Permaweb Pioneers

beta.OLTA.art is platform and marketplace for interactive Dynamic NFTs, built with Polygon and Arweave as the storage layer. Founders Terence Reilly and George Baldwin have created a place for developers to express themselves through code. The opportunities are essentially endless, leaving a massive canvas open for the next great generative artist to come by and "wow" the world. What's especially cool about OLTA is the interactive component to the pieces. There are parameters that both collectors and viewers can play with, bringing a game-like experience within abstract and conceptual pieces. 

The interplay between games and art is a place where George in particular resides. As the lead developer on the project, there's a keen interest that the pieces be exploratory, up for interpretation and interaction. Of course, all assets are uploaded to Arweave, which provides an elegant experience for full websites that run on code and generate beautiful pieces of art. 

The duo that is Terence and George are inspiring - they have a vision in mind for enabling technologists to express themselves freely, while also respecting the artwork by enabling massive experimentation to occur and storing all contents on the Permaweb for very long term storage. 

Check out beta.OLTA.art to learn more and experience the world of interactive and experiential NFTs.

Also, be sure and follow @onlyarweave for all things Arweave related.

To paraphrase one of the Co-founders of Metaweave, if you're thinking of making something then "it must be built". These thoughts among many factors led Cromatikap to the Open Web Foundry (visit forward.arweave.dev) to go and build social utilities specifically designed for the Permaweb. 

The journey has not be straightforward, especially the formation of their legal entity which is now based in Portugal, also known as "Silicoin Valley" or the "Silicon Valley of Europe". Like many founders, it can be overwhelming to start a new company, manage legal needs, and sort out investments. They've adapted and now have operations up and running, becoming defacto "Arweave Ambassadors" as they connect with all of the web3 builders in Portugal. 

In our conversation, we discuss the Account Protocol, Permatweet,and the Twitter Bridge. These tools make it easy to both explore the dApps on the Permaweb as well as connect web2 platforms with web3. 

Check out Metaweave.com to learn more and experience the discussed tools first hand.

Also, be sure and follow @onlyarweave for all things Arweave related.

Tate started building on the Permaweb while in high school during the middle of the first wave of COVID. His foray into Arweave began with storing study guides that were being repeatedly deleted from the students' shared drives. He subsequently built nest.land, where developers can store code modules on the Permaweb for safe-keeping. In short, this was just the beginning. After creating both Verto Exchange and ArConnect (the popular browser extension), his latest venture is Community Labs.

Community Labs, also referred to as "CLabs" just raised $30 million to fund their efforts in creating fundamental technology and protocols geared towards the Arweave ecosystem at large. This is a significant raise (possibly the largest to date in the Arweave ecosystem), and one that represents the opportunity available for both developers and entrepreneurs looking to build the next web. 

With an emphasis on both "structured" and "unstructured" time throughout his day, Tate continues to actively invent and collaborate with his growing and distributed team. Considering the fact that most of what is being built has never been done before, the model of unstructured time can enable more creativity and freedom to think differently. While the company is relatively new, those involved via investments/advisors and beyond have a lot of experience that they are bringing to the table. 

CLabs already has four ventures underway, three of which are protocols enabling further enhancements for the developer experience. Enjoy this episode, Tate shares his story, philosophy on building, and the path forward for the Arweave ecosystem and CLabs. 

Check out CommunityLabs.com, in addition to ArConnect.io.

Also, be sure and follow @onlyarweave for all things Arweave related.

There are some individuals who have shown both a level of commitment and innovation within the Arweave that is next-level, Phil Mataras, Founder of ArDrive and AR.io, is an exemplar of this. His journey into Arweave started back in 2018, after having explored (and mining) Ethereum for 8 months. He needed to change direction, to get closer to utility at a fundamental level. After discovering the Permaweb, he quickly realized it's potential, building first versions of ArDrive.io; a Dropbox-like service that massively levels up the experience, providing decentralized and permanent storage. 

After growing his team and bringing in a total of almost 20 individual investors and just about $20 million USD, the mission has grown to provide decentralized (and incentivized) gateways for the Permaweb with AR.io. Gateways are the "front door" to the Permaweb and currently the arweave.net gateway is subsidized and in need of decentralization - something that is already happening with AR.io infrastructure!

