The TL;DR:

You can liquidity mine ARA now!

1. Get ARA in the 🦊 MetaMask mobile app;
2. Pool ARA with USDC in 🍣 SushiSwap to get SLP;
3. Stake SLP in ARA’s 💦 Liquidity Mining Gysr to earn more ARA;
4. Stake ARA for more ARA in the 💎 Hodl Gysr

You can stake in the Gysrs now. Rewards begin 2021-July-24 00:00:00 UTC.

Contract Addresses and Links

0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5 ARA
0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48 USDC
0x81ef0c70fa76c8e7563cb26ee34a2e7f2a77c410 USDC_ARA_SUSHI_LP

🍣 SushiSwap ARA/USDC liquidity pool
💦 ARA/USDC SLP -> ARA Gysr Fountain
💦 ARA -> ARA Gysr Fountain

Announcement

The Ara project is pleased to announce that we’ve chosen SushiSwap and Gysr as platforms for liquidity mining the ARA token (also called yield farming). 300 million ARA are locked in smart contracts, set to reward providing liquidity and holding ARA, over the next 10 and 200 weeks, starting 2021-July-24 00:00:00 UTC. Complete details follow.

Ara is not a DeFi project (We’re a decentralized web project and Ethereum blockchain project — check out our whitepaper and GitHub!) As such, we’re actually not trying to innovate in this area. Rather, we’ve chosen a simple and straightforward liquidity mining setup for ARA, arranging familiar, off-the-shelf DeFi platforms and tools in a common, recognizable way.

So if you’re already an experienced yield farmer, everything here will likely be familiar to you. And if you’re new to token swapping and liquidity mining, this project and guide may be a good place to start.

Our goals liquidity mining ARA are to: decentralize ARA (so lots of people have ARA and are using it, not just a few); enable swapping between ARA and other tokens (connecting ARA into the whole tokenized world); and incentivize liquidity (so swaps large and small work great).

Token Flow

Use MetaMask on mobile to swap freely between ETH, USDC, and ARA. Pool ARA with USDC on SushiSwap to get the ARA/USDC SLP pool token. Stake this token in the first Gysr to earn ARA as a reward. Additionally, you can stake ARA to earn ARA in the second Gysr.

Example moving tokens in:

1. Take some ETH;
2. Swap half of it to ARA, and the other half to USDC;
3. Pool the ARA and USDC in the SushiSwap pool, getting the pool token for the pair, SLP;
4. Stake the SLP in the Gysr fountain, earning ARA.

Example backing tokens out:

1. Whenever you want, unstake your SLP from the Gysr fountain. You’ll get all your SLP back, as well as the ARA you earned during the time you were staked.
2. Unpool from SushiSwap, turning in your SLP to get ARA and USDC back.

What if you have some additional ARA without USDC? Can you stake ARA by itself? The answer is yes, using the second Gysr fountain, which rewards ARA for staking ARA.

You can use the Sushi pool, either Gysr fountain, just one or some of those, or all three, and in whatever amounts you choose. You can move tokens in once and leave them pooled and staked for a long time. Or, you can periodically back tokens out, swap to adjust quantities, and move them back in again. The best strategy depends on your goals, and how many tokens everyone else has put in each pool. These details can’t be known beforehand, and will change over time.

Token Allocation

One billion ARA exist. 30% of them (300 million ARA), are allocated for mining. One quarter of these (75 million ARA), are locked in the ARA -> ARA Gysr, rewarding the hodl 💎. The remaining three quarters (225 million ARA), are locked in the ARA/USDC SLP -> ARA Gysr, rewarding liquidity 💦.

Both Gysrs will release ARA for 200 weeks (nearly four years), beginning 2021-July-24 00:00:00 UTC. The second Gysr will reward evenly over this time period. The first Gysr will release two thirds of its rewards (150 million ARA), over the full 200 week time period, and greatly concentrate one third of its rewards (75 million ARA), over just the first 10 weeks.

ARA came to DeFi in January 2021 with an ARA/ETH pool on 🦄 Uniswap v2. Through that pool, about 42 million ARA were decentralized to the world. We now expect most liquidity to migrate from Uniswap to SushiSwap, as Sushi is where the Gysrs reward liquidity.

23 million ARA are in the hands of trusted partners to the project, who are assisting us with advice, outreach, and community, but are not developers or members of the core team. Team and advisory distributions are under 25%. The remaining ARA (depicted as open starfield in the diagram) is in reserve.

A decision made once-per-project; Gysr’s on-chain guarantee

300 million ARA are locked in Gysr’s smart contracts, which will reward them over the 200 week duration. This is an on-chain guarantee — no one (not you, not us, not the Gysr team) can change how the Gysrs work. No one can remove the ARA or shorten or lengthen the time periods. As someone who’s used personal computers since nearly their inception, setting up the Gysrs was an interesting experience — there is absolutely no ‘Undo’ button here.

For this reason, setting up liquidity mining is something a project gets to do one single time. This part of the Ara project is finished. We won’t create or fund additional liquidity mining or yield farming pools, even if newer (even potentially better) options exist in the years ahead.

We’re glad smart contracts provide these public and irreversible guarantees. They place many details of the ARA token safely and comfortably beyond our control, a compelling benefit of decentralization. While they run automatically on the blockchain, we’re looking forward to spending our time and energy working on the software, marketing, community and every other part of the project.

Project Summary

ARA directly connects creators and fans, enabling distribution and payment without platform fees and limits.

Content distribution, rights, and payment challenges that have existed since day one on the Internet still stand in the way between creators and fans. New distributed tools and technologies mean that it doesn’t have to be that way. We’re building Ara to let creators and fans break free of platforms that take too much value and control from both sides, and help platforms be better as a result.

Project Highlights: The Ara File Manager is a simple desktop app that contains a complete local Ara network node and wallet. Creators publish their content, set a price in the ARA token, and get a hash-based link of the mutable archive. Fans click this link, and purchase with ARA. Smart contracts automatically pay 90% or more to the creator, while rewarding up to 10% to peers who seed in distribution swarms. Full details of the software and economics are in our whitepaper.

Ara is truly decentralized: With the Ara File Manager, your machine is participating directly in peer distribution swarms and the blockchain. There are no gatekeepers, middlemen, or censorship.

Ara is 100% open source. With the Ara modules on GitHub, developers can integrate Ara into their own apps and sites, enabling their users to buy, sell, own, upload, and download content in a secure and decentralized way.

A current challenge with NFTs is longevity: While the blockchain keeps NFT metadata decentralized and permanent, NFT media content is not. Ara is well positioned to solve this problem, and the team is working on this and other NFT use cases.

Team & Partners: The core team brings together experience in media and decentralization from LimeWire, Spotify, Twitter, Amazon, and NASA. Guiding the project are advisors with leadership experience at Google, BitTorrent, Inc., The Libra Association, and ConsenSys. Business partnerships include major studios and labels like Sony, Disney, Fox, NBCU, and Warner Brothers. We integrated the ARA token into the Rad app on PlayStation.

Two CEXs have confirmed they will list ARA (one in Korea and one in the United States), and we’ve built relationships with many more. In DeFi, ARA is paired with USDC on SushiSwap. Liquidity mining on the Gysr platform is decentralizing the token.

Ara is a vibrant community of open source hackers, crypto and DeFi frens, influencers, content creators, their fans, and now, you, too! Join us in Telegram and Discord.

Considerations providing liquidity on Uniswap and SushiSwap

While you are a liquidity provider, your stake is a part of every swap. Every time there’s a swap on the pool, you’re stake changes in two ways: First, it grows, earning part of the 0.3% fee the swapper pays. Second, it changes, representing the new ratio of the two tokens in the pool.

