Archiving parts of my site on the Blockchain
The internet never forgets (until it has to)
I love blockchain technology in general. I’m an investor in, have written about, and am a user of, various blockchain platforms. I have also contributed by disclosing bugs in various blockchains.
I have used a few document storage blockchain projects like Storj, IPFS, etc a little under 4 years ago.
Now that I have my own site, I decided to look at these protocols again. I recalled a protocol that was on my radar called Arweave, a data storage blockchain protocol. I found it to be the easiest to use for what I wanted. I had read their whitepaper ages ago, but hadn’t really used their tech.
Today was the perfect opportunity to use it.
Arweave has a concept they call “permaweb”, built on top of the Arweave network.
The permaweb is a collection of interlinked documents and applications that get stored permanently on their protocol (so you may want to be careful what you put there).
I decided to put some sections of my site on the permaweb. Ironically, I opted to archive all the articles I wrote about blockchain technology - on the blockchain (technically “blockweave”)!
E.g. this paper - Future tourism trends: Utilizing non-fungible tokens to aid wildlife conservation is no longer pointing to the AJHTL Journal website. It is now pointing to, and archived on, the Arweave permaweb.
Archived paper: https://sqwgu2q52ul3lozh67aqok6l4sdqj4r455l2esuiktdt5xkfkb5q.arweave.net/lCxqah3VF7W7J_fBByvL5IcE8jzvV6JKiFTHPt1FUHs
View raw transaction : https://arweave.net/tx/lCxqah3VF7W7J_fBByvL5IcE8jzvV6JKiFTHPt1FUHs
View in block explorer: https://viewblock.io/arweave/tx/lCxqah3VF7W7J_fBByvL5IcE8jzvV6JKiFTHPt1FUHs
Why did I do it?
For fun. And because I like keeping my finger on the pulse of what’s happening in this industry.
In due time, I will migrate this entire site to be hosted, in parallel, on one of these blockchain protocols. Again, just for fun :-)
UPDATE:
I have pinned my 2017 article from Pentest Magazine on IPFS. The article is a tutorial on reverse engineering, exploit writing and micropatching - A new initiative of micropatching - 0patch!
This article on the impact of community currencies in low-income communities is also archived on the Arweave permaweb