PermaDAO 1-on-1 Interview: Phil Mataras, Founder and CEO of AR.IO
Through an interview with the founder and CEO of AR.IO, we learned about the founding background, development status, and future direction of Arweave and the AO ecosystem project. This will allow PermaDAO contributors to better understand the project, and also let the project know how PermaDAO operates and collaborates, thereby increasing PermaDAO’s influence in the Arweave ecosystem, especially among European and American teams.
Author: Xiaosong HU
Translator: Xiaosong HU
Reviewer: Scarlett LI
Source: Content Guild Translation
Dear partners of the Arweave ecosystem, the Web3 world has experienced a journey of ups and downs in the past month, which is enough to go down in history. The German government chose to liquidate its confiscated Bitcoin at this sensitive moment, which undoubtedly set off a huge wave in the already turbulent market. The market is full of doubts and concerns about the future trend of Bitcoin. The compensation process for the “MT.Gox” incident has finally started. What impact will this “Sword of Damocles” hanging over the market have? Will the giant whale leave or will the market regain confidence? It is still an unknown. At the same time, the results of the US election on the other side of the ocean also affect the hearts of every cryptocurrency investor. This candidate who showed a positive attitude towards cryptocurrency finally won, and the market also responded positively with a strong rebound. Of course, we cannot ignore another influential figure-Donald Trump. He announced that he would attend the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville at the end of this month. What kind of surprises will he bring us? At the regulatory level, whether the applications of many institutions, led by BlackRock, for Ethereum spot ETFs, can eventually be approved by the SEC has also become the focus of market attention. This may determine whether Ethereum, and even the entire cryptocurrency market, can truly become mainstream. In this era full of variables and opportunities, the development path of Web3 is destined to be full of challenges. Where will it go in the future?
Despite the volatile external market, Arweave and the AO ecosystem have maintained a steady development trend, constantly proving their strength with dazzling achievements, and outlining a promising blueprint for the future of Web3. Sam, the founder of Arweave and AO, announced last week that Arweave Temporary Storage v1.0 will be launched soon — Arfleet, which aims to provide users with a safer, more efficient, and convenient large-capacity data storage solution, which is undoubtedly a milestone for the long-term development of the Arweave ecosystem. At the same time, in order to further enhance the user experience, the AO official team also took the opportunity to release AOS Web, allowing users to log in to the decentralized supercomputer terminal directly from the browser, lowering the threshold for use and allowing more people to participate in the construction of the Arweave ecosystem. The highly anticipated Apus Network also released a proof of concept (POC) for model evaluation, which not only proves the huge potential of AO’s decentralized computing power in building an AI model GPU network but also opens up a broader imagination space for the application of the Arweave ecosystem in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, everPay, a cross-chain token payment protocol dedicated to building the future of decentralized finance, has also completed the development of the $wAR deposit function, continuously improving the functionality of the Arweave ecosystem and providing users with a safer and more convenient decentralized financial service experience.
The vigorous development of the Arweave ecosystem is inseparable from the active participation and support of the community. Developers and users are the most valuable assets of the Arweave ecosystem. Last Saturday, the Arweave Hyper Parallel Shanghai Station was successfully held. Arweave official representatives set foot on Chinese soil for the first time, communicated face-to-face with community users, and discussed the development prospects of Arweave, marking Arweave’s official entry into the Chinese market and taking an important step in the promotion and development of the Arweave ecosystem in China. At the same time, developer activities such as Arweave in India and Arweave in the Philippines are also being actively prepared. By holding various hackathon competitions, the Arweave team hopes to attract more developers and users from all over the world to join the Arweave ecosystem and jointly build a more decentralized, open and free future Internet world. On-chain data shows that the $stETH deposited in the AO network has exceeded US$500 million, which not only reflects the prosperous development of the Arweave ecosystem but also explains the reason why AR Token has performed strongly in the past month. More and more investors are beginning to pay attention to Arweave and are full of confidence in its future.
The ecosystem project we interviewed this time is AR.IO, and the interviewee is Phil Mataras, founder and CEO of AR.IO. Just last week, AR.IO officially announced the continued adoption of its global ArNS, open-sourced the ArNS application and Network Portal, and launched the AR.IO Ambassador Program. It is also through this in-depth communication between PermaDAO and AR.IO that everyone can have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of some of the stories behind this veteran team in the Arweave ecosystem.
Part I: Regarding AR.IO
Q1: Hi! Phil Mataras! Could you please introduce the background of AR.IO and how it was established?