DeFi communities have named this behavior, and the risks it represents, as Impermanent Loss, and there are many good articles, videos, and math-powered papers that explain and model the implications. But a simple way to describe it that we haven’t seen elsewhere is to focus on three possibilities, and for each, talk about the different ways someone might feel. Suppose someone pools some A (an example project token) and D (an example stable token, or something foundational like ETH), waits some amount of time, and then checks the current ratio in the pool. At any moment, the situation might be:

1. More D and less A. (This happens when people have wanted more A, and have swapped more D into the pool to get it.) 😃 Someone in this situation might feel happy they can depool, and end up with more D than they put in. 😥 Or, they might feel unhappy they started with a significant share of A, and that quantity has become much less.
2. More A and less D. (This happens when people have wanted less A, and have swapped A into the pool to get rid of it.) 😥 Someone in this situation might feel unhappy knowing that if they depooled right now, they would get back less D than they put in. 😃 Or, they might (simultaneously, even) feel happy that they passively grew their quantity of A much larger, without needing to choose when to perform a swap at the current ratio of any one moment.
3. No change. (This happens if nothing has happened, or if combinations of the first two situations have restored the ratio to what it was at some earlier time.) 😥 Someone in this situation might feel unhappy because they were hoping for one of the things above to happen, and must either keep waiting, or depool to give up. 😃 Or, they might feel happy because they could depool and get back all the A and all the D they put in, and more from the 0.3% swap fee they’ve earned throughout. (This earning happens throughout all three situations, of course, but is easy to see when the ratio is the same.)

Every pool on SushiSwap and Uniswap has these risks. What are good ways to manage them?

1. First and foremost: The most important rule of crypto: Never risk any more than you are willing to lose.
2. Find good projects. Realize that even good projects, for reasons within and not within any individual or group’s control, can fail.
3. Instead of holding all of example token D, or all A, or pooling all of both and holding all P, choose a mixture of these three methods that you like.

Let’s list out those three methods in more detail:

1. If you hold all D, you’re not involved in the project (which is fine!)
2. If you swap D to A, your quantity of A will not change, but how much D it represents may.
3. If you hold all P, the ratio in the pool may change, representing more A and less D at one time, or more D and less A at another, or be the same. As this happens, how much D the A represents changes.

These risks are not specific to ARA — every token pooled on SushiSwap and Uniswap works this way. We hope with this description of different methods and possible situations in the pool, as well as additional materials and communities you find online (ours and those of other projects), you empower yourself to make the best choices for yourself.

Join the Ara community in Telegram and Discord, and as always, stay safe and have fun!

TL;DR: Get the MetaMask app on your phone. Write your recovery phrase on paper. Buy or send in some ETH. Swap to ARA, contract address 0xa92e7c…ef7df5.

Step 1: Get the MetaMask app

On your phone, go to metamask.io. From there, click to get MetaMask from your device’s app store. The app is free, and doesn’t require signing up or entering any personal information.

Step 2: Secure your wallet

MetaMask has options to load a wallet you’ve made before. If you’re new to crypto and defi, choose Create a new wallet.

After choosing a password, there’s something else you have to do. Grab a pen, a piece of paper, and get the room to yourself. MetaMask will lead you through steps to back up your Secret Recovery Phase. This is very important — if you lose your phone or it breaks, you’ll use this piece of paper to recover your crypto.

Step 3: Get some ETH

Next, you need to get some ETH. If you’re totally new to crypto, you can buy some right in MetaMask. You may already have crypto in an exchange like Coinbase, and can send ETH from there. (In MetaMask, click Receive to see your Ethereum address, and then follow Coinbase’s steps to send ETH to that address.)

Step 4: Select ARA

Now we’ll convert some ETH to ARA. Click the Swap button, choose Select a token, and type ARA.

Below, MetaMask says: Verified on 3 sources. Always verify the token address on Etherscan. To do this, click the link, scroll down the Etherscan page to find where it says Contract, and make sure it matches this:

Contract: 0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5

Step 5: Swap ETH to ARA

Enter the amount of ETH you want to convert, and MetaMask will check a variety of online sources to get you the most ARA with the lowest fees. Slide the slider to perform the swap. That’s it! MetaMask lists your ARA balance beneath your ETH balance.

Join our community!

As of this writing, most of ARA’s liquidity is in Uniswap v2. MetaMask likely accessed that pool behind the scenes to perform your swap. You can use Uniswap directly with a desktop or laptop PC and these older and less simple steps in our detailed guide.

You can use ARA to sell digital content, earn ARA rewards contributing bandwidth to keep it online — and all in secure and decentralized way. Read more about how that works.

Ara is an online community of open source hackers, crypto DeFi frens [yes that’s spelled correctly!], content creators, their fans, and now, you, too! Join us in Telegram and Discord.

👋 Hi there! Here’s information about our June 2021 test run on Gysr; It’s correct but history. You probably want to read about the full plan for Liquidity Mining ARA, here 😁

You can liquidity mine ARA now!

1. Swap in Uniswap, SushiSwap, or MetaMask on mobile to get some ARA;
2. pool that ARA with USDC in SushiSwap to get SLP;
3. stake the SLP in Gysr to earn more ARA.

The Gysr will release 1 million ARA over 10 days, starting 2021 June 18 02:00 UTC, which is in a few hours.

This is a first real step to try this out together, as a community. After the 10 day duration, we plan to create additional Gysrs to reward the original Uniswap pool, as well as simply those who hodl ARA. We’ll fund them to decentralize the token with much larger amounts and longer durations, as described in our March announcement.

Contract Addresses and Links

0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5 ARA
0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48 USDC
0x81ef0c70fa76c8e7563cb26ee34a2e7f2a77c410 USDC_ARA_SUSHI_LP

🦄 Uniswap v2 ARA/ETH liquidity pool (to get ARA)
🍣 SushiSwap ARA/USDC liquidity pool (to pool ARA, and get the SLP)
💦 ARA/USDC SLP Gysr Fountain (to stake the SLP)

2021 June 16 Community Announcement

Today, I’m pleased to share with you, our community, our first pools for liquidity mining ARA.

In January, the ARA/ETH pool on Uniswap created a bridge for the project to other tokens, and the world. We’re big fans of Uniswap v2, and have no plans to leave there. But also, as we’ve talked with people these last two months, as well as observed how other projects are setting up their liquidity mining/yield farming with available DeFi tools, it’s become apparent that there are two pretty big alternatives:

• USDC (instead of ETH); and
• SushiSwap (instead of Uniswap)

So we’ve made a new pool for this week’s trial where you can stake and swap ARA. It’s on SushiSwap, and ARA is paired with USDC:

🍣 SushiSwap ARA/USDC liquidity pool

This creates a second pool token, representing the ARA/USDC pair on SushiSwap, at the contract address:

USDC_ARA_SUSHI_LP
0x81ef0c70fa76c8e7563cb26ee34a2e7f2a77c410

A note on having two pools, on two platforms, paired with two different tokens: As we’ve investigated options to put this together, something we’ve put a lot of thought to is how to best balance choice with complexity. A good setup enables choice, but doesn’t contain so many options as to be complex (which can create FUD). So while we might have two options, pooling with ETH on Uniswap, or pooling with USDC on SushiSwap, we likely won’t do every possible combination.

Liquidity mining happens on Gysr:

💦 ARA/USDC SLP Gysr Fountain

It’s a Gysr v2 Fountain, so while you can use the GYSR token when staking, your rewards while staked should be predictable. It’s completely fine to not use (nor necessary to pay much attention to, I believe) the GYSR token at all. But determining that is a part of this test, too.

Ara is built by a community, and crypto is a community of communities, all building a decentralized future, together. In our exploration of options for a great DeFi setup for ARA, we feel really fortunate to have been introduced to the team at Gysr. We’ve found their version 2 product, released just days ago after passing audit, to be simple, powerful, useful and necessary — well positioned to solve a critical need of token decentralization that nearly all new projects face.

While we’re thinking of this as a test, it’s all on mainnet, and you earn real ARA. The Gysr will make 1 million ARA available over 10 days, starting in several hours. This rate may be similar to the rate of our actual, full liquidity mining setup when we launch that after this test.

So join us by getting ARA and USDC, pooling it in SushiSwap, and then staking your SLP tokens in the Gysr!

And most importantly, please share your experiences throughout with the rest of the community in our Telegram and Discord! A fair, equitable, and understandable liquidity mining setup will hugely help Ara as a project and ARA as a token. Decisions like how to set up liquidity mining a project gets to make just one time. We couldn’t do it without you.

And as always, have fun and stay safe!

