7 reasons to run an ar.io gateway
Published in
3 min readDec 12, 2023
The various nodes on the ar.io Network, known as Gateways, are the interface between users and data stored on Arweave. Each Gateway acts like a “Permaweb Service Provider” and supports multiple value-adding, low-trust services for users and applications that need to read and write data on Arweave. See All Gateways
1. It’s easy
Get setup on your laptop in as little as 15–30 minutes.
- Don’t need a commercial set up / start with a Raspberry Pi
- Hardware requirements: 4 core CPU, 4 GB Ram, 500 GB storage (SSD recommended), stable 50 Mbps internet connection
2. Highly customizable
- Uniquely configure your gateway for specific applications, use cases, community needs, or business models. Setup your gateway to serve the broader ecosystem or isolate it only for yourself.
- Run it on your own laptop or build a whole system around it and make it multi-cloud with redundancy and a robust caching. It is all up to you how you want to use it!
3. Self-sovereign data access
- The combination of Arweave as a permanent hard drive that never forgets and running an ar.io gateway puts you in control of writing, serving, indexing, and caching the data that’s most important to you.
4. Opens the doors to increased development
- ar.io gateways enable developers to build on top of the Arweave protocol efficiently without having to interact directly with the protocol itself. Until now, having to interact directly with the Arweave protocol or even just Arweave.net created a barrier for developers to build upon Arweave. The technical skills needed to do so were not widespread and are, often, different from Web2.
Ease of development includes:
- Simpler paths for getting content ‘(/)’ on a gateway vs a miner node.
- Protocols enabled by gateways like ar:// eliminate dependencies on a single access point which can stall progress developing or completely shut down production.
- Fee collection for gateway access is not built into the code, but its open source and modular nature means any business can design and implement their own fee structure that fits their exact needs.
- Developers can set a preferred gateway to access with several layers of fallback if any are offline, or determine the best gateway to access from the entire GAR at the time of their query — check out all of the gateways in the network.
5. Onboard the next group of businesses and organizations to Arweave
- Now that Arweave can be accessed by more developers an increase of businesses and organizations (and new types of applications) will be much faster and easier to onboard. As an ecosystem we are already seeing people becoming more aware of the power of permanent data for their organization.
6. More access means more resilience
- Strengthen the censorship resistant Permaweb and help build the next Library of Alexandria that houses all the worlds informational treasures
- Each Gateway is able to register with the Gateway Address Registry (“GAR”) where it can be easily discoverable by Permaweb apps, and increase their own traffic and fees.
- Protocols enabled by gateways like ar:// eliminate dependencies on a single access point which can stall progress developing or completely shut down production.
- Selecting gateways still running older version of the gateway code to keep their code working while they upgrade to any breaking changes ar.io could make.
7. Learn, build, grow the permaweb
- Become an expert in the technology that will be in the forefront in the future
- Move the permaweb towards mass adoption: Gateways will help establish the ar:// protocol and open up the permaweb to new domain names (such as ArNS) and search queries. It will become easier for the masses to see the utility and value of having their most important files and web pages saved permanently.
Bonus: It’s Really Fun!
- Building on the permaweb with ar.io gateways and the Arweave is like the early days of the internet with a wide-open frontier to learn, test, create, and bring to life new applications.
