Web3 is developing at an accelerated pace, and Arweave as an infrastructure will be adopted by more developers to create a new and more colorful ecosystem. PermaDAO is a co-builder community established for this purpose. All participants can find their own roles here to contribute to the Arweave ecosystem. Any proposals and tasks about Arweave can be published here and receive support and feedback from the entire community. Join PermaDAO and build Web3!
作者：Xiaosong HU @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Reviewer: Lemon @ Contributor of PermaDAO
The Arweave in Asia event was successfully concluded in Singapore in September. As the organizer of the event, PermaDAO had in-depth exchanges with many Arweave ecological projects on site. Everyone felt that Arweave project parties were more enthusiastic about technical research and development, and were still slightly lacking in sensitivity to market expansion and popularization of mass education. It was also based on everyone's communication that I wanted to interview the relevant persons in charge of the Arweave ecological project parties so that everyone, especially those who have not yet entered Web3, can see and understand what each project party is doing, and also provide some reference cases and templates for those who want to All in Web3 during the bear market.
That’s why we decided to create a series like this which will be very popular - by interviewing relevant members of different Arweave related projects, everyone, especially newcomers who haven’t entered Web3 yet, can see and understand what each project is doing. It also provides some reference cases and templates for those who want to go all in Web3 during the bear market.
For our first face-to-face interview, we chose Permaweb News, a senior media that has been reporting on Arweave ecosystem consulting trends. This time, we invited Pierre, the senior editor-in-chief of Permaweb News, to share his projects and personal experiences with everyone.
About Permaweb News
Permaweb News homepage: https://permaweb.news/
1. Question: Hello Pierre! I am glad that you can accept my interview. The first question I would like to ask is, could you please introduce the background of Permaweb News and how it was founded?
A: I may not be the most suitable person to talk about the background of the establishment of Arweave News, a media organization. I should first add that Arweave News has been renamed Permaweb News in the first half of this year - the reason is very simple, because I am not one of the founders of Arweave News. I joined the Arweave News team a few months after its establishment. But what I can tell you is that the purpose of Permaweb News is to represent a media organization supervised by some Arweave community members, mainly reporting news about the Arweave ecosystem. As you can see, we have never given up on this goal, and to this day we still publish news about Arweave, the ecosystem.
2. Q: What are the important milestones in the history of Permaweb News?
A: From my personal perspective, Permaweb News is not a project that can discuss or define such "milestone logic" until now. I want to explain further: Permaweb News has been constantly struggling for consistency and has achieved relatively small gains in trying to create the right content for our audience. Most projects in Web3 are doing something like "weightlifting" - pushing hard to implement new features or entire products; in contrast, Permaweb News is doing aerobics - trying to hold a plank for a long time. It may not look impressive until you try it yourself.
I know everyone thinks it’s easy to keep up with the Arweave ecosystem and try to publish news as it happens or create a simple weekly digest. However… if you try to do this every day, every week, you’ll find that it can be tiring and counterproductive. By the way, I’m very happy that PermaDAO has started doing its own compilation and publication of the Arweave weekly digest; I’m sure you get what I’m talking about.
Moreover, I know that this constant struggle becomes visible only when something stops for a while, just as something that was once considered by everyone as natural as breathing suddenly disappears.
3. Q: What is Permaweb News’ future vision and plan?
A: Okay, holding a plank position for over two years is cool and nice, but it’s time to try other types of physical exercise. We’ll continue to create content and focus on the Arweave ecosystem (we’ll even open access to anyone who wants to write their own articles), but we’ll also start “playing around” in other areas.
It’s obvious that AI today will change content creation forever. Personally, I prefer to play with my vocabulary like I did before, but a Master of Laws could write an article about the Arweave 2.7 branch in the style of Mark Twain by the time I’ve read the first page of it.
So AI is very powerful and we can’t ignore this technology, but we’re not going to use it heavily for content creation. We’re going to try more to use its power to create insights for large aggregated data sets. We’re going to create what we call “Permaweb News Research”. Now forgive me for not revealing too much, but I think a lot of people are going to find it interesting, and the power of UDL+Arweave’s immutability will start to be realized by a much larger audience than it is today.
4. Q: Does Permaweb News currently have a clear timeline? What resources are needed to connect?
A: Given that I was a bit long-winded in my previous answer, let me be brief: the answer to the question of whether there is a clear timeline is - yes; as to what resources are needed to connect, you'd be surprised how resourceful we have been able to prove ourselves. Holding the plank position for a long time makes weightlifting exercises quite feasible. However, we have to give credit where credit is due: we have received a lot, a lot of help from the PermaDAO community, the Cascad3 team, and the AIKEK team.
5. Q: In addition to the full-time staff currently working at Permaweb News, what other ways can others get involved? How do you incentivize these participants?
A: Well, as I told you, we want to be the news outlet of the Permaweb that is completely open to anyone who wants to write about Arweave. Before, we have provided limited access to known individuals or projects that have contacted us through different mediums, but whose contributions can enrich the space with different/novel perspectives. For example, right now, we are running a kind of silent experiment, which started a few months ago: we encouraged three individuals who had no previous contact with Arweave (or even with the broader Web3 except indirectly by ordinary people) to record their journey with Web3 and Arweave without any guidance from us. We even let them assume their own style and way to record this journey... One of them started presenting it as a Viking legend... It's crazy, I know, but I'm curious how those unbiased people see Arweave from the outside, and how their views change after digging deeper.