[Note: The Ara core team made this announcement in our Telegram and Discord channels on the night of 2021 March 29 in American time zones. I’m posting it here in Medium so you can get to it without having to scroll up a lot. Edits from the original include: (1) Linking account mentions to work outside Telegram and Discord; (2) Changing ‘5 days’ ago, which is an error, to ‘2.5 days’ ago, which is correct; and (3) and adding an important note that the draft schedule of 8 weeks and 200 weeks does not begin in a week. We will make further announcements about the schedule when we’ve figured out more details, including, when it will begin. Thanks!]

Hello everyone.

There have been a lot of questions today, and thank you for those. Members of the core team and I have been trying to answer moment to moment, but also, we’ve spent the day meeting with each other and members of the wider community, discussing how to best respond, and planning how to best move forward.

In everything we do in this community, it’s our goal to be as transparent as possible. There’s stuff outside our control that limits this some times, and about some things. But please know that if there’s something that isn’t answered, or answered right away, that’s likely (although unfortunately) the reason why.

I have been working on Ara for 2 years. Tony, Joe, Eric, Brooklyn and others have been working on it even longer. We shipped version 1.0 of the Ara File Manager in December 2019. In January of this year, ARA got a Uniswap pool. And then, just 5 days ago, a larger community found us, which is great. So if you got here now, that’s awesome, you’re awesome, and welcome. 😍

As many of you have found us in the last few days, I’ve heard from many of you that you’re surprised by two things: That we’ve been at this for so long. And, that this project is actually real: A team of real people; A GitHub of real code; A software stack you can integrate; A desktop app you can install and run. A community that includes content and platform partners, indie and major.

Building real stuff takes time. We’re all in this for the long haul. I want you to come along as we do that — through many months, through lots of software development and testing, as we build something together that gets the world a significant step closer to our shared vision for a more decentralized Web.

We’re making useful software tools that solve real problems content creators and their fans face from centralized platforms today. We’re excited to work with the open source communities around Ethereum and Dat/Hypercore Protocol (which we are and have been a part), podcasters, videographers, other artists and their fan communities, as well as people who use the ARA token with the sites and apps that are a part of everything that’s Ara (and the people who are most interested in that).

So while the ARA token is just one part of Ara, a lot of you who found us because of ARA’s activity on Uniswap, and want to know those specifics. The simple truth is this: We were unprepared for the level of activity and interest the project has seen in the last 2.5 days when ARA on Uniswap really started to happen. So our delay in answering even simple questions about this so far is because we’ve been racing behind the scenes to put together a first draft of a great plan for the project that contains those answers.

1 billion ARA exist. So far, only about 4% of them have been swapped into the pool. Right now, the pool contains 0.7% of the billion total — the rest of the 4% have moved out through the pool into the world.

4% of ARA out into the world is great — but it also isn’t nearly enough for ARA to get started for real. We’re concerned that immediate exuberance (well-founded exuberance! and welcome exuberance!) around this great project could very quickly result in numbers that make no sense, to anyone, and are difficult or even impossible to work with. And that if this happened, that it could actually hurt the project.

Fortunately, we’ve got great help to chart a path for Ara forward. We met Tyler @LordTylerWard way back at the start when Ara was just an idea at Token Factory. (And Tyler, a huge thank you already for spending the time you’ve spent in the last few days with Tony, Eric, me and others helping us pencil together this map.) I’m very glad that Tyler, with his expertise from BarnBridge, is advising us.

So while none of this is final, here’s what an early draft of that map looks like:

Around 25% of the 1 billion ARA has already been distributed to members of the core team. Tyler tells us this is quite standard for projects.

It’s our goal to get 30% of the 1 billion ARA out into the world, to do this in a transparent and structured way, and also, to do it pretty quickly. DeFi has tools to help projects do this that didn’t exist even a few months ago. Eric, our lead blockchain dev, is looking at BarnBridge’s smart contracts around yield farming. Setting things up for ARA may be as simple as forking BarnBridge contracts (they are already tested and proven) and adding in presets for ARA.

We’re considering a schedule like this:

• Over 8 weeks, distribute 10%
• Simultaneously, over 200 weeks, distribute 20% (totaling 30% of 1 billion)

[Note that this draft schedule of 8 weeks and 200 weeks does not begin in a week. We will make further announcements about the schedule when we’ve figured out more details, including, when it will begin. Thanks!]

These simultaneous schedules (fast and slow) reflects the reality that we’ve already been building Ara for a few years, and plan on building for more.

45% remains with this plan, and we’ll keep that as a treasury, and use it for activities that help the ecosystem, the network and its users. This reserve we may also not end up using at all.

I hope this answers many of the questions many of you have had today. Our Telegram and Discord chats are all about Q&A, so keep them coming — Tony, Brooklyn, I and other members of the core team are here to help.

Thanks everyone! -Kevin, on behalf of the core team

Coinbase only carries 42 cryptocurrencies? Robinhood can ban things? Should I really feel comfortable giving any of these apps a scan of my passport? I thought crypto was supposed to be decentralized!

It is. Or more correctly, it can be. You can take control of your ETH, access the full universe of Ethereum-based altcoins, and take the power into your own hands. Here’s a step-by-step guide, using our token, ARA, as an example. Follow along to see how to move ETH into decentralized wallet software (using MetaMask and Etherscan), and then turn some of it into ARA (Using Uniswap).

The TL;DR summary

1. On a desktop or laptop computer, get the Chrome extension MetaMask.
2. Copy your 12-word seed phrase to a sheet of paper, and keep it secret and safe.
3. Copy your wallet address from MetaMask, paste it after https://etherscan.io/tokenholdings?a= to see what’s in it, and bookmark that page.
4. In MetaMask, click Add Token, and paste in the ARA contract address 0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5
5. Buy ETH in MetaMask, or send some from another app to your MetaMask wallet address.
6. At Uniswap’s ARA pool, click Trade, connect MetaMask, click the arrow to swap ETH to ARA, type in either amount, and click Swap. MetaMask will confirm, and show the current gas fee in ETH.

That’s it! Keep reading for details and screenshots of each step along the way.

Step 1: Get MetaMask

You’ll need a desktop or laptop computer, and the web browser Chrome. We’re going to get a Chrome extension called MetaMask, which holds ETH and Ethereum-based tokens in a completely decentralized way, and lets you use them with websites safely. Navigate Chrome to:

https://metamask.io/

Click Download now, choose Chrome, and then click Install MetaMask for Chrome. You’ll end up on this page of the chrome web store, showing the extension offered by https://metamask.io and with 1,000,000+ users. Click Add to Chrome. Chrome will confirm; click Add extension.

With MetaMask installed, Chrome is navigated to a page produced by the extension itself. Click Get Started. Instead of Import wallet, choose the second option Create a Wallet.

Step 2: Secure your wallet

Choose a password, typing it twice, and click Create. (Note: This password will protect your wallet’s private key as it is stored in this copy of MetaMask. The password you choose isn’t related to your wallet as it exists on the blockchain.) The next step is far more important: your seed phrase.

Before you continue, get:

• A single sheet of lined paper
• A pen
• A hard writing surface
• The room to yourself

Seriously. You don’t want someone else looking over your shoulder for this next part.

When you’re ready, CLICK HERE TO REVEAL SECRET WORDS, and copy the twelve words down on your sheet of lined paper.

They may feel like a refrigerator magnet poem, but you should treat them more like nuclear launch codes. Don’t copy or type your seed phrase! Don’t take a screenshot! Don’t use your phone to take a picture of your computer screen! Anyone with your seed phrase can send ETH and tokens from your wallet. It’s pretty hard to figure out how many people that could be for a piece of information that’s stored digitally. Kept in a file on your computer (bad idea), what happens when a year from now, your laptop breaks, and you take it to a repair shop? If you take a picture with your phone (bad idea), what happens when your friend accidentally swipes to it after you’ve handed him your phone to show him some photos? Does your camera roll automatically upload to Dropbox, or sync with iCloud? How many other devices could it end up on? Are you sure employees of those companies can’t read your data? If ever there was a healthy time for a moment of digital paranoia, storing your crypto wallet seed phrase is the correct time.

With your seed phrase safely copied only to a sheet of paper, click Next. MetaMask will have you click the same words in order, which is pretty easy to do glancing between your screen and paper sheet. Then you’ll be able to click All Done.

