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Arweave ecosystem faces internal disputes and forks
How Irys responds
According to information disclosed by Sam Williams, co-founder of Arweave, on X, Irys (formerly Bundlr), a storage middleware solution based on Arweave, is planning to fork Arweave.
Sam Williams stated that Arweave has established a mechanism called “protocol evolution” to ensure that network forks do not disrupt the data stored on the network. This mechanism allows for forks and upgrades to the network in a secure manner. However, Irys ignores this mechanism and intends to not only abandon the existing dataset but also reset the token supply from scratch, which has raised widespread concerns in the industry.
When asked about the reasons for the fork, Irys stated that they do not want to support the existing data and provide tokens to a group (XXX). In response, Sam Williams emphasized that for a permanent storage network, forks are a crucial issue and should be carried out in a way that protects and builds the network state rather than destroying it. Sam Williams urged Irys to reconsider its forking plan and conduct experiments in a way that benefits the entire ecosystem.
In addition, given Irys’ actions, the responsible party of the Arweave network, ar.io network, plans to remove trust in Irys’ data bundler from its main gateways. This means that data uploaded through Irys will face longer delays before appearing on the network.
Furthermore, the Arweave community has provided users with a new, free bundling service that is compatible with Irys, available at: https://up.arweave.net. Users only need to replace the Irys node URL to use this service, effectively solving the problems faced by Arweave users.
On the other hand, if Irys users do not want to participate in this fork war, they can avoid the impact by switching to alternative bundling services. Sam Williams stated that the team is more than willing to provide one-on-one support to users who need to migrate.
It is evident that Sam Williams defines Irys’ behavior as “harmful to the community and the ecosystem” and is taking corresponding measures to resist it.
In response, the official Irys statement on X claims that although Sam Williams is committed to building technology to prevent tyrants, he is behaving like a tyrant himself, trying to exclude Irys from the supposed open-source and permissionless Arweave platform.
At the same time, Irys takes this opportunity to promote its own services, stating that it is developing new data sourcing technologies and promising not to disrupt the services that users currently rely on Irys.
