The Forever Web: The need for an ageless Internet

The pace of change in the world of tech is famously fast, but we scarcely contemplate the way in which this breakneck speed might influence the viability of data over time.

Did you know that after two years, one-third of all data stored online has either been lost completely or changed so dramatically that the URL is now essentially linking to something else?

What if the internet's data didn't have to wither and die? What if, like words engraved on a stone tablet or newspaper stored on microfiche, there was a way to retain online information indefinitely? This concept, dubbed the PermaWeb, has attracted the energies of a number of Web3 development teams, with the best known being Arweave.

The brainchild of a team of developers, academics and entrepreneurs, Arweave uses blockchain technology to enable a permanent serverless web, offering unparalleled levels of data replication and security for users, as well as financial incentives for miners.

Its vision of a wholly decentralized web is one that cost-effectively stores data for all time.

Not only would they be resistant to censorship of any form, but they would represent an immutable web of knowledge - reflecting the guiding principles of the internet before it became prey to corporate influence.

Because it utilizes the hash of the last block on the network, as well as a randomly-selected old block which is included in the production of the next block, miners have to prove they can access an old piece of data from the network, demonstrating that they're performing their data storage duties.

As we have seen, that powerful connection does not persist over long periods of time: the data is only available so long as webmasters make it available, hackers leave it unmolested, governments condone its content and so forth.

With the PermaWeb, data remains viewable for eternity.

The PermaWeb doubles as an alternative to web archiving services and a means of future-proofing the data of today against the constant threat of digital authoritarianism.