MetaMask has a popup about token swapping, but you can just click X to close it. We’re going to use Uniswap directly instead.

Step 3: See what’s in your wallet

At the top of the page, click Account 1 to copy your wallet address. You’ll get a long string of letters and numbers that begin 0x.

Open a second tab in Chrome. Paste the address below into the location bar.

https://etherscan.io/tokenholdings?a=

Right after the ?a=, paste your wallet address, starting with the 0x, and hit Enter. The Etherscan page will read the contents of the wallet from the blockchain, including both your ETH, and any other Ethereum-based tokens it holds. Right now you’re new wallet is empty, but soon it may look something like this:

Bookmark your page — It’s an easy way to check the contents of your wallet. It’s also useful as a way to get external confirmation of your balances, separate from what MetaMask, Uniswap, and other software shows.

In the example above, that wallet has 0.17 ETH, 503,900 ARA, and 2,509 UNI-V2 tokens. Soon, we’ll use Uniswap to turn ETH into ARA. Once you’ve got ETH and ARA, you can also add both to the Uniswap pool. When you do this, you’ll get UNI-V2 pool tokens, which represent your stake in the pool, and grow in value as future ETH and ARA swaps pay you Uniswap’s 0.3% fee.

Let’s take a closer look at the text in the Token Name column:

Ethereum

Ara Token
0xa92E7c82B11d10716aB534051B271D2f6aEf7Df5

Uniswap V2
0x6d2F0FabB11ea0B1F4416711758E86E86Fa7C154

Below Ara Token, Etherscan shows ARA’s contract address, which is 0xa92E7c82B11d10716aB534051B271D2f6aEf7Df5. This address uniquely identifies ARA, showing that these tokens are true ARA tokens. It’s pretty easy for anyone to create a new token, and name it whatever they want (including using an existing name intentionally, as a scam). But, it’s not possible to duplicate a contract address. This is why it’s important to always check the contract address when working with altcoins.

Step 4: Tell MetaMask to show a token

Etherscan always shows the complete contents of a wallet, listing the ETH and all the tokens of different types. MetaMask, however, only lists your ETH, even when there are more tokens in the wallet. This can cause an unnecessary moment of panic. To see your tokens in MetaMask, you have to add their type manually, telling MetaMask the contract address, symbol name, and some other details. Let’s do this now so MetaMask will be able to show you your ARA balance.

To get back to MetaMask, open a new tab in Chrome. To the right of the address bar, click the puzzle piece icon. Beside MetaMask, click the push-pin:

This gets the MetaMask icon out of Chrome’s extensions menu, where you can click it to let it communicate with the current page. Then, click the red fox icon to open MetaMask, like this:

Now let’s tell MetaMask about ARA so it will show your balance after you swap. Click Add Token, then the Custom Token tab. In the first box, Token Contract Address, paste the contract address for ARA:

0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5

From the contract address, MetaMask should correctly fill out the Token Symbol, ARA, and 18 decimals of precision. Click Next, Add Tokens, and then click back to Account 1 in the upper left. Now MetaMask will show how much ETH you have in your wallet, and also how much ARA, like this:

Step 5: Move ETH to your wallet

There’s no request or pull in crypto wallets — instead, every transfer is a send. If a friend needs to send you some ETH or tokens, give your friend your wallet address.

When you give someone your wallet address, they can see what’s in your wallet and send it more ETH and tokens. That’s all that they can do. They can’t take anything out. (Anyone who has your seed phrase, however, is able to take all your ETH and tokens — so keep your seed phrase safe and secret!)

To use Uniswap and swap some ETH into ARA, you’ll need to get some ETH in your MetaMask wallet. There’s a Buy button right in MetaMask, which links to Wyre which you can use to move funds from a bank payment card to ETH in your wallet. Alternatively, you may have started out in crypto with an app like Coinbase or Robinhood, and have some ETH there.

Following the instructions for that app, there’s a way to send ETH to an Ethereum wallet address. Make sure you paste your MetaMask wallet address correctly! You may want to move a small amount of ETH first as a test, before moving the full amount.

Step 6: Swap ETH for ARA

Now we’re ready to get some ARA. Navigate Chrome to Uniswap’s page for ARA, which includes the ARA contract address:

https://v2.info.uniswap.org/token/0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5

In the upper right, click Trade. Uniswap will show you the ARA contract address, letting you again confirm it’s correct.

If Chrome isn’t showing the MetaMask button (in the upper right, an orange fox), click the puzzle piece and pin MetaMask so it appears. Then, on the page, click Connect to a wallet and choose MetaMask.

MetaMask will ask you for permission to talk to the Uniswap page. Keep clicking to continue through the prompts.

With MetaMask connected, Uniswap will show your balance. Click the small down arrow between the top and bottom boxes to choose whether to swap ETH for ARA, or ARA for ETH. You can type a number in the upper or lower box, and Uniswap will fill in the other box to show how many tokens are required, or how many you’ll get. When you’re ready, click Swap.

The Uniswap page will ask MetaMask to confirm your transaction. There may be several confirmations as Uniswap and MetaMask work together.

In addition to the ETH that you’ll swap for ARA, some ETH will be used for the gas fee:

Like any blockchain, Ethereum works because a large global network of computers participate in the protocol, keeping records of data in blocks, performing cryptographic functions on that data, and exchanging data with each other. Altogether, this creates a decentralized and indelible record of transactions, and prevents the same token from being spent twice. The people who run these computers aren’t doing this for free — they are rewarded automatically by the software, earning ETH. These people are called miners, and on Ethereum, the transaction cost they earn is nicknamed gas.

As of this writing in February 2021, largely due to Uniswap’s popularity, gas prices on Ethereum have become very expensive. Sending ETH from one wallet to another costs a few dollars worth of ETH, and using a Uniswap pool (a more computationally complex transaction on the blockchain) can cost $50 or more. What used to feel like a postage stamp now feels like sending something overnight air.

Why this is happening, and how prices might return to normal, is beyond the scope of this guide. Future developments in Ethereum aim to solve this problem. Even before those updates, the current situation of very expensive gas should incentivize more miners to join the blockchain, and in turn, reduce prices.

Have fun and stay safe

Moving some ETH from a centralized app to a wallet you control means you can keep it and use it outside the uncertainty of that app’s future. It also means you can access the full menu of crypto tokens, like ARA.

But it has been said, With great power, comes great responsibility. Keep your seed phrase both safe and secret. Practice resetting your wallet software and recovering it, as you would on a new phone or computer. Always check the contract address. Perform small transactions as practice before large ones. And, using this guide as the beginning and not the end, educate yourself about both the finance and technology of cryptocurrency.

And, if you’ve got any questions, chat with us, the Ara team and community, in Telegram or Discord.

We’re building Ara to let creators and fans break free of platforms that take too much value and control from both sides, and help platforms be better as a result. This earlier story talks more about the Ara File Manager, the kinds of problems we’re aiming to solve, and our plan for Ara to fix them.

I love airline miles. Every once in a while, I can get a better seat, or a free flight. But here are some things I don’t like about them:

• My points can expire (Or the airline can only promise that they won’t)
• The airline can change the points value, arbitrarily, and whenever they want
• The airline controls how I can use my points (which products, services, and partners), and who I can transfer them to (if anyone)
• If the airline goes out of business, all my points disappear (obviously)

None of this may seem surprising. Airline miles are not real. They’re made up by the airline. They’re nothing more than an informal promise the airline makes with you, their loyal customer.

Airlines keep customers’ miles in a centralized ledger. Somewhere inside Norwegian Air or the Star Alliance is a relational database table with at least two columns: one for my account name, and another for the number of miles I have. I can only hope the airline has backed up this database, ensured its reliable availability, and secured it from hackers. (Instead of having frequent computer problems like these.) Even more basic, I must trust that the airline won’t just change my number. What ability do I have to prevent them from doing that? What recourse would I have if they did?

What if loyalty points were actually backed by something? What if this something were decentralized, irrevocable, and fungible? Essentially, what if loyalty points were also a crypto token on the blockchain?

For an example of what this might look like, grab your PS4 and get the app Littlstar Cinema.

Littlstar Cinema is a streaming app with live esports, live TV channels and on-demand series, and premium content. Watch on your TV, or connect your PSVR to view immersive content like stereoscopic and 360° VR.