A: After launching ArDrive, a Web3 dropbox app that utilizes Arweave’s permanent storage, in 2021, we realized there were other opportunities across the Arweave ecosystem. All Arweave data was served through one main gateway, Arweave.net. This presented a single, centralized point of failure, and as anticipated with the large scale growth of the ecosystem, would provide scalability challenges over time. Gateways are essential for applications to read, write and discover permanent data, since these features were not directly supported on Arweave nodes. Furthermore, there was no protocolized incentive for these features to offset gateway hosting costs, minimize user-gateway trust and help ensure access to permanent data is maintained in perpetuity.
So in 2022, in collaboration with Forward Research, PDS took over operationsof the Arweave.net gateway, with the goal of creating a new distributed, permissionless and incentivized gateway network called AR.IO that can be deployed on the smallest server or the biggest cloud. This gateway network forms the backbone of the permaweb, an internet that remembers everything.
AR.IO Gateways have many features that enable the permaweb, including reading, writing, indexing and querying for Arweave data, as well as site hosting and permanent domain names. The AR.IO Network has been in testnet for over a year, with mainnet as the next major https://ar.io/milestone.
Q2: What are some significant milestones in the history of AR.IO？ What is the future vision and plan for AR.IO？
A: PDS has developed a number of both technical and community-driven milestones since we first envisioned AR.IO, including:
- Open Sourced the AR.IO Gateway. These are the nodes of the AR.IO Network. Their primary role is to act as a bridge between the Arweave network and the outside world. This means that a gateway’s main task is to make it easier for users to interact with the Arweave network by simplifying the technical processes of writing, reading, and discovering data on the permaweb in a trust-minimized fashion.
- Released the Arweave Name System, the cornerstone feature of the ar.io network. It is a permanent registry of friendly names that represent AO Processes, Arweave wallets, and Transaction IDs, accessible from any AR.IO Gateway’s domain.
- Released the AR.IO Network Whitepaper, which details a decentralized and incentivized gateway network aimed at attracting more gateways to the Arweave network and at making the permaweb more accessible to all. At the core of AR.IO’s incentivization mechanism is the IO Token, a utility token used for joining the network, payments, gateway accountability, and protocol incentives. The network features modular and composable gateway infrastructure in addition to the Arweave Name System (ArNS) — a system for assigning friendly domain names to permaweb data.
- Launched a Zealy program, AR.IO EXPerience, an ongoing gamified way to drive growth and awareness for AR.IO, empower everyone to learn about Arweave, experiment with AR.IO via on-chain tasks, and start earning rewards in the form of points that will become a potential proxy for tokens at the main net.
- Entered into a formal partnership with Dev DAO, collaborating on an Academy Course that educates and incentivizes the largest protocol-agnostic community of builders about AR.IO, priming them to utilize ArNS and become gateway operators at launch.
- AR.IO migrated to AO, the supercomputer built on top of Arweave. This significantly increases the value of the evolution of the AR.IO Network, bringing enhanced scalability, efficiency, and decentralization to the forefront.
- Developed and released the ArNS App and AR.IO Network Portal, designed and developed to make it easier than ever to use ArNS and run your own gateway to the permaweb.
- Introduced an Ambassador Program, intending to leverage our most engaged audience members to spread the word about AR.IO to new audiences outside of Arweave and continue to grow our community.
- Updated the AR.IO SDK, an open-source all-in-one package that can be used to leverage all the AR.IO products and protocols like the gateway address registry, the arweave name system, and the observer incentive protocol.
- Onboarded a new AR.IO Asian Community Team, noting the importance of growing our audience in this core location, we’re partnered with a team in China to expand our presence and build a community there.
The short-term future vision and plan is to continue to innovate our technology and create new opportunities for builders and the retail audience alike to participate with AR.IO as we march closer to the main net.
Q3: Thank you for your detailed answer just now. How many full-time staff members are currently working at AR.IO, and what are the ways for others to get involved? How do you incentivize participation?
A: Permanent Data Solutions (PDS), the global team building AR.IO is currently composed of over 20 full-time and contracting contributors. We’re getting others involved through thoughtful initiatives including, test net, partnerships, our Zealy EXPerience Program, our Ambassador Program, and attending and sponsoring events around the world, and many of these mentioned have built-in incentive structures.
Q4: The entire Web3 ecosystem has so many public chains. Why did you choose to develop on Arweave? What brought AR.IO and Arweave together?
A: During my crypto journey, I first discovered Ethereum, and after participating in this decentralized network it brought me down a rabbit hole that eventually exposed me to Arweave. I decided to develop Arweave because of its potential for a sustainable, fault-tolerant, data storage solution that can address the current issues plaguing the internet. AR.IO was born out of the need to further decentralize access to Arweave and truly create a permanent web of information.
Q5: In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge that AR.IO and Arweave face?
