Ever noticed how ‘onchain’ should come with a disclaimer.txt? Whether you’re building L2s, dApps, or yes, even NFTs, the reality is nobody can really afford to put their actual data onchain.
When storage costs $800/MB, everyone’s forced to play the same game: store links instead of data, pray your centralized storage solution doesn’t fail, and hope nobody notices.
To make matters worse, EIP-4444 will require Ethereum nodes to prune historical data, leaving its survival in the hands of centralized actors or the goodwill of enthusiasts, with no onchain incentives to store and serve it. We’re changing that.
Today, we’re breaking down exactly how WeaveVM achieves storage costs that are 90% lower than traditional chains – and why this matters for every developer building in web3.
The Future is Data-Rich
With low storage costs for EVM dApps, we’re about to see a whole new generation of blockchain applications that don’t have to make the offchain compromise. Imagine:
- Games with all assets truly on-chain
- Social platforms with permanent content storage
- Financial applications with complete historical records
- AI models with their training data stored on-chain
The Storage Cost Crisis
First, let’s talk about why this is such a big deal. Traditional blockchain storage is expensive – Ethereum current costs are currently over $800 per megabyte. Not because Ethereum core devs have expensive taste in mechanical keyboards, but because high costs relate to demand for compute, discouraging spam and helping to maintain network health.
The real problem is these costs force almost everyone to store their data offchain, creating this weird situation where “decentralized” apps often depend entirely on centralized storage. It’s blockchain’s dirty little secret: your smart contracts might be decentralized, but your data probably isn’t.
How WeaveVM Fixes EVM Storage
When we tell people our storage costs are $0.05/MB instead of $800/MB, they usually think we’re either lying or cutting corners. We’re not — we just specialized to solve the right problem. Here’s how:
1. Your Data, Compressed
Most chains store data like they’re hoarding receipts — keeping every little detail in its original, bloated form. Data settled on WeaveVM goes through a two-step compression process instead:
- First, Borsh serialization strips out all the unnecessary bulk
- Then, Brotli compression squeezes out any remaining bloat
- Result: Same data, fraction of the size, perfect recovery
2. A Dedicated Storage Network
Rather than forcing a high-speed blockchain to pretend it’s good at storage, we integrated Arweave — a chain designed purely for permanent storage. It’s like the difference between renting a safety deposit box from a bank versus trying to store your valuables in a race car.
3. Smart Contracts Get Direct Access
Here’s where it gets interesting: your smart contracts can read and write to this storage directly. No external oracles, no centralized APIs, no complex middleware. If your code can run on the EVM, it can use WeaveVM as a hard drive.
4. The Exact Same Tooling You’re Used To
The final piece of the puzzle: a novel data pipeline, with the exact same EVM interface. We automatically optimize how your data is processed, stored, and made available to dApps. No complexity for developers, just dramatically lower costs.
The result isn’t just cheaper storage — it’s storage that actually works how blockchain was supposed to work: permanent, accessible directly from your contracts, and not getting in the way of you running a profitable chain.
Beyond the Numbers
This cost reduction enables developers to build what they actually want to build, not what storage costs force them to build.
It’s about making “onchain” mean what it was always supposed to mean: truly decentralized, truly permanent, truly accessible.
Try It Yourself
We believe in showing rather than telling. You can:
- Test these numbers yourself with our calculator
- Start building on our testnet today
- Join our Discord to learn more
And hey, with all the money you save on storage, you can finally throw that Token2049 side event! You know, the one with the open bar and questionable French techno (don’t forget to invite us).