The key to Filecoin and Arweave accruing value?

With the rise of Ordinals on Bitcoin (BTC) sparking debate over how users should store their NFTs and blockchain gaming projects searching for cheaper, secure ways to store data, it’s time to revisit the discussion surrounding decentralized storage coins.

Decentralized storage protocols Filecoin (FIL) and Arweave (AR) show similar price action, leaving investors with a decision between the underdog showing signs of increased adoption by NFT users and blockchain gaming projects and the clear leader in market cap and adoption.

The total market capitalization of the entire digital storage cryptocurrency landscape today is $4.87 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap, and each protocol provides something different. The two largest projects in the space by market cap that specifically addresses storage needs for NFTs and blockchain gaming are Filecoin and Arweave. Filecoin is currently the top-ranked project in the sector. It ranks 27th on CoinMarketCap by total market cap, but Arweave has significant on-chain activity and fundamental news that deserves attention.

The primary difference between the projects is their focus. Arweave is focused on long-term data storage with a one-time payment model, while Filecoin is more focused on incentivizing large-scale storage, especially for private data, and uses a tiered payment model based on storage time and space requests.

Filecoin has recently announced it would launch smart contracts, solidifying its new position as a layer-1 platform. This development has led to speculation on Filecoin’s future success in deploying Web3 offerings with real-world services like computing and storage, supported by Filecoin’s open marketplace for decentralized storage.

Given the current volatile crypto and macro climate, Filecoin revenue is notable at $2.53 million per month (up 238 over 30 days). Over the same period, fees are up 33% ($2.99 million), indicating strong demand for the platform. The market cap of FIL is at $2.76B, up 14% in the same period.

Didn’t know that $FIL had $2.5m revenue per month, not shown on DefiLlama pic.twitter.com/jhVyTRNjTQ

— Nagato (@NagatoDharma) March 12, 2023

Filecoin has a maximum supply of 2 billion tokens and a circulating supply of around 403 million. Of the total supply, 70% is dedicated to mining rewards, which increase with network adoption. The rate at which new tokens are created decreases over time as the network matures.

By comparison, Arweave has a much smaller market cap of…