A: Like many projects in web3, Arweave’s challenge, which is directly correlated with AR.IO’s, is widespread adoption and integration amongst other competing and emerging technologies. Given the unique model, data storage costs will also be something that we’ll have to find new ways to address and provide flexible pricing or other solutions for larger data sets.
Q6: Many people used to compare Arweave with Filcoin. After the launch of the AO protocol, many people liked to compare AO with ICP. There were also many very fierce opinions on Twitter. What do you think of this phenomenon?
A: I find the comparisons usually come from people with one of two perspectives. Those with actual knowledge and understanding of the technologies, who can collaboratively discuss and compare them for the betterment of the industry and society as a whole, and those whose opinions involve various mental gymnastics that correlate to their financial success or failure with that given coin, protocol, or community.
The fact that Arweave, AR.IO, and AO are compared to many other, sometimes larger, projects, shows the real utility offered by our networks and how undervalued they may currently be perceived.
Q7: We see that Arweave Oasis has been established in China, Arwevae in India, and Arweave in the Philippines have all been established one after another. The Asian community is also playing an increasingly important role in the Arweave ecosystem. How does AR.IO plan to develop in Asia (especially China), what work have you done so far, and what are your plans?
A: As we mentioned, we’ve recently onboarded a team in China that has a strong foundational understanding of Arweave and is well-connected in the crypto community in China and beyond who are working to grow community channels there, before digitally with new WeChat groups, and via event collaboration, most recently with the upcoming Hyperparallel Events. We’re starting to engage more closely with all of the mentioned groups support them from afar and create educational opportunities as best as possible.
Part II: Regarding Phil Mataras
Q8: Could you please share your educational background and professional experience?
A: I received my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at the University of Delaware in the USA. Instead of doing programming out of school, I became an IT Consultant, integrating Microsoft technology to Fortune 500 companies. I grew to become a system operations team lead and then enterprise architect for one of the Big 4 Accounting firms in the US. My focus was primarily designing, and deploying large-scale, highly-secure solutions for both internal and external customers at the firm in the cloud and on-premises.
Q9: How did you become familiar with Arweave?
A: My “Crypto TG Group” brought it up in the ICO craze of 2017. I could not participate since I am located in the USA, but figured I could run the node software since it was permissionless. After testing it out myself, I knew that “permanent storage” could be a game changer. The Arweave Community at the time was small but still very genuine, and the mission for the network was incredible. So I was hooked!
Q10: As a veteran Web3 practitioner, what advice do you have for people who want to enter Web3 in the current bear market environment?
A: Build things that are exciting to you! Start on small things that have a tangible user experience or output, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Bear market environments typically weed out the really bad ideas and investments, and invite new ones, so if you focus on building now, you will be in a better position for the next wave.
Q11: Are you under a lot of pressure in life and work right now? Have you ever regretted it?
A: As a startup founder there is an incredible amount of pressure, whether from the team, community, investors, and family. It’s a continual battle to meet the expectations of all groups as best as possible! However, while being a founder has introduced so many new challenges in my life, I’ve had this pressure often in my career. This time though, it’s for a mission that is so powerful (“getting permanent storage in the hands of everyone”) that I continually have to remind myself I am lucky enough to be able to work on it. Having support from my family goes a long way when it comes to keeping my engine going and meeting the demands of a CEO.
So far, I haven’t had perfect decision-making, so I’ve tried to learn as best as I can from my mistakes, but I do not have any regrets!
Part III: Regarding AO meeting in Berlin
Q12: Can you share with us a little bit about the Arweave in Berlin conference?
A: I’ve received invites over the years to the ceremonial Arweave Birthday event held in Berlin, but never had the opportunity to go. Having never been to Germany before, the trip for me had a lot of new experiences. It was great to be able to see the hackers at the Weavers hackathon and all of the passionate individuals around the ecosystem. What sealed it for me was viewing the book-burning memorial at Bebelplatz Square on the eve of the Arweave Anniversary. It was a powerful moment in which the mission became even more engrained and is something that I wish everyone on my team, and across the Arweave Ecosystem, could experience.
Q13: What is the biggest difference between this year’s Arwevae in Berlin and previous years?
A: I haven’t gone previously! This time we had a great hackathon as well as an interactive art exhibit at a nightclub, which is very different from the normal Arweave Ecosystem events! Even though there were so many familiar faces, I was still able to meet new founders and builders, and even finally meet some faces to names that I’ve been speaking to on Discord for years!
Q14: During the Berlin conference, Sam held three live broadcasts. Among them, the model of AO tokens was the most concerning. Many people think that the AO incentives given to AR holders are less than STETH. This is unfair. What do you think?
