NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Arweave, the first truly permanent information storage network, will now be the protocol on which successful social media platforms Odysee and Solarplex build and grow. Odysee is a Web3 video-sharing platform known for anti-censorship with over 7 million monthly active users - more than 20x more users than Farcaster and more users than Ethereum’s entire decentralized application ecosystem. Solarplex, built off of BlueSky, spans over 100 countries, 900 cities, and has been the source of over 120,000 NFT purchases on Solana to date.
Odysee and Solarplex were acquired by Forward Research, a research and development incubator that helps builders and operators create new services on Arweave. Both the Odysee and Solarplex team will join Forward Research to help build further social capabilities on the Arweave network.
Arweave, which last year announced the Universal Data License, is building the social infrastructure to put users rights first above corporations and governments. On the Arweave network, users have free speech free from censorship and can set their own terms for any content using the Universal Data License. This gives creators unique revenue streams and enables developers to utilize Arweave’s enormous data lake of over 6 billion unique items to build new apps and services – without having to grow them from a ‘cold start’.
“The Arweave protocol will be the home for what social media should have always been: An open space for free exchange of ideas where users have immutable, guaranteed rights,” said Sam Williams, founder of Arweave and Forward Research. “Odysee and Solarplex and the founding teams are a great addition to the ecosystem, helping us build out the core social protocols of Arweave’s Permaweb.”
“Over the past year we’ve been working on the next evolution of Odysee on Arweave and AO, giving Odysee users complete autonomy and self-governance with no compromises,” said Julian Chandra, CEO of Odysee.
“Decentralization and free speech are key pillars of the future of social networks — but realizing and sustaining this vision requires enabling creators to monetize their content independently of big tech’s entrenched interests. Arweave’s tools and user rights frameworks are built around these principles, and will provide a strong foundation for our growth,” said Viksit Gaur, founder of Solarplex.
Following the launch of AO in February 2024, the hyper-parallel computer has sent over 100M messages and has been the foundation of on-chain AI, running LLMs (large language models) inside of smart contracts. This enables the development of autonomous agents that can trade creator content or tokens based on dynamic instructions given to the LLM. Arweave will have further news on its AI momentum on June 20, 2024.
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About Forward Research
Forward Research, Inc. is a venture software development company dedicated to growing the Arweave ecosystem. Founded and led by Sam Williams, the founder of the Arweave Protocol, Forward Research looks to incubate projects that expand Arweave adoption and use cases.