Modeling the Growth of Arweave’s Permaweb

Key Insights

• Arweave's innovative permanent storage solution represents a groundbreaking leap from traditional data storage, opening up an entirely new market for storage.
• Arweave has achieved product-market fit within the Web3 space, emerging as a leading solution for archiving blockchain historical data, storing NFTs and metaverse assets, and providing content storage for decentralized social media applications.
• According to our storage model presented in this report, data stored on Arweave is projected to increase by over 2,100% from 134 TB to 2,950 TB by 2026.
• Using the storage projections calculated from our model, we use a Price-to-Sales valuation method to model the value of AR. The model projects AR to reach $97 in 2026, a 978% increase from current prices.

In recent years, permanent data storage has ushered in the potential for a revolutionary shift in the way data is stored and accessed. Leading the way in this new market is the Arweave project. The protocol introduced an innovative "pay once, store forever" model, making it possible to store data in perpetuity. This model has led to the development of the Permaweb, a decentralized and permanent version of the web built on Arweave.

As a zero-to-one invention, permanent data storage is a unique market opportunity that sets Arweave apart from established cloud storage providers like Amazon and Google. Furthermore, Arweave stands out from other decentralized storage networks (DSNs) such as Filecoin, Sia, and Storj — all of which are primarily focusing on disrupting the incumbents through a low-cost alternative to temporary storage. Other DSNs have a TAM of ~$80 billion, but Arweave, with its unique advantage, could expand into a relatively untapped market for permanent storage.