an extensive list of partners, including Techstars, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. 

Why the Solana and Arweave Partnership is Mutually Beneficial 

Adding to what Decrypt says, this is a win-win partnership for the brands involved and their clients and community. Solana and Arweave developed a partnership that delivers a genuinely collectively-owned, decentralized data solution. In addition to providing the benefit of community ownership, this type of data storage system is beneficial to both protocols. 

The Solana Arweave partnership is beneficial because: 

• Adds interoperability, perpetuity, and decentralization to Solana 
• Takes intensive design time off of Solana’s shoulder 
• Community driven mission 
• Store and forget 

In a statement on Arweave’s blog, Yakovenko admired Arweave because he believes it can add interoperability to Solana. Furthermore, the Solana founder believes that it would be more rational to work with what Arweave has designed rather than building its own costly solution. It would have been an expensive, time-intensive deployment when Solana’s developers are already working on other projects that have no choice but to be designed in house. 

First, the collective ownership of the hard drive ensures an impermeable data storage tank that can be accessed in real-time but secured across many nodes. The risk of corruption is also limited through the Solana and Arweave partnership. Critical records such as document credentials and government-derived IDs become permanent entries on a ledger, making it impossible for forgery. 

Read more about how blockchains can transform document credentialing right here. 

SOLAR Bridge is a mechanism for validators on the Solana ecosystem to transition into a “store and forget” state. Once a transaction is validated, it will be stored on Arweave permanently so that such a transaction does not need to be verified again. 

Arweave offers advanced functionality for public data using decentralized, censorship-resistant technology. Bering Water Group, a Hong Kong-based investment firm that backs Arweave, has developed the SOLAR Bridge. The bridge serves as a core, foundational product of the Arweave and Solana partnership. SOLAR Bridge stores ledger data in real-time from Solana’s blockchain, ensuring a truly public infrastructure.

How Accumulate Can Enhance Data in This Type of Partnership 

Accumulate is creating a secure network of blockchain services that will support a variety of tasks such as payments, social networks, regulations, business, education, and entertainment. It can add to other ecosystems by further enhancing data systems through identities, security, pruning, validating, integrating, and scaling across Web 2 and Web 3 platforms. 

In Conclusion

The Solana-Arweave partnership is the epitome of how two strongly developed protocols can offer complementary resources to create an end-product that’s mutually beneficial for all parties involved. 

Accumulate offers a universal interconnected protocol that can benefit Web 2 and Web 3 data. As a core benefit, Accumulate makes layer 1 blockchains more interoperable and secure, thus further enhancing the data on protocols like Arweave through pruning, validating, scaling, and integrating it with other chains.