Inside Littlstar Cinema, there’s a loyalty points program called ARA Points. ARA points are ARA tokens, our ERC-20 utility token, recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

Right now, you can complete “missions” in the app and earn ARA. Soon, you’ll be able to cash in those rewards for digital goods within the app, or save them towards redeeming a free month of Littlstar Premium.

While Littlstar keeps your account in a traditional database, a component of your identity is your decentralized AraID. Tied to this AraID is a full Ethereum wallet, capable of holding ETH and ARA tokens. You can see your AraID and wallet address right on your TV, and copy it from your account page on littlstar.com.

Also coming soon, standard wallet controls like those you may be familiar with from MetaMask or My Ether Wallet, (and already in our desktop app, the Ara File Manager), will let you use your wallet, or even take custody of it entirely. This is only possible because on the blockchain, ARA and AraID are truly decentralized.

The blockchain makes ARA points real. They’re the same ARA that enable creators to sell their content to fans with the Ara File Manager, and that are coming soon to exchanges, first LATOKEN at the end of this month.

From ARA’s presence in Littlstar Cinema on the PS4 alone, 80,545 users (and counting!) have a decentralized AraID. You can see their wallet addresses and ARA rewards points right on Etherscan:

https://etherscan.io/token/0xa92e7c82b11d10716ab534051b271d2f6aef7df5

As of this writing, 3,262 addresses hold ARA, many from completing an early “mission” and claiming a 100 ARA reward, or more recently completing a new one for 10 ARA.

Ara is made up of open source components built by a community. Bundled together into the Ara File Manager, creators and fans can use them to avoid the fees and limitations of any centralized platform.

We’re also working to integrate the Ara modules into platforms large and small. By themselves, the Ara modules handle real-world, user-level functionality in online identity, content distribution, and rights management. Projects can integrate all of them, or just the few they need.

Integrated into Littlstar Cinema, ARA becomes a reward points and digital content purchase system. Elsewhere, Ara can reliably and securely mirror unlimited quantities of content to an unlimited number of users without bandwidth cost, and indelibly record identity and ownership between individuals or corporations.

Blockchain has promised a decentralized future where individuals can take ownership and control of what’s theirs (your identity, your privacy, the content you own), becoming rightful partners to (rather than servants of) the centralized services and platforms that connect us.

On behalf of Ara contributors and the Littlstar team, it’s with a lot of pride that we’re showing a real start to this future, right now, and right in your living room, on your TV and PS4.

Earlier this year, we released the Ara File Manager. Today, we’re very happy to announce we’ve also released the Ara File Manager’s source code.

We’re building Ara to let creators and fans break free of platforms that take too much value and control from both sides, and help platforms be better as a result. Last week’s post talks more about the Ara File Manager, the kinds of problems we’re aiming to solve, and our plan for Ara to fix them.

What does open source mean for you? Even if you’re not a coder, open source is important.

Would you buy a box of cereal at the grocery store if there were no ingredients listed on the back? Would you choose a new car if the hood was locked, and only the dealer who sold it to you had the key? While these imagined situations feel unfair, they’re analogous to the protections we as consumers give up countless times a day as we use closed, proprietary, and secret apps, software services, and electronic devices.

More and more people today are interested in educating themselves about how the choices they make as consumers affect not just them, but the wider world we all share. You might choose a T-shirt from a company that talks about how it was made, rather than an alternative that comes from a supply chain that likely exploits workers in the developing world. You might choose between utility providers not just on price, but also to encourage the development of renewables. You might eat more vegetables and less meat not just for the personal health benefits, but also because animal farming emits a lot of carbon and is often inhumane. You might choose books and toys for your children that feature unbranded characters and universes (trucks, castles, dinosaurs, ponies, pirates) to encourage creative play, rather than assembling the Avengers.

Digital products are no different. The choices we make as digital consumers affect not just us, but also the market and society as a whole. It’s been great to see, in recent years, a new generation of consumers who really care about the network effects of their decisions, and choose stuff that’s best for both themselves and the world. The learning curve may be steeper with apps compared to food, but no less surmountable. Here are some things to keep in mind: Can I (or third parties I trust) see the insides of this? (Or is it locked and secret?) Later on, will I be able to move from this to an alternative? (Or is the stuff I make trapped in here forever?) Is my information private in a way that protects me? (Or are things instead designed to protect and enrich the service provider at the cost of my freedom and privacy?)

A really simple thing to look for is open source. Similar to the label ‘organic’ on food, it can mean a few different things, but they’re all generally good. Open source products allow audit, and invite modification. Communities form around them of individuals who don’t all share a single agenda or motive, leading to decisions that guide the product that are far more likely to respect users. Simply put: a project gives away a lot of power in choosing to be open source, and is more likely to act better as a result.

At Ara Blocks, we’re choosing open source for a few reasons:

Transparency and Trust. Any product makes claims about how it operates. Are these claims true? With closed apps and services, you can’t really know for sure. Instead, you just have to trust the organization making the claims. Open source is much better: you (or a knowledgeable independent third party) can verify the claims for themselves. You don’t have to wait for a skilled investigative journalist to smell trouble and somehow get inside a closed organization to try to discover more. All the details that would uncover something that’s not right are already laid out on the table for everyone to see.

Your Freedom to Tinker. Maybe there’s some little part of the Ara File Manager that you find annoying. Well, because it’s open source, you can change it. (And if so, please let us know, so we can include your change into the next version we distribute!) Maybe there’s another part that you would like to know exactly how it works. Access to the source code means you can find out.

Evangelism and Recruiting. A software project’s success depends on attracting a talented team of people around it. Some work here, building Ara as their day jobs. Others might be working for another company integrating the Ara modules to improve their own products and services. And more people might just play around with Ara in their free time, just for fun but still helping the project through testing, providing user feedback, and sharing ideas for improvements and new directions.

If you’re interested in finding out more about open source ideals and the open source movement, there are many excellent resources online: The Open Source Initiative works to raise awareness and adoption of open source software. GNU is an operating system and community and writes about the philosophy behind free software. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a digital rights group that fights to protect our rights as individuals in the digital world. And lastly, Freedom to Tinker is a blog from the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.

Follow @AraBlocks on GitHub, Instagram, Twitter, and Medium, and read our whitepaper at ara.one.

This story was first published on Hacker Noon

In August in Montréal, MUTEK, an international festival of digital creativity and electronic music, showcased fantastic projects combining art, music, spherical video, and virtual reality. I attended from Ara Blocks, a software startup dedicated to building tools for digital creators like these. MUTEK invited me to speak on the blockchain panel.

I head Product for Ara. We’re building software as a part of the currently emerging new generation of decentralized technologies, including decentralized identity, peer-to-peer content distribution, and of course, blockchain.

At the blockchain panel, Catherine Mathys of the Canada Media Fund presented her report, Blockchain Technology and the Canadian Media Industry. It’s the result of an extensive research project conducted by CMF and partner organizations. It’s excellent, providing an accurate global overview and correct details of where blockchain is now in 2019.

Few new technologies have experienced the quantity of attention that we have all given to blockchain in recent years. There’s a mountain of coverage, much of it hype. I imagine this is what CMF researchers may have been responding to, when, on page 16, Blockchains: challenges and obstacles, they wrote this:

Misunderstood concepts and a lack of conclusive examples

The lack of understanding of the technology naturally gives rise to skepticism and even mistrust. It seems clear that confidence can only be built if opportunities for awareness and learning are increased.

There is also a need for more compelling examples of applications to convince industry stakeholders and consumers of the tangible benefits of blockchains. In particular, products and services developed using blockchains should offer an easy-to-use, intuitive, and customizable user experience, which attracts the attention of new users.

I agree completely. These words illuminate a growing frustration in many of our minds. If you’re hungry for blockchain, there’s lots of stuff to read about and do for the speculator, and for the enthusiast, but very little for the user. I’m a product person. Technology is interesting to me when it powerfully and easily solves real day-to-day problems for millions of real users. There has been very little blockchain out there for me.

Blockchain sounds cool, and I’m tired of reading about it. I want to get my hands on the wheel of this thing.

