Swarm functions as a decentralised communication and storage platform designed for a sovereign digital society. It achieves economic self-sustainability via an incentive mechanism governed by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. This structure allows users to retain ownership of their personal data, adhering to fair data principles. The architecture ensures resilience against node churn, connectivity problems, or targeted DDOS attacks, facilitating zero-downtime service.

The project’s long-term goal is to serve as the operating system for a re-decentralised internet, offering scalable infrastructure for a data supply-chain economy.

• Unstoppable features for unstoppable dApps: Built-in redundancy, communication, and privacy preservation guarantee data delivery and availability even if individual nodes fail. It supports any data on any device, on demand.
• Radical data ownership and management: Data is fragmented into small pieces distributed across the network, eliminating vulnerable central hubs. Node operators are compensated for storage without knowing the content they hold.
• Enabling zero-cost economics: No single entity controls or monetises the data. Rather than depending on intermediaries for data integrity and availability, node operators contribute to a fair data economy.

Moving hosting, access, and execution costs to users removes the final barrier to agile application development, helping realise web3.

BZZ serves as the native token of the Swarm Network. Users spend BZZ to pay node operators for services such as storage and bandwidth.

The total token supply is fixed at 63,149,437 BZZ tokens.

The network incentivises positive behaviour: node operators who offer greater bandwidth and storage, and who deliver popular chunks quickly, receive more traffic and higher rewards. Files uploaded to Swarm are split into 4 KB chunks. This competition among operators to provide high-quality service helps secure, grow, and maintain the network.

A lively ecosystem is essential for Swarm. A growing community is already building on the network, including projects in decentralised marketplaces, art, NFTs, archives, data stores, and music streaming. The Swarm Foundation supports this expansion through grants.

Current cloud models rely on standalone computers with data managed centrally by trusted institutions. By introducing the BZZ token, Swarm provides a crucial element for transforming the cloud. Through collaboration with the web3 community, Swarm aims to establish an autonomous, private, and unstoppable information storage system for a digitally self-sovereign society.