We cover a ton in this episode, and Phil is truly a Permaweb Pioneer having been one of the early internet explorers to find out about this technology and subsequently build a widely used app that is ArDrive.io. 

Follow @onlyarweave for all things Arweave related :)

Co-founders William and Aaron provide a deep look into their inspiration for creating Releap, a Solana and Arweave based music NFT platform created to "empower emerging and major artists with new ways of gaining exposure, engaging with fans, and monetizing their work". 

When building a service, it can be a major benefit to intimately know the issues with the status-quo that the founders are looking to improve upon. In Releap's case, this is part of the genesis for creating the service. As a band member playing gigs in Hong Kong, it just wasn't enough to financially sustain the group's efforts - and that's where William became inspired to look to an entirely new model of music - NFTs. 

Releap has done an amazing job with their UI/UX, and they're continually making improvements to lean into the social components of listening to music. Borrowing from the likes of SoundCloud with timestamped comments, it does feel inherently social while enjoying a fresh track. 

Be sure and listen to some tracks at Releap.io

Also, follow @onlyarweave for all things Arweave related :)

Memory Gardens secures your memories for 200+ years through Arweave on a platform that you can experience with a VR headset, mobile device, or computer. Founder Ben Peeri has combined his years of technical experience at large corporations with his innovative perspective to create MemoryGardens.xyz.

The impetus for creating Memory Gardens stems from his personal experience - he lost a loved one and was mourning that loss and in need of a place to remember events, stories, etc. At first, Memory Gardens was a place exclusively for pets. After speaking with a number of individuals interested in the service for humans, he's now opened it up for any memory, including those featuring humans of course. 

Today, you can create customizable spaces and place images and various forms of media on what look like picture frames of these digital buildings and walls. It's a visceral experience and one that lends itself to recalling events that have even have themes, like a holiday setting that features imagery from those specific times. 

The team at Memory Gardens is being very mindful of the onboarding process, with options to pay with crypto or a credit card. The intention is to enable access to this technology so that individuals can easily share and store these memories for generations to come. 

Be sure and visit MemoryGardens.xyz if you're interested in creating your own Memory Garden. 

Follow @onlyarweave and check out OnlyArweave.com

Blockchain continues to elevate legacy systems (like referral networks) with more robust architecture. Usher is a partnerships platform for web3 - you can also think of it as a referral network for web3. 

If you're a builder and want to create your own referral campaign, use our Usher link here to sign up: https://app.usher.so/inv/kjzl6cwe1jw146m7un34t705z20e84pxqhdsi31b4gh33dz66u0qkl7vwsptl0x

Usher enables both community builders and developers the ability to create incentive mechanisms to power growth and awareness. In the current world of business, referrals constitute a massive amount of new customers, and the same can apply in web3 - this is what Usher has built (and stored on Arweave). 

Usher merges the benefit of a referral system with the integrity of the immutable blockweave. Those that share their link as referrers can be confident that the terms won't change on them mid-campaign, and if there is any change it will be accessible on the blockweave. In short, Usher is providing transparency beyond anything we've seen prior with partnerships and referral platforms. This has the potential to quickly establish credibility, considering transparency shows all what is happening behind "closed doors" which are often opaque in the current web2 way of doing things. 

Be sure and visit Usher.so if you're interested in creating your own campaign or if you want to earn by sharing. 

Follow @onlyarweave and check out OnlyArweave.com

At first glance it can be a bit of a challenge to understand the breadth of what founder Joe Berenbaum is building with AFTR.market - Is it a multi-sig? Is it a governance tool? Is it made for managing bounties? These questions (and more!) are explored in this deep dive into AFTR.market and the builder behind it all. In short, AFTR does a lot, and as a platform it has the possibility of un-locking high volume and collaborative building on Arweave well beyond what we see today. 

AFTR Market allows you to create and group Arweave assets together inside of a “vehicle.” By grouping these assets together on-chain, one can then put governance around them to manage their profit streams. There are layers when going through these concepts, we unpack them to deliver a conversation that is both informative and imaginative.

Give AFTR.market a follow @AftrMarket

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter and Metaweave for all things Arweave!

