Irys Project Faces Fork by Arweave and Token Supply Reset; Arweave Founder Condemns: Greed!

Irys Project Faces Fork by Arweave and Token Supply Reset; Arweave Founder Condemns: Greed!

Irys Project Faces Fork by Arweave and Token Supply Reset; Arweave Founder Condemns: Greed!

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Arweave ecosystem disputes and forks
How Irys responds
According to the information disclosed by Sam Williams, co-founder of Arweave, on X, Irys (formerly Bundlr), a middleware storage solution based on Arweave, is planning to fork Arweave.
Sam Williams stated that Arweave has an established mechanism called “protocol evolution” to ensure that network forks do not disrupt the data stored on the network. This mechanism allows for safe forking and upgrading of the network. However, Irys ignored this mechanism and intends to abandon the existing dataset and reset the token supply from scratch, which has raised widespread industry concerns.
When asked about the reasons for forking, 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, forking is a critical issue and should be done in a way that protects and builds the network state, rather than destroying it. Sam Williams urged Irys to reconsider its forking plans 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 gateway. 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 another bundling service. Sam Williams stated that the team is willing to provide one-on-one support for users who need to migrate.
It is clear that Sam Williams defines Irys’ behavior as “harmful to the community and ecosystem” and takes corresponding measures to resist its actions.
In response, the official Irys response on X claims that although Sam Williams is committed to building technology to prevent tyrants, he behaves like a tyrant himself, trying to remove Irys from the 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 technology and promising not to interrupt the services currently relied upon by users.