⚫About Arweave

Q: Why choose Arweave as the blockchain to build GlacierDB?

First, Arweave provides fully decentralized and permanent storage on-chain, where you can build smart contracts. The SmartWeave contracts allow developers to build permanent applications on top of Arweave easily, and they use lazy evaluation to free the validators from smart contract work. This mechanism makes SmartWeave a very effective and inexpensive way to implement decentralized applications.

Besides, Glacier is built on top of Arweave storage, which applies storage-based consensus paradigm (SCP). It makes the storage and query convenient, secure, and scalable.

Q: How Glacier Network Utilizes Smartweave?

Smartweave provides contract implementation services for ERC-20 Token Contracts and NFT Contracts. The Glacier Network makes extensive use of Smartweave technology, with the Glacier PST Token and Glacier Dataset Name NFT being two prime examples.

The Glacier Dataset Name NFTs can be used to record metadata associated with different datasets. They enable users to trade datasets using Name NFTs, easing data distribution and sharing. It can also make use of NFT-related functions for data security and copyright management.

The Glacier PST Token is a vital component of the Glacier governance network. Creating a PST Token with Smartweave is a simple process.

In terms of expanding the Glacier Dapp ecosystem, we can follow the PST Token standard, which allows users and Dapp project teams to use PST Tokens to represent their contributions within the Web3 DeDatabase. PST Tokens can also help with the administration of Glacier Dataset DAOs. PST Tokens can be used by users or DAPPs to vote on on-chain dataset management issues such as allowing a Dataset NFT to be traded, paying for high-performance Executor nodes, and more.

Q: Where in the stack does GlacierDB use Arweave's SCP?

In Ethereum's model, all full nodes execute computations, generating and storing the global state for queries. In contrast, SCP separates computation from storage through the use of off-chain smart contracts. These contracts can be written in any programming language, with inputs coming from a storage-based blockchain.

In GlacierDB, every NoSQL write request creates a transaction log that is stored on Arweave within a Glacier data block. Blocks written to Arweave periodically are equivalent to the Append-Only Logs of the storage system. The computational component (Storage Engine) is operated by the Glacier Data Shard, which can be regarded as an Golang implementation of Smartweave. The transaction logs generated by the computation are then stored to Arweave storage.

Q: In terms of retreating the data, is the gateway interaction on Arweave controlled by Glacier or by the users? And how does the gateway work across different storage protocols?

Typically, users interact exclusively with GlacierDB rather than directly with the underlying storage solution (such as Arweave). GlacierDB provides structured data management capabilities through the use of tables, which enable dApps to define data structures, relationships, and constraints.

GlacierDB is supported by various storage protocols, and a storage adapter is available to abstract away differences between the various storage options and provide a unified view to GlacierDB.

Q: What is the fee like when you interact with Arweave and Bundlr?

The storage fees are low. Assume the size of a row in a collection is 1 KB, 1,000,000 rows will take 1GB of Arweave storage space. Currently 1 GB of Arweave storage is about 0.9 AR (~8USD), the storage cost for each row is ~ 0.000008 USD.