Comparing data storage on Arweave via Bundlr to IPFS and AWS
When it comes to storing your data, what you choose matters. While options may have been limited just a few years ago, today developers can choose from a variety of services, which primarily include AWS, IPFS, and Arweave. The difference between these solutions are big, and how you choose to store your data is extremely important.
While AWS offers various data storage solutions, they are all non-permanent, centralized solutions prone to physical server damage, blackouts, and data deletion.
At AWS, your data is being stored in a centralized location, therefore it is possible that the data can be hacked, manipulated or compromised. It is very common for companies to face data or website hacks. It’s something we see in the news frequently.
Since these companies rely on physical data centers to store their cloud data, it is possible that there are outages. If this happens, your website or digital applications that are hosted on these servers would crash. For businesses, this is costly and potentially disastrous. Here is a recent example.
Additionally, you are trusting a company to give you access to your data. Although rare, it’s possible for a company to deny access to your accounts or change permissions to make it more difficult to make account changes. This is much more common on social platforms than it is for data storage, however, it still is possible.
Another issue is that your data is not stored permanently. If you do not pay every month for these services, your data can be deleted. This is a huge issue for NFTs. Can you imagine looking at one of your NFTs only to find that it is a dead link?
Many people collect NFTs with the purpose of holding onto them indefinitely. There should never be a risk that their NFT or any of its metadata could be deleted.
While IPFS is decentralized but does not store your data permanently, putting it at risk of being deleted
On IPFS, data is stored in nodes, however the nodes are not incentivized to store your data permanently. When a node begins to reach capacity, it triggers a process called Garbage Collection. This is when nodes begin automatically deleting data it no longer thinks is necessary.
Matt Lim, who is building Formfuction, stated it very clearly in his article:
“IPFS is not ideal — even though it uses content addressing to ensure NFT metadata can’t be changed, it does nothing to guarantee that your data doesn’t get deleted. For example, if you use Infura’s IPFS pinning service, your data gets deleted if it hasn’t been accessed in 6 months. For NFTs, that’s a total dealbreaker.”
Users can prevent their data from being deleted if they pin it. If you pin your data through a service such as Pinata, you are asking the nodes not to delete your data. However, most pinning services only offer free accounts until you hit a data limit at which point you need to start paying monthly.
If you do not pay, your files will be deleted.
Matt Lim contacted Pinata, and asked them about data persistence. They replied with the following:
“As long as your content remains in the “pinned” state on Pinata, and your account does not fall behind on multiple payments, your content will not be deleted.
However if multiple payments are failed and no response is provided after multiple attempts to reach out, then your content can be deleted.”
At this point, some users will move to Filecoin, which is a decentralized storage solution where users can store their data for a fixed period of time. Once that time is up, users can download their data from Filecoin, and it is then deleted.
Once again this is yet another temporary solution. All of these are difficult to maintain for long periods of time, especially for platforms that manage a lot of data, especially NFT marketplaces. The consequences of not constantly managing these services is potentially disastrous.
Arweave is the only solution for permanent, decentralized data storage
Arweave is the most secure way to store your data. When data is uploaded, the nodes are incentivized to store the data permanently, so there is never a risk of it being deleted. Since your data is stored across multiple nodes, even if one of the nodes is destroyed or dropped from the network, the remaining nodes ensure that your data is still accessible.
Additionally, users only need to pay a one-time fee when their data is first uploaded. After that fee, your data will live forever on Arweave. No more payment required.
There are no storage limitations on Arweave, which unlocks new possibilities for developers who can now create even more engaging, robust platforms for their audience without worrying about hitting data limits.
Arweave is the only solution for long-term storage, especially for NFTs. We are seeing more and more developers and artists opt for storage on Arweave because of its unparalleled offerings.
Where does Bundlr Network come in?
Bundlr enables fast, multichain support for Arweave, enabling native support across various blockchains. Bundlr increases uploads by ~3000x and the data is instantly accessible to users. It also allows for users to pay for data uploads in different tokens such as ETH, SOL, MATIC, DOT, and many more.
Bundlr operates as an aggregator and caching layer that sits on top of Arweave. It collects many pieces of data before submitting them onto Arweave in a single transaction.
Currently, Bundlr handles ~70% of all data uploads on Arweave.
Using Arweave via Bundlr is the best way to upload and store your data.
Arweave is the only decentralized, permanent data storage solution, and Bundlr is the fastest way to get your data there. For web3 applications, especially NFT marketplaces, this is crucial.
Where you store your data matters, especially for your users. And when it comes to fast, permanent storage, Arweave via Bundlr is the simple choice.
A special thanks to Matt Lim for his great insights! Check out his company, Formfunction, and his writing on Medium!