Music on Nina can be publicly streamed by anyone - it can also be released as digital editions that can be purchased to both support artists and enable collector-only experiences. In a world where traditional record labels have received criticism for the lack of transparency and allocation percentages to artists, Nina is building both a transparent protocol and an artist-first platform that enables very high levels of artist equity in everything created and distributed via Nina. 

On Nina, the artist receives 100% of the initial sales, and just 1.5% goes to Nina Protocol for secondary sales. In addition to a much more artist-oriented and equitable business model, Nina is built on web3, featuring Solana and of course Arweave for storage. A simple one time fee enables permanent storage of the tracks, making it easy to have piece of mind that the music will be sticking around for collectors and fans. 

The power of the Nina Protocol is that it can enable both artists and fans to earn. Their recently introduced "Hubs" feature brings an entirely new form of earning via referrals and much more. A hub can be just about anything imaginable, and the use-cases are just beginning to come into fruition. 

Founders Mike and Eric have been long time friends, and the entire Nina Protocol team is tight-knit, all with a deep love for music and artists in general. There is a lot more to come, enjoy this episode!

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter and Metaweave for all things Arweave!
 

Hear directly from the founder of wordcel.club, Shek Dev, and his wild journey building on web3. Wordcel is a publishing platform built using Solana + Arweave, a powerful combination of both accessible and robust technology. Shek's journey to building full-time in web3 is inspiring - it shows that you, yes you, can put resources out into any community and receive some great results (especially in the Arweave ecosystem!). His commitment has been aided through his involvement in SuperTeamDAO, a community and source of feedback that has proven invaluable to his efforts building in web3.

What started as a list of projects and a tweet within the Solana ecosystem, has led to Shek taking home the winning prize for the Solana Riptide hackathon (web3 category) just months after his intro entry into the community. The $50k USDC prize not only provided initial funding, it also created a significant spike in growth - there are about 1,000 individuals on the beta list. 

Worldcel has big plans, and Shek's commitment to open source, decentralized, and censorship-resistance is inspiring as he and team build out what may become an integral component of the future of publishing. From an empathetic perspective on user experience (UX), and an attention to detail regarding the brand and identity, keep an eye out for what Shek and wordcel.club do next!

Wordcel's intro blog post is here. 
Follow Shek on twitter @shek_dev

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter and Metaweave for all things Arweave

Co-founder Sherlock Shi takes us on an adventure, ultimately arriving at why meson.network exists, what is here today, and what is in the pipeline. His experience as an Arweave miner, his knowledge of Proof Of Work, and analogies of electricity distribution via Bitcoin and how it relates to bandwidth definitely brings some fresh thinking to how nodes can power the world.

In this episode we dive deep into what meson does and why it's important for the decentralized internet going forward. Fundamentally, meson is built to deliver content faster (content delivery network) by enabling individuals with idle bandwidth to participate and earn meson tokens. While at the time of recording meson is currently in an incentivized testnet, more opportunities will likely be arising soon. 

The team at meson is committed to making the process to sharing bandwidth so easy that someone will not need any manual or walkthrough on how to do it. They see this as an important step to further access and adoption of this technology. Give meson a whirl here and experience the speed they can already deliver -> https://meson.network/#demo

Follow Sherlock here: @SherlockShi_AHA
Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter for all things Arweave

You'll quickly understand that Tom Wilson is dedicate to providing resources to other builders, and most recently, those building on Arweave. What started as an initial tutorial for 8pin, has grown into Permanotes.app, with regular tutorials on Youtube and more. He's also the founder of Hyper.io, which enables developers to build just about any application by taking advantage of Hyper's single API entry point and composable services. In short, its the "easy button" for creating back-end services. 

Tom has been building software for several decades, and he has a long and impressive history of creating value. We dive deep into how Permanotes works, what's to come, why it's important to give to the community, and what the future looks like of what may be called "DataFi" on Arweave. 

Our guest is an inventor, he sees opportunities and gets to building with a curiosity and drive that creates an energy wherever he finds himself online. 

If you're looking for a great experience diving into application development on Arweave, Tom and @onlyarweave collaborated on an entire tutorial to build a decentralized "Permaweb-pinning" geolocation app. Find the tutorial here, and have a go on the app at dev.8pin.app.

