The Vision of the First Permanent Cloud Network
AR.IO envisions a resilient, fair, and neutral Internet where all stakeholders (businesses, creators, society, and individuals) can thrive.
This new internet aims to capture market share from the current cloud giants, whose addressable market is worth over $600 billion per year and is expected to grow to $1 trillion by 2030. AR.IO ’s Perpetual Cloud Network introduces a transformative solution that protects the rights of users and provides a foundation for tamper-proof, universally accessible data and a framework for sovereign cryptographic identities.
By empowering individuals, creators, businesses, and society, AR.IO ensures information security, transparency, interoperability, and durability. Traditional infrastructure is prone to failure due to regional instability and policy changes, and the AR.IO network uses blockchain technology to address these weaknesses and forge a new path forward. Laying the foundation for our existing Internet and its future.
In just three generations, the Internet has reshaped humanity and revolutionized the way we communicate, learn, work, create, and share. However, the Internet remains fragile at its core, controlled by tech giants and overreaching governments—all driven by profit and politics. Under the control of these systems, paywalls, data loss, censorship, manipulation, and advertising have become the norm.
This centralization of power has led to memory loss, deplatforming, data breaches, and limited access to critical information, ultimately stifling expression and autonomy. Centralized cloud systems have played a huge role in this, and approximately 4 billion people around the world rely on these systems.
Uphold the truth
Throughout history, truth has been lost or tampered with with devastating consequences. Libraries, manuscripts, and cultural records have been destroyed, and entire eras of knowledge have been lost to time. Much of what we know survives only because of hidden archives, fragmentary records, or painstaking reconstructions.
If we had access to immutable, durable documentation, perhaps history would have unfolded differently. A system that ensures the immutability and seamless access to truth would not only protect knowledge, but also prevent the injustices that arise from its loss.
The Internet has taught us that it is not built to protect the truth, as an average of 30% of links "rot" after 5 years. The AR.IO network provides tools that ensure the security, permanence and accessibility of knowledge and truth. At the same time, AR.IO integrates sovereign encrypted digital identities, ensuring that individuals and entities can verify their contributions to this immutable knowledge network, adding an important layer of trust and responsibility.
The need for change
The Internet’s potential as a venue for free and sovereign information exchange is hampered by the lack of three key components:
- A method of storing data indefinitely
- Make sure it cannot be changed
- and make it generally available
Without these foundations, personal memory, cultural heritage, and our digital experiences remain at risk and vulnerable to commercial interests. A new paradigm is needed, one that guarantees permanence, transparency, and sovereignty of the digital world we share.
The new cloud era
Just as Bitcoin revolutionized money by creating the world’s first permissionless digital currency, AR.IO is launching the world’s first permanent cloud – a decentralized, blockchain-powered network that redefines how data, applications, and digital identities are stored and accessed.
The Persistent Cloud eliminates reliance on centralized servers and single vendors and is tamper-proof and universally accessible, ensuring that information cannot be lost, censored, or tampered with by any single entity.
The system utilizes existing and new technologies to address gaps left by the current Internet.
How to run:
- AR.IO is built on Arweave, a permanent data storage network that provides immutable, source-driven, and economically sustainable storage.
- AR.IO 's gateway network ensures that this data can flow freely and be openly accessible around the world, regardless of physical location.
- AR.IO Names (ArNS) replace traditional domain names with friendly, readable names, ensuring content and identities are always accessible.
AR.IO prioritizes immutability, transparency, and long-term accessibility. Rather than being a temporary centralized solution, it fundamentally changes the way information is stored and accessed.
By combining a permanent infrastructure with a semantic layer, AR.IO transforms the way content is stored, discovered, and reused, eliminating broken links, ensuring permanent access, and enabling smarter workflows through machine-readable metadata. This new fair, neutral cloud ensures universal accessibility, censorship resistance, and platform independence of data, enabling businesses, creators, individuals, and society to thrive.
From vision to reality
The Persistent Cloud is built on a foundation of breakthrough open source innovations that make persistent, decentralized storage and access a reality.
