Immutable & permanent, two terms that are often conflated.
Permanent data is immutable but immutable data isn't always permanent!
What's the difference?
Immutability is the concept of making data unalterable after storing it. Storage devices often allow modification of data, making it difficult to ensure it remains unaltered.😔
So, to achieve immutability, we first need a means of detecting if alterations occur.🤔
For that, we use a mathematical formula called a one-way function to calculate a unique digital fingerprint (known as a hash) for the data.🕵️
This "hash function" is easy to calculate in one direction but practically impossible to calculate in the opposite direction.🔒
This means anyone with a copy of the data can run the hash function on it producing a new hash to compare with the original. If the hashes match it's an exact copy. If someone has only the hash, they can't recreate the original data making hashes safe to share in public.
If the original data is altered even by a single bit, applying a hash function will result a completely different hash.
This makes it easy to detect any changes made to the original data as the new hash won't match the original.
Let's consider a storage solution that provides immutable data. If the data is hashed when stored, detecting any alterations to the data will be easy.
That's great! 🥳 But once an alteration is detected how do we go about restoring the original data? 🤔
If the immutable storage solution has only a single copy of our data and that copy has been altered it's going to be difficult for us to reverse any detected alterations. This is the pivotal difference between permanent data and immutable data.
Permanent data is not only immutable, it also has assurances around the fault tolerance of its data. For that, permanent data requires multiple copies (replicas) of the data and it's best if replicas are distributed globally making them difficult to alter all at once.
For data to be permanent it must be...
By utilizing Arweave, a single up-front payment ensures that your data is both immutable and permanent with miners economically incentivized to replicate the data, greatly increasing its fault tolerance and censorship resistance. 🐘🚀
Hey all, if you've ever wanted to hear how Arweave works, described in simple terms please come join me tomorrow for the Arweave101: Prerelease Hangout . 9AM Pacific / Noon Eastern. You can add it to your Calendar using this link.. app.gather.town/events/OiZ3G74vQGyNswVItikv We'll watch the first 3 videos in the series (about 15 min) and then hang out and discuss the best things to include in Arweave102 Anyone is welcome, this topic should be fairly accessible to anyone curious about the technology. 🍻
Censorship resistant social media is going to be a huge theme in 2023. Importantly it’s going to be a race to see if the technology can reach scale before the upcoming regulations can stop it.
Is there a world where lens and farcaster co-exist or is it a winner takes all market?
Very cool to be able to click on my first post, scroll down to the bottom (on lenster) and see the link to the post data stored permanently on Arweave 🐘.
arweave.net/eA-Uwxi0ufrUZMVfcAi1BwhCiakYyrNAQq2psuihCvo
Love this unbannable, censorship resistant vision for the future of social media.🚀