NFTs, Collectible NFTs, NFT Storage

Using Arweave Through ArDrive for Storing 10,000 Generative NFTs Permanently: How to Get It Done

And I’ll include info on what it costs, too!

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash No idea what this photo is, but it vaguely seem appropriate for an article about file storage, doesn’t it?

There’s a giant problem in the generative NFT space that almost no one talks about — long-term image and metadata storage. Yes, people tout IPFS storage as the end-all/be-all of permanent storage, but it’s just not true.

IPFS is great, so long as your content is pinned. But here’s the big secret: Pinning isn’t forever, and it’s not free. You generally need a pinning service like Pinata or Filebase to get involved. And that means you’ll need a monthly subscription to keep your pins alive. (I do NOT recommend either of those, btw. You can read my tirade against Pinata here, and you can basically substitute Filebase for “Pinata” in there, as their new pricing model is now broadly the same.)

What happens if you stop paying the monthly subscription? Say you change careers in 5, 10, 15 years, and you stop paying that never-ending monthly fee. What happens?

Well, they stop pinning your data. And eventually, IPFS may well see your data (your metadata and your imagery) as garbage. (That’s not a joke; it’s the actual term used in the IPFS documentation here.) They write “IPFS uses garbage…