Irys is a Layer-1 datachain designed to make data fully programmable by unifying high-performance onchain storage, data availability, and an enhanced EVM execution environment. Unlike traditional storage chains that treat data as static payloads, Irys integrates cryptographic proofs of storage and availability directly into consensus, ensuring that every piece of onchain data remains verifiable, accessible, and usable inside smart contracts.

Its hybrid Proof-of-Work and Stake mechanism continuously samples miners’ stored data through deterministic HDD-paced reads, enforcing honest storage and enabling fast, low-overhead verification. Through innovations such as 2D matrix packing, multi-ledger lifecycle management, and stable, decoupled fee markets, Irys delivers scalable, cost-efficient storage where data can persist for any duration—from short-term to permanent—under predictable economics.

Complementing this is IrysVM, an EVM-compatible engine that introduces native data-access primitives, allowing contracts to stream and compute on large datasets directly onchain. This transforms data from a passive record into an active, composable asset that can power verifiable AI, analytics, licensing, and new classes of fully onchain applications, enabling developers to build systems that compute on trustless data at scale.