The cloud that never forgets
AR.IO 's vision is rooted in Arweave's "pay once, store forever" model. Unlike traditional cloud storage, which requires ongoing payments and is prone to data loss, Arweave only requires a one-time upfront payment to ensure permanent data storage. The Arweave decentralized network incentivizes storage providers to replicate data indefinitely through protocol donations. This approach decentralizes control, eliminates single points of failure, resists censorship, and guarantees the permanence and provenance of information. Through timestamping and data tamper-proofing, Arweave creates a transparent and unalterable record.
By leveraging Arweave’s persistent storage, AR.IO creates a durable foundation for a permanent cloud. Users and developers can store documents, applications, and media with the assurance that their content will remain available, unchanged, and open for generations.
TLD-free cloud accessible at any time
AR.IO 's decentralized network of gateway nodes ensures reliable, uninterrupted access to data and content. These gateways seamlessly handle data retrieval, upload, and distribution, providing a consistent and well-performing experience that eliminates the vulnerabilities of centralized systems. Unlike traditional platforms that are subject to strict content policies arbitrarily set by providers, AR.IO gateways use a flexible review model that allows operators to decide what content to provide based on their own values and jurisdictions. This ensures the open access principle of the network, allowing users to access content even if a gateway chooses not to provide service.
With AR.IO ’s Arweave Name System (ArNS), access becomes even simpler. ArNS replaces traditional DNS with permanent, censorship-resistant domain names. ArNS allows data and digital identities to have human-readable, memorable names, making it easy to locate content and interact on the web.
Full-Stack Cloud
AR.IO integrates with decentralized computing platforms and blockchain networks to execute decentralized applications directly on the network based on permanent storage.
This flexible integration allows developers to build powerful full-stack applications. The front-end, back-end, and smart contracts can be connected to AR.IO programmatically to easily upload, download, and discover permanent data. This architecture ensures that the application is not only decentralized, but also unstoppable, with all components based on permanence.
Trustless, transparent computing is critical for industries such as finance, governance, and supply chain management, where reliability and accountability are unquestionable. This architecture ensures that applications run transparently and securely without relying on intermediaries. By providing a solid foundation for these applications, AR.IO allows developers to create secure, transparent, and durable systems.
A self-sufficient ecosystem
AR.IO powers its network through a protocol-based incentive system based on native cryptocurrency, creating a sustainable and transparent foundation for growth. The system ensures that gateway operators, storage providers, developers, and users receive fair returns by combining economic incentives with active participation in the network. Revenue generated by services such as ArNS registration, data uploads, and dApp transactions will flow into a protocol-controlled donation fund to fund storage, bandwidth, and computing costs in a transparent manner.
Unlike a single company driven by profit maximization motives, AR.IO 's decentralized model leverages immutable smart contracts to eliminate monopoly control and promote fair participation. This approach encourages cooperation and ensures sustainability, while fairly rewarding participants and promoting a resilient, community-driven Internet.
Coexistence with traditional cloud
The goal of the Persistent Cloud is not to replace the traditional cloud, but to do so by filling critical gaps, providing tamper-proof, location-independent connectivity and interference-resistant storage.
Individuals can use a permanent cloud to back up irreplaceable memories and important files, while leveraging traditional clouds for transient needs such as real-time applications, temporary operations, and collaboration. Enterprises can take a hybrid approach, leveraging a permanent cloud to ensure their most critical data is permanently protected, while leveraging traditional clouds for daily operations and more temporary needs. Together, these systems create a practical, progressive evolution of the Internet that builds a durable, equitable future for everyone.
The Internet of the Future
AR.IO makes Neal Stephenson's vision of a "data paradise" in "Cryptonomicon" where information is not controlled by governments, corporations, and centralized institutions a reality. The first permanent cloud ensures the security of human knowledge, ensures the free flow of data, empowers users to own their own identity, protects the truth, and promotes unrestricted innovation.
AR.IO combines permanent, provenance-driven data, encrypted identities, self-sustaining incentives, and unstoppable access to lay the foundation for the Internet's growth while ensuring integrity and reimagining the way we store, share, and interact with information. Vulnerabilities such as censorship, manipulation, and centralization will be eliminated, ensuring a future where critical data, creative works, digital identities, and even human consciousness can be preserved for generations to study, connect, or build upon.
Without a persistent cloud, we risk losing digital sovereignty and leaving shared truth in the hands of a few gatekeepers. With a persistent cloud, we have a reliable, inclusive, and durable internet — one that empowers the future of humanity while protecting its knowledge and creativity.
