AR

Arweave

Storage

Pay once, store forever: a permanent-storage chain with a near-final supply, now also the base layer for AO.

Clean supply, thin usage v1.2 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Arweave has an unusual and coherent design: users pay once, most of the fee goes into an endowment, and 65.65M of the 66M AR already exists, so there are no unlocks to absorb. Paid usage is small, though: DefiLlama shows roughly $12.9k of fees in the last 30 days, a fraction of what miners still receive in block rewards. At rank #161 (outside the top 100) and −80% inside the last 12 months, AR trades as a high-beta AI-storage narrative token; the September rally to $4.79 has no confirmed fundamental trigger.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$3.86
+1.9% 24h · −18% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$253.5M
rank #161 · FDV $253.5M
24h volume
$10.6M
4.2% of market cap
From ATH
−96%
ATH $89.24, Nov 2021
2026 YTD
+12%
$3.43 → $3.86
Fees 30d
~$12.9k
DefiLlama (ViewBlock data), Oct 2026

The last 12 months

$2$4$6$8$10Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec2025-11-08: $8.0699$8.07 peak2026-04-07: $1.6435$1.64 low2026-09-21: $4.7946$4.792026-10-20: $3.8602$3.861Spike to $8.072“Block halt” scare3HyperBEAM bundlers live4Gateway mesh migration5Year low at $1.646AR.IO white paper v3.07Decentralized AI hackathon8POAP history archived9+41% in a day10Gateways onto HyperBEAM
MarketTechProductGovernanceAdoptionUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026. Intraday wicks do not show.

Key events
  1. 1
    08 Nov 25 Spike to $8.07. Price doubles in a week to the 12-month high, then falls back to ~$4.2 within ten days.
  2. 2
    06 Feb 26 “Block halt” scare. Reports of a 24-hour halt after block 1,851,686; the team blamed stale ViewBlock data and other explorers showed blocks continuing. AR fell −19% that day.
  3. 3
    17 Feb 26 HyperBEAM bundlers live. Uploads through the arweave.app gateway routed through HyperBEAM bundlers from Feb 2026; AO marks one year of mainnet.
  4. 4
    30 Mar 26 Gateway mesh migration. One aggregator reports the move to a decentralized gateway mesh completed; not confirmed elsewhere.
  5. 5
    07 Apr 26 Year low at $1.64. After a −40% one-day drop on 28 Mar with no clear cause, AR bottoms at $1.64.
  6. 6
    05 May 26 AR.IO white paper v3.0. New network and token white paper for the gateway layer and its ARIO token.
  7. 7
    02 Jun 26 Decentralized AI hackathon. AI hackathon with HackerNoon, Nosana and MEXC, part of the AO agents push.
  8. 8
    05 Aug 26 POAP history archived. Full history of Proof of Attendance Protocol tokens stored permanently on Arweave.
  9. 9
    20 Sep 26 +41% in a day. Rally from $1.72 (2 Aug) peaks at $4.79 on 21 Sep; reports cite AI-storage interest and futures volume, no confirmed news.
  10. 10
    Soon Gateways onto HyperBEAM. Stated goal: run gateway functions in the AO/HyperBEAM stack so users need not trust operators. No date announced.

How a file upload becomes permanent on Arweave

User or app
Signs and pays

Uploads a file or AO message and pays a one-time fee in AR.

Bundler
Packs uploads

HyperBEAM bundlers batch many data items into one Arweave transaction.

Protocol
Splits the fee

A small share goes to the miner; most is held in the storage endowment.

Miners
Prove storage

Win blocks by proving random access to old data; earn block rewards plus fees.

Gateways
Serve the data

AR.IO gateways index the transaction and serve it by ID to browsers and apps.

AO
Computes on it

AO processes read the data and log their own messages back to Arweave.

Where AR comes in: every upload is paid in AR, and most of that fee is locked in the endowment rather than paid out, which acts as a sink. Miners are paid in AR from new block rewards and fees, with the endowment as backstop. AO compute is paid and rewarded in the separate AO token, so AR only benefits through storage fees and the AO emissions share for AR holders.

Usage and adoption

USD per year, rough annual run rate
Storage fees paid
~$0.16M
Miner block rewards
~$0.56M

Fees: DefiLlama (ViewBlock data) shows ~$12.9k over 30 days, annualised; the page's period labels are inferred. Block rewards: ~2,800 AR a week in Q1 2025 (PermaDAO weekly reports) × 52 weeks, valued at today's $3.86; rewards decline over time, so the 2026 figure is likely lower. Both are orders of magnitude, not audited figures.

  • strong signal
    Storage fees
    ~$12.9k / 30 days

    DefiLlama via ViewBlock, Oct 2026. Real payments for storage, but very small.

  • medium signal
    Endowment
    ~113.6k AR

    Dec 2024 (AR.IO white paper). Fees held back to pay future miners.

  • medium signal
    Data stored
    ~347 TiB

    Early 2026, ~33 GiB uploaded a day. From competitor 0G's blog; not checked against Arweave dashboards.

