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Overview

Irys is a provenance layer. Data on Irys is permanent, precise, and unconstrained.

  • Permanent: Data stored on Irys is censorship-resistant and immutable. There's no counterparty risk of data being removed.

  • Precise: Data is timestamped with a high-precision timestamp, providing a reliable sequence of events.

  • Unconstrained: There are no limits on file upload sizes. Users can always read, write, and discover data at scale.

You can imagine Irys as an assembly line. Data enters on one side, it's stamped with a timestamp, attribution, and authorship details before being stored permanently as data with strong provenance.

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. For the exact cost to upload, use their payment calculator.

Free uploads​

Uploads of less then 100Kib are free on Irys' mainnet and devnet.

Receipts​

Each upload to Irys is given a cryptographically signed receipt that can be used by anyone to trustlessly verify the data's provenance.

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 covert fiat or own tokens.

With balance approvals:

  • You pay for transactions.
  • Users sign transactions.

Create an approval​

const receipt = await irys.approval.createApproval({
  amount: irys.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 irys.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: "NFTs To The Moon" }];

try {
  const response = await irys.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 query package.