Today we’re expanding WeaveVM Archiver’s permanent storage capabilities to Substrate-based chains. This integration enables complete historical data archiving with guaranteed permanence, addressing a critical need in the Substrate ecosystem.
Why This Matters
Substrate chains generate massive amounts of historical data that needs to be preserved. Even back in 2022, Polkadot’s archival node size was around 0.6 TB, and Moonbeam’s full node setup requires 1 TB of disk space. Current solutions often rely on centralized providers or temporary storage, creating potential points of failure.
With WeaveVM’s Substrate archiver, chains can now store their complete history permanently on-chain at a fraction of traditional costs. One project we did this for recently is Humanode, who use WeaveVM’s ledger storage to synchronize new nodes into the network.
Technical Implementation
The archiver operates as an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline designed specifically for Substrate’s architecture:
- Extraction: Interfaces directly with Substrate nodes to capture:
- Full block data
- Chain events
- Extrinsics
- State transitions
- Transform: Processes raw chain data into optimized formats for permanent storage
- Load: Settles data permanently to WeaveVM’s storage layer, which leverages Arweave for persistence
Cost-Effective Storage
Storage costs approximately $0.05/MB - making permanent data retention economically viable for production chains. This represents significant savings compared to traditional storage solutions while providing stronger guarantees around data persistence.
Integration Benefits
- Complete history: Capture and preserve entire chain history
- Trustless architecture: No reliance on centralized storage providers
- Query access: Direct access to historical data without external dependencies
- Cost predictability: Fixed storage costs without ongoing maintenance fees
Getting Started
- Visit our GitHub repository to get the code
- Follow the setup documentation to configure the archiver
- Start archiving your chain’s data within minutes
Development Status
The archiver is now in production-ready state and fully open source. We’ve thoroughly tested it with multiple Substrate implementations to ensure reliability and performance at scale.
Our development prioritizes:
- Minimal configuration requirements
- Error handling
- Efficient resource utilization
- Clear monitoring and logging
Next Steps
Join our Discord community for:
- Technical support
- Integration guidance
- Feature requests
- Contribution coordination
Use our calculator to estimate storage costs for your chain’s specific needs.
Through this release, we’re taking another step toward solving blockchain’s data permanence challenges. For technical details or integration support, reach out through our Discord or GitHub.