  • weak signal
    AO network
    Mainnet since Feb 2025

    AI-agent and compute platform; no reliable usage figures found.

Arweave's paid usage is small: roughly $0.16M of storage fees a year against roughly $0.56M of block rewards, so miners still live mostly on new supply. The difference from most coins is that new supply is nearly exhausted, so the question is whether uploads, from AI data and AO apps, grow before the block rewards run out.

Project

What it is
A blockchain for permanent data storage (live since 2018). Users pay a one-time fee in AR; miners are paid to keep replicas, and the “permaweb” of apps and archives is served by gateways. AO, a parallel compute network, runs on top of it.
Team
Founded by Sam Williams (CEO). Development is led by Forward Research, which also built AO; the AR.IO network runs the gateway layer. Small ecosystem compared with the larger L1s.
Technology
Blockweave with succinct proofs of random access: miners must prove they hold old data to win blocks. A storage endowment funds miners if block rewards and fees fall short, priced on a conservative hardware-cost decline.
Traction
~347 TiB stored and ~33 GiB uploaded a day in early 2026 (competitor 0G's estimate). Uploads through arweave.app routed via HyperBEAM bundlers since Feb 2026; POAP history archived in Aug 2026. AO mainnet has run since Feb 2025.
Roadmap
Move gateway functions into the AO/HyperBEAM stack so users need not trust operators, and grow AO as a “hyper parallel computer” for on-chain AI agents. No firm dates announced.
Competitors
Filecoin, Walrus and 0G for decentralized storage; AWS S3 and Glacier for cheap archives; other compute chains for AO.
Key risks
Fee revenue is tiny; the 200-year endowment math rests on storage costs falling; AO value accrues to the AO token, not AR; thin liquidity; Feb 2026 “block halt” scare showed reliance on third-party explorers.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
AR
-4%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-39%

AR roughly held flat over 12 months while BTC fell −25% and ETH −39%, but only thanks to the September rally. Over 3 years it is roughly −15% (from ~$4.5 in Oct 2023, a manual and unverified estimate) vs BTC ~+179% and ETH ~+53%; 3-year figures are manual because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$1.64 low (7 Apr) to $4.79 high (21 Sep), daily closes; now $3.86, YTD +12.5%
12-month drawdown
−80%, from $8.07 (8 Nov 2025) to $1.64 (7 Apr 2026); −95.7% from the $89.24 ATH (Nov 2021)
Liquidity
$10.6M traded in 24h, 4.2% of market cap; rank #161, outside the top 100
Relative strength
1 year −4.3% vs BTC −25.0% and ETH −38.6%; +135% off the April low but −18% in the last 30 days
ATH check ATH check passed. The $89.24 high (4 Nov 2021) came more than three years after launch, in the 2021 cycle, so it is used as the reference; AR is −95.7% from it.

Tokenomics

Supply
65.65M AR circulating of a 66M cap (CoinGecko), so FDV equals market cap. 55M at genesis, 11M released through block rewards.
Emissions
Block rewards decline with block height. PermaDAO weekly reports showed ~2,600 to 2,900 AR a week to miners in Q1 2025, about 0.2% of supply a year; under 0.4M AR is left to issue.
Unlocks/vesting
None outstanding: genesis allocations are long since unlocked, so there is no scheduled unlock pressure.
Utility
One-time storage payment, miner rewards and endowment. AR holders also receive a share of AO token emissions, a passive reason to hold.
Concentration
Most of the supply (55M of 66M) was allocated at genesis to the team, investors and token sale buyers; no recent public breakdown of holders was found.
Sinks
The endowment: most of each fee (95% per Arweave's blog; other sources say 80% to 85%) is held back from miners. It held ~113.6k AR in Dec 2024. No burn, no ETFs, no native staking for AR.

Bull case

AI agents and AO apps need verifiable, permanent data, so uploads and fees grow from a tiny base; with almost no new supply left, even modest fee demand matters. AR holds the $3.70 area of mid-October and retests the $4.79 September high.

Bear case

Fees stay in the tens of thousands of dollars a month, AO value flows to the AO token, and the September spike retraces like the November 2025 one ($8.07 to ~$4.2 in ten days). A loss of $3.00 opens a path back to the $1.64 April low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Monthly storage fees (DefiLlama) vs miner block rewards
  • Daily upload volume and total data stored
  • AO usage and HyperBEAM gateway decentralization progress
  • $3.70 support (mid-October closes) and the $4.79 September high

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

AR against EUR · USD

24h $118.0k · ±2% depth $167.3k

OKXlisted

AR against EUR · USDT · USDC

24h $722.4k · ±2% depth $72.3k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceAR/USDT$2.35M$280.9k
OKXAR/USDT$713.1k$72.3k
BybitAR/USDT$164.9k$43.8k
MEXCAR/USDT$126.1k$122.1k
BitgetAR/USDT$122.1k$188.0k

Deepest DEX pools

No on-chain pool with real trading found.

On-chain share of all AR volume: 0.0%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

Where to follow

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