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter for all things Arweave

The world of institutional digital preservation has been going on for decades, and Peter Van Garderen has been a leading force as the founder of Artefactual Systems. His company has produced the most widely deployed archive management solutions in the world - Archivematica and Access-to-Memory. 

Peter's journey has led him to web3 and he's now working on a number of projects that require archiving of data, including Landano (land management dApp) and Orcfax (Cardano oracle).

"My agenda is to apply record-keeping and archival science research and standards to web3. While blockchain document notarization and Arweave's permaweb design solve some fundamental issues for long-term access to authentic digital information, there is still a layer of (professional standard) record-keeping business logic that is missing from web3 platforms. I plan to tackle this shortcoming in Arkly." - Peter Van Garderen

Arkly.io is in the early development stage (at the time of this recording) and the plan is to open access to the Arkly API for other Web3 projects in Q4 2022 and launch a user-interface in early 2023.

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter for all things Arweave.

From building dApps to joining the core Arweave team, Cedrik has touched just about every aspect of the development process when creating on Arweave. He's gone on to create Textury.org, where he and a team continue to make key tools for creating Profit Sharing Tokens (via community.xyz), uploading to the Permaweb (via arkb), and most recently the launch of a new gateway (arweave.live). 

"Our main priority right now is Arg8, the new gateway that we have released...we want to help as much as possible for the managing the Arweave ecosystem load... the only gateway that everyone was using is arweave.net. The current version of the gateway is not easy to get started... so with Argate with want to bring more possibilities and hopefully anyone will be able to start their own gateway with Arg8 (arweave.live)" [paraphrased]. 

Gateways are an important ingredient in accessing the Permaweb, they are basically the "doors" to the Permaweb. Historically, one gateway has been managing a massive amount of traffic and at times there have been challenges due to the load. Arg8 is looking to make it easy to spin up a gateway which in turn will likely increase the accessibility of the Permaweb and continue to expand the decentralized nature of Arweave and the Permaweb. 

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter.

Duncan Brown is a blockchain engineer and team lead at Veritree, a reforestation initiative that is built on Cardano and Arweave. Their mission is to create the technology to verify and amplify the world's best Nature-Based Solutions. The team partners with established tree planting organizations, and they go several steps further by adding on-the-ground data to the blockweave to store it permanently. 

From APIs, custom built dashboards, and trackable tree codes, Veritree appears to be doing just about everything to keep a cohesive ledger of their tree planting efforts in order to maintain a high standard of verification and planting authenticity. 

Duncan is an inspiring individual who cares deeply about both blockchain and the environment. When looking for solutions to manage the tech side of the project, he and team decided upon Cardano and Arweave - a combination we're seeing more of in the world of "web3". The Veritree team has experimented with a number of methodologies for drumming up interest, one of which is what they call an ITO or Initial Tree Offering. They've successfully launched one already, you can find the details here: ito.veritree.com.

Visit onlyarweave.com and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter. 

Benjamin's curiosity in "web3" technologies made a big leap once he decided he was done with "web2" after some great conversations with Sam Williams which eventually led to Benjamin becoming a co-founder of Arweave.news.

As a budding programmer, the possibilities of Arweave sparked many thoughts, one of which was archiving the internet as we know it. "The robust promises of Arweave got me really interested in it as an alternative to the Way Back Machine... I thought wow, can't we just port all of this information over to Arweave instead?".

After further exploration and discovery, another big "aha!" moment occurred in conversation with Sam regarding front-end interfaces and development on Arweave, "all you really need to do to make a Permaweb application is to be able to write front-end code and use a couple of libraries that query the Arweave blockchain for data". This insight enabled a huge leap in thinking through the potential of what can be built on Arweave and the accessibility of it from his set of already known tools, languages, and emphasis as a developer. 

Of course, the insights have continued on and Benjamin is now on his path in founding PermawebDAO, which currently represents a collection of products and services built on the Permaweb. There is more to come on this front, so be sure and give @xylophonezy a follow on Twitter. 