To do that (and more importantly: to let you do that), we’re building Ara. It’s a collection of open source Node modules that handle real-world, user-level functionality in online identity, content distribution, and rights management. The first thing that we’ve built with Ara we call the Ara File Manager. It’s a desktop app for Mac and Windows, with Linux packages coming soon. Under the hood, it’s the same Ara modules you can run on a server, or integrate into your own app, site, or device.

You can download and install the Ara File Manager to try it out yourself. Running it for the first time, you’ll create a new ARAid, or sign in with credentials you created previously. To the user, an ARAid comprises two things: a hash value you can save on a USB thumb drive or in any password manager, and a password you can set and save, or just remember. (Additionally, the File Manager will give you a mnemonic seed phrase. If you forget everything else, you can use these twelve words on new computer to completely rebuild and regain access to your ARAid.) All this works because your identity is completely decentralized — you don’t have to choose or trust someone else to keep your identity for you, nor can you lose control if that provider goes down or becomes untrustworthy.

Notice how this sign up/sign in UI is in the desktop app, not our (or anyone else’s) app or website. This is something I’m quite proud of, as it’s a real demonstration of true decentralization.

The Ara File Manager’s main window lists the content that you’ve published and purchased. If you’ve gotten the File Manager following the steps here, it will start out empty. Most users will get the File Manager after first clicking a creator’s ara:// link somewhere on social media, a messaging app, or the web, and in those cases the File Manager will begin downloading the requested content. To see how that works, let’s follow a creator’s steps to distribute and sell their work on Ara.

But first, why would a creator choose Ara? What are the benefits of distributing your content yourself with Ara’s decentralized tools, as opposed to using any of the large corporate platforms? There are many, but here are my favorite four:

No size or format limits. Online video platforms take creator uploads, and then recompress media to lower resolutions and smaller file sizes. Smartphones take photographs at resolutions of twelve megapixels, but Instagram resizes every image down to a single megapixel. Platforms do this to save their own bandwidth costs, and hope that creators and fans won’t notice.

Ara doesn’t do this, delivering to fans digital content exactly as creators publish it. For fans today, this means lossless multichannel audio, and video at 8K and beyond. For the immersive and mixed-media creators like those I met at MUTEK, removing size and bandwidth limitations can be enabling. Blender files of three-dimensional assets are enormous. Spherical video data must be many times the size of traditional video to appear at similar quality.

During a project’s production, Ara can assist groups of creators collaborating from different locations (or just using several different computers nearby) by mirroring digital assets. One group of independent creators might be mixing spherical video with multichannel audio for delivery on the HTC Vive, or a physical venue like the Satosphère (which has 8 video projectors and 157 speakers!) Elsewhere, a major movie studio might be localizing a new film into different languages. The Ara File Manager as it exists today, and production tools that integrate the open source Ara modules in the future, can help creators work together more easily by mirroring digital assets quickly, reliably, privately, securely, and without cost.

Flat bandwidth cost. For both independent creators distributing their content on the web, and for the largest content platforms, when content becomes popular, bandwidth costs rise. This has often forced independent creators onto the platforms: It’s free to upload your video to YouTube, where Google will pay the bandwidth bill, but only while adding their own advertising and monetizing your fans at the cost of their privacy. Bandwidth cost has also meant that only the largest and most moneyed platforms have survived. Google can afford to operate YouTube while few others could, employing economies of scale so large they involve constructing datacenters the size of (and some nearby) hydroelectric dams.

With Ara, the economy of scale available to individual creators is the internet itself, and the community a creator builds with their fans. Ara’s peer distribution flattens the bandwidth expense curve. Fans who have purchased content seed it out to other purchasers, and earn ARA tokens as a reward. With Ara, your album can go viral without your bandwidth bill following suit.

No 30% platform tax. Even huge platforms like Spotify struggle beneath Apple’s 30% tax, while turning around and charging a similar fee to artists and labels on their platform. Creators must trust that platforms pay them fairly, and when platforms make a mistake, (or simply choose to demonetize you), the financial benefit is always in the platform’s favor. Banks and payment processors add their own high fees, slow settlements, and requirement to trust without the ability to verify, while only offering a patchwork of regional availability.

With the ARA token, payments happen directly between creators and fans, and are immediate, transparent, verifiable, and available globally on day one. Rights and ownership information is anonymized and verifiable on the blockchain.

Delivery and payment separated from content and moderation. In the streaming world, renegotiations fail, providers discontinue business, and purchasers lose access. Additionally, your favorite blog or podcast might be available to you one day, and gone the next — and not because a creator changed their content, but often because a platform changed their policies. Right now, the big platforms hold your content, your fans, and your revenue stream, and run it all with their rules.

Ara components allow creators and platforms to separate many of these concerns, enabling much better respect for the multiple stakeholders involved. In recent years, we’ve witnessed shifting, reactionary, and draconian decisions by the major platforms that frequently satisfy no one. The more distributed tools and platforms that people can build with Ara will be more equitable by default.

Back in the Ara File Manager, let’s complete the creator flow. Click Publish New File to open the Publish Package dialog:

This creates a new Ara File System, or AFS. Choose a name for it, and then drag in a folder or some files. You can set a price for your AFS, in the ARA token. Zero works great for free content.

When you press the Publish button, the File Manager will estimate a small cost in Ether, or ETH. This is called gas, but I think of it as a blockchain postage stamp, ultimately paying the miners running the computers that make up the Ethereum blockchain. The cost in ETH is shown, and in most cases will be a value less than one cent in dollars or euros.

Please note: As of this writing, we’ve shipped version 0.12.5 of File Manager. All the content distribution, security, and payments functionality is in place, but we’re calling it a beta. Also, this version uses the Ropsten Ethereum Testnet, test ETH, and test ARA tokens. If you’re reading this a week or two in the future, your File Manager is likely a later version that’s on the Ethereum mainnet, and uses actual ETH and ARA tokens.

Back in the main window, your content appears under Published Files. Right-click it and choose Copy Link to get an ara:// link like this one:

ara://download/f8a49beb84e560ce8e98d529cccf076f399df358b5ad346a025c370a6fd2d0c4/Example%20name

Creators can post these links anywhere text goes, and fans can click to buy and download. It’s fully decentralized: there’s no website, platform, company, or even domain name or registrar sitting between creators and fans.

Once a fan purchases and downloads, they can keep the content in the Ara File Manager to seed it to other purchasers, and earn ARA rewards. Right now, the smart contract that governs this revenue sharing model awards up to 10% of the purchase price to seeders, with 90% or more going to the creator.

Another part of the Ara File Manager to check out to understand how it all works is the Account panel. There are two crypto token wallets here, one for ARA and one for ETH.

Creators price their content in ARA, and earn ARA as fans purchase it. Fans pay in ARA, and earn ARA to seed content to other purchasers (creators also earn ARA rewards from seeding). ETH covers the transaction costs, usually a cent or less, to record publishing and purchasing on the blockchain.

The Account panel shows your wallet address. This address isn’t private: you can safely publicize it, and anyone can use it to send you ARA and ETH tokens. In this way, creators can simply receive donations for their work, Patreon-style. Users can send tokens by pressing the Send Tokens button, and entering the destination wallet address.

A note about privacy and encryption: The Ara modules employ strong, end-to-end encryption to protect content. (Under the hood we’re using Elliptic-curve cryptography, specifically Curve25519, as provided by libsodium.) Only those who know an ara:// link can access its contents. So, if you’re collaborating during production, make an AFS with a price of 0 ARA, and send the link to your colleagues over an encrypted messenger like WhatsApp or Signal. Used this way, Ara is much more private (and less expensive) than tools like Dropbox.

A note about preventing piracy: The Ara File Manager checks ownership records in the blockchain to only seed content to peers who have also purchased it. All the code is open source, but that doesn’t erode this protection: A peer modified to try to get stuff without paying won’t be given bytes by the swarm of unmodified peers. At the user and product level, ARA rewards also help protect content. Sure, a user could purchase, download, then take files outside Ara. But why would they seed for free, when they can get paid to seed in the Ara File Manager with ARA rewards?

A note about DRM: While Ara works with any DRM envelope, my hope is creators will choose to sell their content without DRM. This is how most content is distributed on the web today.

