Solana - Arweave Bridge: Interoperability Hack

Introduction

Solana is a high-performance blockchain that can deliver up to 50,000 transactions a second. If the network was being consistently utilised at its full capacity, the protocol would generate 4 petabytes of data each year. This is a significant amount of data which needs to be stored somewhere. Similar issues have occurred with other blockchains as well, at one point it was suggested by Vitalik that it may make sense for Ethereum to start charging rent for storing the data, as it was becoming unfeasible to provide the service for free.

Blockchains are inherently ordered in a way such that if they were to be verified, this process would need to begin at the genesis block and continue all the way through to the tip of the chain. Therefore, it is critical that all of the data in the chain is reliably accessible in order to go back at any time and query the blockchain. This allows for the verification of the chain’s full state and confirmation of its integrity.

Arweave offers scalable and permanent data storage. Information stored on the Arweave network is backed by sustainable and perpetual endowments, and is tamper-proof, distributed, and decentralized. As a collectively owned hard drive, Arweave allows us to remember and preserve valuable information, apps, and history.

With this bridge, it will be possible for Solana to leverage the Arweave network for storage of the Solana ledger’s data, ensuring that this data can always be retrieved as required. The bridge will also remove the need for validators on the Solana network to run full nodes. Arweave is therefore a highly complementary solution to Solana and other high-performance blockchains that generate a lot of data.

Event Details

Solana - Arweave Bridge Interoperability Hack

Arweave is a scalable and permanent data storage protocol. Solana is a high-performance blockchain boasting high throughput and sub-second block times using a network timestamp system called Proof-of-History. Assuming Solana performs at peak capacity consistently for a full year it’s expected to generate 4 petabytes of data. It’s essential that the entire ledger is permanently stored and available. This is why both the Solana and Arweave core teams are excited to launch a grant for an Arweave+Solana integration that can address this need.

Application requirements

The application shall facilitate a bridge to connect Solana ledger data to Arweave permanent storage and must fulfill the following criteria:

Solana
 

1. Allow the storage of Solana ledger data in Arweave. Transactions should be efficiently batched into Arweave with the following tags

• Signature: transaction signature
• Pubkey0-N: pubkeys of the accounts in the transaction
• Blockhash
• Slot
• Entry block index
• Tx entry index

2. If it is efficient to do so tag the following pubkey metadata as well

• Fee Payer
• Signer
• Writable
• Read-Only
• Program
• Leader

Application Design

1. Standalone application that can use the Solana’s json RPC methods to retrieve the block data, (see docs.solana.com)

2. Data should be packed to minimize costs in AR, within reason.

3. Demo should include examples to query the Arweave chain for the stored transactions by tag Example, Pubkey=2ojv9BAiHUrvsm9gxDe7fJSzbNZSJcxZvf8dqmWGHG8S should paginate through the transactions for that key.

Nice to haves (all 3 add up to a 10% grant bonus)

1. Application should automatically start and stop based on the user providing AR for funding.
2. Application should be able to recover its position from a cold restart.
3. Integration that can connect it to our explorer "fetch more data" button. https://explorer.solana.com/account...

Rules

Successful submissions will meet the following criteria:

1. Submissions must be your own original work.
2. Apps must be open source, with the full source code available on Github or another open code hosting repository. Feel free to use whatever OSS license you prefer.
3. All submissions must include a brief description of the application and functionality in the GitHub repo
4. All applicants must join the Solana Discord server and share your submission in the #arweave-bridge channel upon completion

Resources

Need to learn more about the Solana or Arweave technology? Use the resources below, or reach out to the relative support teams on the shared discord channel:

Solana Discord

Arweave Dev Discord

Solana

Access Solana's Web3 SDK

Polling for Blocks Guide

Developer Documentation 

Arweave

Get an Arweave Wallet & Free Tokens

Arweave Web Extension Wallet

Developer Documentation & Getting Started Guides

Submission Deadline

The hackathon will take place from July 29th to August 28th. The submission deadline is August 28th @ 23:59 PM PST