Arweave Announces the Launch of the Arweave Name System

Arweave is a project that aims to act as a collectively-owned hard drive that never forgets, hosting the so-called permaweb, which is a permanent, decentralized web of numerous community-driven platforms and applications. Recently, the project announced that it made the next step towards achieving this by launching the pilot program of the Arweave Name System (ArNS), which will significantly improve the ability to find data on the network.

Today we're launching our pilot program of the Arweave Name System (ArNS) – a Smartweave based directory of friendly subdomains enabled by https://t.co/ljKQFJO6vN gateways on the @arweaveteam permaweb!

🧵 1/3 pic.twitter.com/62tQDABgyz

— 🐘🔗ario.arweave.dev (@ar_io_network) June 29, 2022

A new way of naming pages in Arweave’s ecosystem

According to Arweave’s announcement, its Arweave Name System is a Smartweave-based directory of friendly subdomains. These subdomains are enabled by AR.IO gateways within the project’s permaweb.

The idea is to be able to select any Arweave transaction and make it easy for people to find all the data on Arweave. The announcement further says that users can freely visit the decentralized version of the ArDrive.Arweave.Dev website which is hosted entirely on the permaweb.

The Arweave Name System is imagined to be a decentralized and censorship-resistant naming system that would run on the project’s blockchain and used to connect friendly names to PermaWeb-based dApps, data, pages, websites, and more. The project further said that the goal of using it is to make Permaweb URLs more “beautiful and expressive,” but from the more practical point of view, it is to allow dApps and notable Arweave transactions to be hosted from inviting and recognizable Arweave gateway subdomains.

Until now, URLs were a combination of the Arweave Gateway’s DNS name, and the Arweave Transaction ID, with the Transaction IDs being 43-character identifiers that referenced L1 or Bundled Data Item transactions. This was useful for the project’s security and addressability, but it also had the potential to trigger spam filters and even look suspicious to individuals. And, of course, there is the standard problem of being next to impossible for users to remember these addresses, or even recognize Permaweb destinations to which the addresses are leading.

A new era begins for Arweave Permaweb

With ArNS, that will change, and these addresses will finally become readable to humans as well. The system has been live as of June 29th, and Arweave noted that it only takes 3 steps to name a Permaweb-based page. First, users can go to the Permaweb and build the page, then they claim their domain, and finally, they set their Twitter profile name.

The Arweave Name System (ArNS) is now live on https://t.co/KpHwxvgAEB! 🐘

1⃣ Build your homepage on the permaweb.
2⃣ Claim your domain.
3⃣ Rep it as your Twitter name!

Be one of the first 200 to get a 'ArNS Beta Tester' Soulbound Token when the beta ends!

Here's how 👇 https://t.co/yzYNMN6uBH

— 🐘🔗 sam.arweave.dev (@samecwilliams) June 29, 2022

The project also hinted that the first 200 users to become ArNS Beta Testers will get the Soulbound Token at the end of the beta period, which might be another way to incentivize users to participate.

Arweave seemingly expects that this move will lead to a significant boost at the development of its Permaweb, with many new pages emerging now that it is becoming easier for the users to navigate from page to page and actually know where they are going.

To learn more visit our Investing in Arweave guide.