What about triple-A content like movies released by the major studios, television shows, and video games? This class of content today is protected not through the complex watermarking and DRM schemes imagined necessary a decade ago, but rather by simple strong encryption between closed devices like televisions, streaming sticks, game consoles, and smartphone apps. Integrated into services and devices like these, Ara’s swarm delivery will still lower bandwidth costs, and the ARA token will still incentivize seeding. The blockchain will still keep rights and ownership data verifiable while protecting privacy. And, the content will still be completely protected.

A note about usability and decentralization: On the blockchain panel, Catherine asked me: How easy is this stuff going to be to use? My answer was: About as easy as two-factor authentication.

As you saw from the steps above, users must be able to set strong passwords, copy and paste long hash values, and securely store seed phrases. Decentralized apps can focus on usability to make things easier, but only up to a point — after that additional usability is commonly gained by compromising away the protections of true decentralization.

This doesn’t mean that everyone who uses Ara will have to deal with hashes and seeds. Each project, when integrating Ara modules to utilize part or all of the functionality they provide, can make its own choices that weigh the balance between usability and decentralization.

Having said that, making Ara in its fundamental, fully-decentralized form as easy to use as is absolutely possible is super important to me. Decentralized technology arrived with the promise to empower individuals. This will only work if it’s easy enough for individuals to use.

A note about partners and integrations: The Ara File Manager is just the beginning of getting Ara in front of and useful to millions of regular people. I think of the Ara File Manager as raw, unfiltered Ara: the Ara Node modules, with some friendly HTML on top so you can use them by clicking buttons rather than typing on the command line. The Ara File Manager might be a little geeky, and that’s OK, because most people who use Ara won’t be using tools like the Ara File Manager directly. Rather, they’ll be using Ara integrated into sites and apps they know and love, and new ones we and others build with Ara.

Ara grew out of a project by NYC startup Littlstar, the VR streaming platform and makers of the popular PS4 app Littlstar Cinema. Funded by Disney, Sony, Tornante, and A&E, Littlstar has partnered with most major studios and broadcasters including ABC, NBCUniversal, CNN, WWE, Showtime, Fox, Discovery, and National Geographic.

We’re working to integrate Ara into projects large and small: apps and sites made by us, products and services of business partners we’ve got existing relationships with, and new people we’re talking to. Each of these integrations will be able to make choices with Ara appropriate to their business and their users. Some might just use the content distribution capabilities, others just the ARA token. Some might layer on fees and rules they require, and that’s OK, too. Different integrations may present Ara to users in different ways, but will still be compatible parts of the same Ara ecosystem.

Also: you don’t have to do a business deal with us (or anyone) to use Ara. The Ara modules are open source on GitHub and npm, right now. If your app or site needs to reliably and securely mirror unlimited quantities of content to an unlimited number of users without bandwidth cost, or indelibly record identity and ownership between individuals or corporations, a few lines of JavaScript and some of the Ara modules may be all you need. While we’d love to talk to you about what you’re doing with Ara, talking to us isn’t a requirement.

A note about the software stack: The Ara modules make up a new software stack for decentralized applications. We picked Node.js for JavaScript’s universal appeal and evented architecture. Under the hood, we share code with Dat (alongside the truly awesome Beaker Browser) including Hyperswarm and more from Hyperdivision. We built the ARA token on Ethereum, and are happy with that decision for now, but have designed Ara to allow a possible future path that’s separate. We’re committed to free software and very involved in the open source communities around Dat and Ethereum.

We’re not using IPFS. I sometimes describe Ara as an alternative to IPFS that’s simpler, exposes APIs at a much higher level, and thanks to the Ara File Manager, that you as a user can try out right now.

A note about the team: To build Ara, the team came from places including Spotify, Twitter, Amazon, x.ai, Betaworks, and NASA. Guiding the project is a group of advisors with leadership experience at Google, BitTorrent, Inc., and The Libra Association. It’s an absolute joy to be working each day with such a diverse, talented, (and frankly, oftentimes frighteningly smart) group of people.

A note about the name: Ara is a constellation in the southern sky recorded by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. In mythology, Ara is the altar where Zeus and the gods vowed to defeat the Titans. Creators and fans are the heroes in our story, and with Ara, we’re forging them some pretty powerful tools.

The technologies at work here: peer-to-peer content distribution, blockchain, and crypto, aren’t new. What makes Ara different is we’re building useful modules at a high level. We’re releasing products powered by Ara, and working with partners to integrate Ara into existing apps, sites, platforms, and services. To me, the challenge of doing this is more compelling than the technology itself, and way more interesting than the speculation and hype.

So, if you’ve read about blockchain for years but never used it, download the Ara File Manager and try it out. And let me and the rest of the team know what you think.

Follow @AraBlocks on GitHub, Instagram, Twitter, and Medium, and read our whitepaper at ara.one.

Kevin Faaborg first saw the web in his freshman dorm at Harvard, where he studied physics, learned C from Brian Kernighan, and wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. Four years later working at MTV, he tried to explain Napster to Viacom execs. Few people are aware that LimeWire was a company; Kevin worked there for 5 years, writing code at the start and defending it in a Manhattan courtroom at the end. Spotify then launched in America, where Kevin worked for 7 years before joining Ara. His publisher wants him to link his book, Mastering Node.js, now in its second edition. Follow Kevin on Twitter @zootella.

I Got Tired of Reading About Blockchain Projects that I Can’t Use—So I’m Building One Myself was originally published in ARA Blocks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is Ara?

Ara is a new content protocol with decentralized rewards and distribution.

The Ara platform uses a peer to peer file system to deliver content through a distributed network, the blockchain to store license transactions for each file, and a decentralized identity for each user and piece of content in the network to ensure all data is secure and not owned by any central authority.

Ara enables any device in the world to become part of a global supercomputer, database, and delivery network all at once by utilizing its unused processing, storage, and bandwidth capacity.

What problems does Ara solve?

Ara is solving a couple of key components in the current media business.

Publishers and content creators are able to gain back control of their content and distribution. They are able to set the costs at launch followed by basic distribution terms around a single piece of content. Publishers are able to get paid directly in micropayments at the point of purchase, with future features including revenue splits that are able to be managed directly in a smart contract.

Businesses are able to integrate Ara’s technology to power their content delivery and significantly reduce their content delivery costs.

Finally, consumers are able to “rent” their unused compute power like they would their apartment on Airbnb in exchange for rewards. Within Ara, consumers are able to decide how their data is shared with other organizations, and can rest assured that they will be able to prove ownership to content they have purchased even if the central authority goes away.

What is the relationship between Littlstar and Ara?

Ara is a subsidiary of Little Star Media Inc. and started as a project built by the talented team inside the Littlstar organization. Ara powers all of the platform and distribution technology for Littlstar’s consumer apps, and Littlstar will work to create tools and opportunities to make the Ara network more accessible and robust.

How does Ara use the blockchain?

Every time a new piece of content is added to the network, Ara generates a smart contract associated with that AFS through its decentralized identity. For a creator putting content into the system, that initial smart contract will have a price with initial terms around distribution following in a later release. For a consumer buying that content, the smart contract will act as proof of ownership. At launch, Ara will use the Ethereum blockchain, however the Ara File System is blockchain agnostic.

What are Ara’s use cases?

Ara can be used for any application that requires the sale of media, however it is powerful enough to handle the delivery of any content around the web whether it be movies, video, photos, pdf’s, webpages, software updates…etc. We see some of the early use cases of Ara to be games studios, film or video, music, and individual creators. Ara will also be able to support the completion of arbitrary jobs that require a user’s compute power and/or storage.

How do I discover content on the Ara network?

Any developer or business will be able to build a discovery application on top of the Ara network. Littlstar will put out the first feed of new content that comes into the Ara platform. Littlstar is also working on a browser that would surface some of the best content within the Ara ecosystem. If you are a developer or business and interested in integrating Ara’s technology into your application, email us at: hello@arablocks.io

How secure is my content on the ARA network? Is it more or less secure than DRM/other forms of media protection?

The Ara protocol is simply a form of content delivery with a ownership ledger. The system is not designed to replace traditional DRM solutions, but rather compliment them. Any company can use their current DRM solution and put that content into the Ara network with their DRM baked into the content. Ara provides security of the data as it’s being transferred over the network using a public and private key, and a ledger of everyone who has ever purchased the file.

