At DePIN Day Singapore, Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, took the stage to share what he called a new primitive for the decentralized web — a composable layer designed to connect data, compute, and users in a truly trustless way.
After seven years of building Arweave and the broader Permaweb, Williams introduced a new evolution in the protocol stack: Hyperbeam — a “meta virtual machine” and message framework that could serve as the glue layer for decentralized infrastructure networks.
Permanent storage and a living web
Arweave began in 2017 as a protocol for permanent, trustless data storage. Over the years, it evolved into a foundational layer for what Williams calls the Permaweb — a web that never forgets.
Today, the network stores over 23 billion pieces of data and delivers storage at a fraction of centralized costs.
“On Arweave, storage costs around 75 cents per terabyte per month,” Williams explained. “Compare that to $23 on Amazon S3 — it’s nearly impossible to compete with that.”
This economic advantage, he added, is not unique to Arweave — it reflects the broader strength of DePIN. Decentralized physical infrastructure networks are reaching scale and efficiency that traditional providers can barely match.
A peer-to-peer network that never forgets
At its core, Arweave functions as a peer-to-peer gossip network that never forgets. Every message broadcast on the network is not just shared with nodes today — it remains available to anyone who might need it in the future.
This design, Williams argued, creates a simple but powerful primitive for DePIN builders: information that endures.
“If you send a message on Arweave, you’re sending it not just to every node now — but to every node that will ever exist,” he said. “That permanence makes it a composable base layer for other decentralized networks.”
Beyond storage: computation and the Permaweb stack
To extend Arweave’s capabilities beyond static data, the team built AO (Autonomous Objects) — a computational layer that brings deterministic, verifiable execution to the Permaweb.
This layer already processes billions of messages and thousands of contracts, effectively enabling trustless web applications — from indexing and querying to decentralized identity.
“We want a usable decentralized web,” said Williams, “not just one that’s decentralized in theory.”
With storage, compute, indexing, and authentication now in place, the next challenge was interoperability — connecting all these protocols into a single, coherent system. That’s where Hyperbeam comes in.
Hyperbeam: the glue layer
Williams described Hyperbeam as a meta virtual machine designed to link multiple decentralized protocols through a unified message format and cryptographic validation layer.
Without such a layer, he argued, decentralized stacks remain fragmented:
“We end up with brilliant individual protocols that don’t talk elegantly to each other — and that gap is where centralization creeps back in.”
Hyperbeam aims to fix that by introducing:
- A shared message format (based on the RFC 9421 standard for HTTP-signed messages).
- A meta virtual machine that allows any execution environment — EVM, WASM, or custom — to interoperate.
- A Merkle-based verification layer (“hashtags”) that records the lineage of every data transformation.
Together, these components bring blockchain-grade validation directly into the transport layer of the web, enabling end-to-end decentralization — all the way to the user’s browser.
“Most Web3 projects still send you to a centralized website,” Williams said. “The edges of the network aren’t decentralized. With this system, they can be.”
A unified, verifiable web
By embedding verifiable signatures into standard web requests, Hyperbeam allows users to validate computation results inside their browsers — without relying on intermediaries like block explorers or hosted frontends.
Every interaction produces a Merkle log that traces who said what, when, and why — effectively building a global, distributed record of computation over time.
“What you get,” Williams explained, “is a global hash of the world’s computations — a verifiable trail of truth that scales naturally as people use it.”
Toward a truly decentralized internet
With Hyperbeam, Arweave is positioning itself not just as a storage protocol, but as a core building block for the decentralized web stack — spanning storage, compute, communication, and validation.
Williams closed with a challenge to the industry:
“We talk a lot about decentralization, but you’re only as decentralized as your most centralized piece. If we can make every layer verifiable — from storage to browser — then we finally have the web we’ve been promising.”
