Public vaults have arrived!
Public files on Akord and what it means
Privacy and encryption was the starting point for Akord, and it would have struck us as strange to think when we founded the company that one day we’d be storing publicly available data. But back then we didn’t know about Arweave. The permanent data storage paradigm has opened our eyes to a far broader understanding of data ownership.
By providing public file support on Arweave, we are opening the door to owning different types of data in different ways. The permanence of data on Arweave allows for files intended for the public domain to stay there – forever. In this context, ownership is not the ability of the individual to keep data private, but to keep data accessible for everyone and to never have it taken down by a centralised authority.
Introducing public vaults
Can a vault be public? I hear you say. Aren’t vaults places where we lock things away? Well, a vault is also defined as a space covered by an arch shape structure like a ceiling or roof. Which is a perfect way to to think about Akord’s public vaults. We provide the covering over head, but when you create your public vault anyone can walk in.
When you hit the “New vault” button in Akord, you’ll now be asked whether you want to create an Encrypted or Public vault.
If you create an Encrypted vault, the padlock icon will appear next to your vault title and all the asset icons will appear in the Akord orange colour. If you pick Public vault, the globe icon will appear next to the vault title and all the asset icons will be in our blue colour. We’ve tried to make the differences between the two vaults very clear at the visual level, so files are not mistakenly uploaded publicly when they were intended for private, encrypted storage.
It’s important to note that in public vaults you most of the same features you have in encrypted vaults, like the ability to invite contributors or create an Akord Note, but unlike encrypted vaults there is no in-built chat in public vaults.
When you view media in a public vault, you’ll see a Share button in the top right. This will enable you to copy a link to your file directly to your clipboard, allowing you to easily share the content with whoever and wherever you want.
Upcoming improvements
Vault sharing
With this release, you can only share single files, not the whole public vault. The ability to share entire public vaults is a feature that is dependent on Akord Explorer, our Arweave explorer for data uploaded through the Akord protocol. Akord Explorer will be deployed directly on Arweave, so it makes sense that sharing public vaults will take people to Explorer. Akord Explorer will be arriving in the coming weeks.
Mint on upload
We see atomic NFTs on Arweave as a further step in data ownership within the public domain. By fusing the non-fungible token, asset and metadata, and sending it all to the weave, creators can have their work and its provenance easily and permanently verifiable on-chain.
Later this year, we intend to implement a mint on upload feature within Akord public vaults, allowing for a user-friendly and quick way for people to mint atomic NFTs directly on Arweave.
––
As with all our product development, we welcome feedback and feature requests. The best place to reach us is by joining our community on Discord.