We have some ideas about incentives for participation. But currently, incentives for each Permaweb News author are optional, and these incentives are provided by PermaDAO. (Wanting to get incentives is optional, because after submitting an article, the author must upload it to the PermaDAO submission center and pass the review of PermaDAO before receiving the corresponding rewards; however, anyone can also publish any article directly on Permaweb News without applying for PermaDAO rewards, which also requires the review of Permaweb News)
PermaDAO’s Contribution Hub provides incentives for Arweave ecosystem news writers
6. Q: In your personal opinion, what is the biggest challenge Permaweb News is facing right now?
Answer: After a long hiatus from writing articles, I finally got the Arweave weekly ecosystem report, hahahaha
Obviously, I’m kidding, but the “serious” answer is relevant here, too. Because the biggest challenge is to truly rekindle the passion and to be able to persevere in an “indefinite” state; that is, in the end, we should still establish a self-sustainable mechanism.
About your personal situation
Pierre’s speech at the Arweave in Asia ecosystem event in September 2022
7. Q: I would like to talk about you personally. Can you share your educational background and career experience? Have you always been engaged in the traditional media industry?
A: Of course! When I was born, I learned... No, I would not go very far in this direction until... I was led in the opposite direction of specialization at an early stage of my life. You could call it the path of a: Renaissance man, a humanist, I don't know of course! In theory, this means that you tend to become a well-rounded individual, acquiring as many skills as possible, and you have the right and the obligation to create your own path in life by never staying in one field. In reality, in today's world, this ideal is impossible to achieve, you can't be Leonardo da Vinci; you are a layman in many fields, and you may reach mediocrity in some. The university I attended taught me a little bit in social sciences (from political philosophy to macroeconomics, law, sociology, cultural anthropology, etc.), which obviously did not help me to choose the specialization route. (Now I am doing a master's in archaeology..., so yes, I am everywhere)
Career-wise, I’ve spent most of my career working in finance and project management consulting. Sounds magical, doesn’t it? Yes, because that actually covers a lot of different types of projects and types of clients. One would say that this alone should be diverse enough to keep me in one place… but it’s not the case… I’ve ventured into a lot more things, but guess what? I’ve never had any experience or background in the traditional media industry, hahahaha!
8. Q: How did you come across Arweave and how did you join Permaweb News?
A: It's a pretty interesting story. I first came across Arweave in early 2021. A friend of mine told me that it was a cool blockchain that promised permanent storage for a one-time fee. I was like, "Well, that's impossible; it must be a scam; there's no service that charges a one-time fee and keeps it forever," so I immediately forgot about Arweave. Then at the end of 2021, I think it was October or November, I came across Arweave again. This time, I was looking for a real permanent medium for storing NFT files, and I personally didn't like the way storage was handled on Ethereum. That's when I first read the yellow paper and other information resources on Arweave, and I was shocked at the time, because it was not a scam, but really did what it promised. I found that a lot of information resources came from Arweave News (now renamed: Permaweb News), and I naturally became a loyal reader. In addition, I gradually became convinced that Arweave's use cases and implementations are indeed unique, so when Arweave News officially announced that they were looking for editors, I did not hesitate to join them and had the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with builders in the ecosystem in person to get first-hand information.
About PermaDAO and everVision
9. Q: everVision has held an NFT auction before, and you, as an artist, have also contributed a series of wonderful works. How did you know everVision?
A: At that time, the entire Arweave ecosystem was still relatively small, and everVision - formerly everFinance was one of the rising stars of the Arweave ecosystem project (I think I was one of the first people in the English section of the community to see the potential of their team and started reporting on it). I remember when everVision organized the first NFT auction, I had just finished my ceramic sculpture collection, so I proposed an idea to them and asked if they had ever considered displaying NFT collections made by individuals outside the team. They were very open and supportive of my idea, so I became the first individual who was not necessarily related to everVision, but displayed his own NFT in this type of auction. After that, there would be a new individual in each new auction (the ones behind were all real artists, hahahaha.
10. Q: How do you view everVision’s team and business development?
A: I told you that I have known the everVision team for quite some time. Looking back now, it is hard not to see them in a positive light. It was also at the same time that I became very good friends with the everVision team, we met in real life, and began to collaborate on a deeper level than we initially did. However, one thing is certain: the everVision team is probably one of the hardest working teams in the entire Arweave ecosystem. The proof of this point is that in just less than two years, it has successfully grown from a very new startup project to a major pillar in the Asian hemisphere where the Arweave ecosystem is located. They also manage the Arweave Asia Fund and continue to provide talented individuals or entire teams to the entire Arweave ecosystem.
11. Q: How do you think PermaDAO and Permaweb News should cooperate in the future?
A: At least, so far we have been working well together. Of course, there is room for more synergies in the future, but I am sure we will reach that level of cooperation. I firmly believe that as long as the dialogue between the two sides is uninterrupted, there is nothing we cannot do together.
12. Question: Do you have anything to say to everyone in the end?
A: You can start doing "plank support" instead of relying too much on "weightlifting". Haha
Summarize
I have known Pierre for more than a year. At the beginning, my impression of him was limited to his Romanian-accented English and the uncle who smoked anytime and anywhere. I also participated in the auction of NFTs carved by him, and his works are indeed very artistic.
As we interacted more and more, we finally discovered that he was a middle-aged man with a typical artist's romantic temperament and innovative spirit. In our conversation with him, he also mentioned many creative ideas, such as cooperating with Web3-authorized financial institutions, training at universities, etc. We also discussed the possibility of bringing his sculptures to the 2024 Asian Arweave Annual Conference.
Regarding his thoughts related to Permaweb.News, I also think Permaweb.News is at a crossroads. Their transformation may empower the entire Web3 ecosystem in the future, and it is very likely to achieve the status of a truly highly censorship-resistant Web3 media. Let's wait and see.
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