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Overview

Irys is a datachain, a blockchain optimized for data storage. Irys is built to store, retrieve, and process datasets of any size with minimal latency.

Irys makes it easy to store your data onchain by supporting payments with ETH on Linea. With a single upfront payment, you can upload data, with guaranteed retrieval for a duration you set at the upload time — from a few days to forever

Data on Irys is fully verifiable; you can inspect the blockchain at any time and verify what data was posted, when, and where it's located in Irys’s data ledgers.

Use Irys with Linea​

Irys is chain agnostic, smart contracts on Linea can link to data on Irys.

You can:

  • Deploy NFT contracts on Linea and have images and metadata on Irys
  • Build games with state on Linea and visual assets on Irys
  • Build an onchain identity protocol with user metadata on Irys
  • Build a cross-chain bridge and use Irys to store messages

You can use ETH on Linea to pay for permanent storage on Irys.

Paying for uploads​

Irys has a pay-once-store-forever payment model based on the number of bytes you upload.

Free uploads​

Uploads of less than 100KiB are free on Irys.

Receipts​

Each upload to Irys is given a cryptographically signed receipt that can be trustlessly verified.

Receipts are a JSON object with the following format:

{
  id: '1Txlbl5NgEqUbIkDnnunHC0gFx0n8_Y92zAsoX54kI8',
  timestamp: 1676891681110,
  version: '1.0.0',
  public: '...',
  signature: '...',
  deadlineHeight: ...,
}
FieldDescription
idTransaction id (used to download the data)
timestampTimestamp (UNIX milliseconds) of when the transaction was created
versionThe version of this JSON file, currently 1.0.0
publicPublic key of the bundler node used
signatureA signed deep hash of the JSON receipt
deadlineHeightThe block number by which the transaction must be finalized on Arweave

Paying for users' uploads​

Use balance approvals to pay for your users' uploads and build a Web2-style UX that saves users from having to convert fiat or own tokens.

With balance approvals:

  • You pay for transactions.
  • Users sign transactions.

Create an approval​

const receipt = await irysUploader.approval.createApproval({
  amount: irysUploader.utils.toAtomic(1), // Amount in atomic units
  approvedAddress: "<address>",
  expiresInSeconds: 100, // Expires in 100 seconds. Delete to remove expiration.
});

Upload using an approval​

const receipt = await irysUploader.upload("GM World", {
  upload: { paidBy: "<address>" },
});

Tagging​

Irys supports attaching up to 20 metadata tags to each transaction. Tags are indexed and can be queried.

// Your file
const fileToUpload = "./myNFT.png";

const tags = [{ name: "application-id", value: "foo" }];

try {
  const response = await irysUploader.uploadFile(fileToUpload, { tags });
  console.log(`File uploaded ==> https://gateway.irys.xyz/${response.id}`);
} catch (e) {
  console.log("Error uploading file ", e);
}

Querying​

Transaction metadata can be queried using the Irys's GraphQL.