A: Giving more AO incentives to STETH (or other token ecosystems) can help bring in new communities into the AO and Arweave ecosystem, instead of circulating amongst the existing community. There has been so much feedback on getting Arweave to new audiences to grow the whole ecosystem, and this is a way to achieve that.
In the end, AO is a very strong use case for Arweave and is already one of the biggest consumers of AR. This will only add more to the Arweave endowment and strengthen the network. This is a great thing for AR holders.
Q15: What do you think of the launch of the AO protocol? What can it do that other public chains and projects cannot do?
A: The launch has been very exciting to follow along with. The virtual events in Gather Town bring me back to my very first experiences in the Arweave ecosystem at the Open Web Incubators. Not to mention, AO has unlocked new use cases and features that we can use in the AR.IO Network, so it’s been fun to build with and explore an entirely new platform. Overall, it’s almost nostalgic to when I first discovered Arweave and started to play with it.
It offers a permanent storage platform that other chains do not, and its parallel execution environment ensures every process can scale as big as it needs to.
Part IV: Regarding PermaDAO and everVision
Q16: PermaDAO is the largest Arweave community in the entire Chinese ecosystem, Have you heard of PermaDAO or everVision before?
A: We are closely connected with both PermaDAO and everVision and are increasingly in discussions about how we can collaborate more closely and integrate our technologies when and where it makes sense.
Q17: What improvements do you think PermaDAO needs?
A: Keep up the great work for the permaweb!!
Q18: In your view, how should PermaDAO and AR.IO collaborate in the future?
A: Some of the potential ongoing ways we can continue to collaborate are by offering resources that would be specifically helpful to the Chinese community and working with PermaDAO and our AR.IO Asian Community Team to translate them for both developers and retail audiences. Offer support and community engagement however we can, and ultimately support the global adoption of Arweave.
Q19: By the way, Before this interview, we looked at your official website. It seems that there is only an English version at present. Will you make a complete Chinese website in the future? PermaDAO’s translation team can undertake this part of the work.
A: Since we started working with an AR.IO Asian Community team, they’ve launched a translated Chinese Notion page on our behalf that they will continue to support with updates and new content. (Click the link below to jump directly to the AR.IO Chinese page)
[AR.IO 中文](https://www.notion.so/AR-IO-990ef2b9c297425faaca51bb969771df?pvs=21)
Q20: How do you perceive the team and business development of everVision?
A: I consider them top experts in the ecosystem. We have been able to work on a few small projects here and there, and they have been communicative, and the quality of English has improved over the years! I think that it is important to continue to connect with Western audiences.
Would love it if there were other opportunities for EverVision to build on top of the AR.IO Network features, like ArNS.
Q21: Lastly, is there anything else you would like to say to the audience?
A: Follow us on X and join our Discord if you want to join our community and help us create an internet that remembers everything!
Conclusion
The reason why we started this series of interviews is to break the seemingly “magical” barrier between the blockchain world and the outside world. For a long time, the blockchain industry, especially the cryptocurrency field, has been full of mystery to the outside world due to its technical threshold, wealth effect, and industry volatility, and has even been labeled as “speculation” and “bubble”. Many people hold an attitude of “arrogance and prejudice” towards practitioners, believing that they are a group of “gamblers” who pursue interests and are out of touch with reality.
However, we believe that the true value of blockchain technology lies in its decentralization, security, transparency, and immutability, which provide the possibility of building a more fair, efficient and trustworthy Internet world. As a leader in the field of decentralized permanent storage, Arweave carries the grand vision of building a “permanent network”.
In the current bear market environment, we hope to show the vigorous development and huge potential of the Arweave ecosystem to the outside world through in-depth interviews with Arweave ecological project parties, with their real work experience and mental journey, and provide some reference and reference for those who are curious and yearning for Web3. At the same time, we also hope to take this opportunity to promote PermaDAO’s collaborative model and excellent products to the Arweave ecosystem, such as Permaswap, the decentralized exchange with the largest traffic in the Arweave ecosystem. PermaDAO has long been committed to building an open, collaborative, and win-win community, and has developed a series of practical tools for DAO organizations. We believe that these tools can not only help Arweave ecosystem projects develop better, but also contribute to the progress of the entire Web3 industry.
As the interviews continue, more and more project parties have begun to pay attention to and participate in PermaDAO. They try to use our tools and actively share their ideas and suggestions with us. We believe that this open and collaborative atmosphere will further promote the common development of PermaDAO and the Arweave ecosystem. We look forward to AR.IO bringing us more surprises in the future, and we also look forward to more sparks between PermaDAO and AR.IO, and jointly contribute to building a better Arweave ecosystem and even the Web3 world.