What are the assets that I need in order to publish on the ARA platform?

A publisher will need a piece of content (or group of content — a tv series, for example) and Ara tokens in order to publish content into the system, and a small amount of Ethereum to cover the gas fees.

Who needs Ara tokens to use the platform?

The Ara token is used by publishers, consumers, and users delivering content in the system in exchange for rewards (similar to mining). Publishers use tokens to publish content on to the Ara network. Consumers use them to purchase that content. Peers or Nodes in the network use Ara as a “deposit” to make themselves discoverable and earn more tokens for their work.

What is a P2P file sharing network?

A P2P (peer to peer) file sharing network is a collection of computers which all share content with each other instead of having one main server sending content to clients. This way, the process of transferring files becomes more efficient and cost effective.

How do I get rewarded with Ara?

To start earning Ara tokens through the platform, a user only needs to download an Ara-enabled application and make their device open as a peer in the network. There are two ways to get your device started delivering content for the system — 1. Purchase one or more pieces of content 2. Allocate a portion of your storage and bandwidth to be used for content delivery.

Where do I find out more about Ara?

Website
Whitepaper
Telegram
Github
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Reddit

Token details coming soon.

Any other questions about the Ara network, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@arablocks.io

ARA FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) was originally published in ARA Blocks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Great Debate

Should a cryptocurrency have a maximum supply (e.g. BTC) or an unlimited supply (e.g. ETH)? There are good theoretical reasons for and against having a max supply. A currency with a max supply would be similar to a finite commodity (e.g. gold). Therefore, it would never depreciate from an increase in supply. However, it may not have as high of a circulation as that of an unlimited-supply currency. A currency whose supply grows depreciates (per unit a la inflation), so its users prefer to spend (or invest) than save, increasing its trade volume; a stablecoin such as Tether would be an example of an unlimited-supply currency since its supply adjusts to make sure each unit matches the price of a stable asset such USD. Then again, a fixed supply prevents minters (e.g. central banks) from increasing the currency supply to increase their assets at the expense of the rest of the network of currency holders. But a free market for currencies would effectively be an unlimited supply, and so on…

To shed light on the debate with real data, let us look at 1,375 cryptocurrencies from CoinMarketCap (as of July 19, 2018) to test the following hypothesis: on average, a cryptocurrency with a maximum supply has a higher market capitalization than one without. (Since this is an observational study, we cannot make causal inferences, but we might be able to make inferences to the two populations.)

Comparing the Means

Let us look at the market cap data for 277 max-supply tokens and 1,098 unlimited-supply tokens. Here are some summary statistics:

╔═════════════╦═════════════════╦════════════════╦════════════════╗
║ MARKET CAP  ║       max       ║     no max     ║   difference   ║
╠═════════════╬═════════════════╬════════════════╬════════════════╣
║ mean        ║     698,417,632 ║     85,093,127 ║    613,324,505 ║
║ median      ║       3,111,609 ║      3,485,596 ║       -373,987 ║
║ std dev     ║   7,767,567,465 ║  1,444,405,122 ║  6,323,162,343 ║
║ skew        ║              16 ║             32 ║            -16 ║
║ min         ║           2,423 ║            494 ║          1,929 ║
║ max         ║ 126,913,779,660 ║ 47,251,527,471 ║ 79,662,252,189 ║
║ ex kurtosis ║             252 ║          1,035 ║           -783 ║
║ count       ║             277 ║          1,098 ║           -821 ║
║ std err     ║     466,707,897 ║     43,570,262 ║    423,137,635 ║
╚═════════════╩═════════════════╩════════════════╩════════════════╝

The means are $698M and $85M, respectively, with a difference of $613M. However, the standard errors are $467M and $44M, so the difference in means might not be statistically significant. (Note that the difference of the medians is only -$374k. We can estimate the standard errors of the medians through bootstrapping.)

Testing the Hypothesis

In order to determine whether the greater max-supply mean is statistically significant, we can run a one-tailed, two-sample z-test. (The central limit theorem lets us approximate each sample mean distribution as normal.) You can refer to the tables below, and for more details, this Google Sheets file.

╔═════════════╦═════════════════════╗
║ Hypothesis  ║     Description     ║
╠═════════════╬═════════════════════╣
║ null        ║ mu_max <= mu_no_max ║
║ alternative ║ mu_max > mu_no_max  ║
╚═════════════╩═════════════════════╝
╔═════════════════════╦═════════════╦═════════╦═════════╗
║ Difference of means ║   Std err   ║ z-value ║ p-value ║
╠═════════════════════╬═════════════╬═════════╬═════════╣
║         613,324,505 ║ 468,737,271 ║   1.308 ║   0.095 ║
╚═════════════════════╩═════════════╩═════════╩═════════╝

The p-value is 9.5%, so at a significance level α of 10%, the max-supply mean is statistically, significantly greater. The max-supply outlier is Bitcoin with a market cap of $127B. Removing it decreases the difference of means to $156M. However, the p-value drops from 9.5% to 6.5%, so we still reject the null hypothesis that the max-supply mean is less than or equal to the unlimited-supply mean.

Logging the Data

If the high skew of the distribution makes you uneasy, let us do the same mean analysis on the natural logarithm ln (log base e) of the market cap numbers.

╔════════════════╦═══════╦════════╦════════════╗
║ LOG MARKET CAP ║  max  ║ no max ║ difference ║
╠════════════════╬═══════╬════════╬════════════╣
║ mean           ║ 14.97 ║  14.87 ║       0.10 ║
║ median         ║ 14.95 ║  15.07 ║      -0.12 ║
║ std dev        ║  3.01 ║   2.44 ║       0.57 ║
║ skew           ║  0.30 ║  -0.05 ║       0.35 ║
║ min            ║  7.79 ║   6.20 ║       1.59 ║
║ max            ║ 25.57 ║  24.58 ║       0.99 ║
║ ex kurtosis    ║ -2.64 ║  -2.95 ║       0.31 ║
║ count          ║   277 ║  1,098 ║       -821 ║
║ std err        ║  0.18 ║   0.07 ║       0.11 ║
╚════════════════╩═══════╩════════╩════════════╝
╔═════════════╦═════════════════════╗
║ Hypothesis  ║     Description     ║
╠═════════════╬═════════════════════╣
║ null        ║ mu_max <= mu_no_max ║
║ alternative ║ mu_max > mu_no_max  ║
╚═════════════╩═════════════════════╝
╔═════════════════════╦═════════╦═════════╦═════════╗
║ Difference of means ║ Std err ║ z-value ║ p-value ║
╠═════════════════════╬═════════╬═════════╬═════════╣
║               0.101 ║   0.195 ║   0.517 ║   0.303 ║
╚═════════════════════╩═════════╩═════════╩═════════╝

The difference between the means estimates the log of the ratio of the max-supply market cap to the unlimited-supply market cap. This is because the log-transformed data have symmetric distributions and the log preserves ordering; therefore, mean[log[X]] = median[log[X]] = log[median[X]] where X is any random variable. According to the tables, the difference between the means is 0.1 with a p-value of 30%, which is greater than α(10%); we keep the null. Thus, the estimated max-supply market cap median is not greater than that of the max-supply market cap.

Closing Remarks

The max-supply sample mean and median are greater than those for unlimited-supply, but only the former is statistically significant. (This conclusion may not hold for all future cryptocurrencies, say over the next decade.) The data and statistical analyses show there is a difference in means, but they do not explain WHY there is difference. Perhaps restricting the max-supply of a token makes it more scarce thus more valuable than a token with an unlimited supply. Maybe the market believes that fixing the currency supply prevents the minters (e.g. central banks) from lining their pockets at the expense of the token holders. Further research in the economics of max-supply currencies would be invaluable to token designers and users. Hopefully, this investigation made a small contribution.

Written by Lester Kim — Lester is a data scientist and the Director of Data at Littlstar.

Note: Random sampling tests were performed for the mean and median analyses with the same results. (See the last two sheets in the Google Sheet document above.)

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Vanessa Kincaid for giving feedback on this article and Eric Jiang for sharing his thoughts on token design.