What Irys Isn't

To understand what Irys does, let’s first clarify what it’s not.

Most blockchains you know—Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana—are built for deploying smart contracts, processing payments, and executing code. But when it comes to storage, they’re inadequate: storage is limited, hard to access, and can be astronomically expensive.

These networks simply weren’t designed for data storage.

To address this issue, the first datachains were created, designed specifically to store large volumes of data affordably onchain. They did their job well enough—storing data relatively cheap, holding it somewhat securely, but similar to how blockchains optimized for execution came with data limitations, datachains optimized for only storage came with their own limitations: data was locked in place, unable to interact or support broader applications. It’s like a library where the books are stored in locked rooms, out of reach.