And of course, follow @onlyarweave on Twitter for all things Arweave :)

You'll notice something immediately unique about this podcast recording; our guest, Sirgulator, uses a voice modulator to remain anonymous. Gridacity.io creates fully on-chain games and interactive multimedia experiences. The team has already released two games - Pulsar79 and Reveries of Ymatar. Each of these games have a very retro feel, including the background music, movement, and general game design. Of course, the biggest difference is that these games are stored on Arweave and utilize Ethereum as well.

"We wanted to create something that was more similar to how it was in the 80's and the 90's, where you bought a game console and game cartridge, and the game cartridges is yours forever... being able to play it 20, 30, 40 years down the line."

Sirgulator is dedicated to enabling actual game ownership, which is why they've chosen the Permaweb for their storage layer for these game NFTs. They've built out an interesting suite of tech that enables each game to be completely unique to any other version of their games. Imagine playing a game that is connected to the larger "theme" and also completely unique for you only... pretty cool to think about. 

The opportunities are massive as more individuals become frustrated by the closed source world of games and the inability to move assets or games outside of specific marketplaces. Gridacity intends on opening up the world of game ownership, propelling it to a whole new level where you can do whatever you want with a game after purchasing it, and keep it for many years to come. 

Be sure and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter to stay in the loop on all things Arweave and Permaweb related. 

Dive deeper as we speak with the founders behind some of the featured projects from the Open Web Foundry 6. This cohort (OWF 6) introduced incredible concepts and implementations, all built on Arweave. If you're unfamiliar with the Open Web Foundry, it's a 6 week intensive program/incubator where you can start with a concept and build out your MVP to present to potential investors. Along the way, you receive mentorship and assistance in building your entity. Learn more here: https://owf.dev

Featuring:
-- JB of contributor.town: Better coordination through data science. Building tools and "super teams" for DAOs and Profit Sharing Communities. 

-- Rees and AJ of fora.co: Social Web3 built on Solana (and stored on Arweave). Earn on every action. User Owned. Uncensorable.

-- Ameer and Erika of kipengine.com: A Web3 game engine for the metaverse, all built on Arweave. 

-- Ross Peili of rarecandy.xyz: A publishing house that supports all types of artists. Also, possibly first to do an "NCO", or NFT Coin Offering. 

Be sure and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter to stay in the loop on all things Arweave and Permaweb related. 

"It's one of our goals to educate them [artists] what's possible with web3, if they lack that knowledge..."

Artby.city CEO Jim Toth shares his perspective regarding artists and the need for a more transparent and equitable platform for those that create both physical and digital art. Their intention as a protocol and platform is to give back the power to the artists and the Profit Sharing Community (PSC) members. 

COO Slava recognizes the creative potential of uncensored and open source, pillars of Art By City from the start; "I believe that we collaboratively can build more than we can on our own... we can see more creative things happen in this ecosystem than we can without these tools... an open environment gives way for more innovation." 

Art By City is dedicated to providing an open and accessible entry into the Permaweb - their easy-to-use UI is both welcoming and inspiring. Explore what the several artists are posting by visiting: https://artby.city/discover

The Art By City DAO (aka PSC) governs the Art By City protocol, which artists, collectors, and enthusiasts can interact with to publish art permanently, monetize their publications, and support artists.

Be sure and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter to stay in the loop on all things Arweave and Permaweb related. 

The NFT rush has introduced a new community of investors in digital art, while also enabling the "art world" of the past to participate in this wild new landscape. Boris Pevzner, CEO of LiveArt, is building bridges for the "art world" and the physical pieces we've all known for centuries to the fresh landscape that is digit art and NFTs. Utilizing a number of mechanisms, including their team's vast experience via Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses, they have already amassed a large collector base and recently introduced a fresh artist on to the NFT scene. 

It doesn't stop there for the LiveArt team, they've built out a comprehensive price analysis and prediction tool for both digital and physical art, again, with the interest in bridging and growing the pool of opportunity for artists and collectors. While it's an audacious vision, things are already underway, with 750,000 signups for their genesis NFT drop which enables individuals to make claim to their $ART token after a year lock up from today. 

Boris and his team see a much larger vision for even what they've already built out, including the formation of a DAO to run things going forward. 

Find out more at liveart.io and liveart.xyz

Be sure and follow @onlyarweave on Twitter to stay in the loop on all things Arweave and Permaweb related.