When you upload your files to ArDrive, they are sent directly from your device to the decentralized storage network called Arweave where they are stored on servers across the world.

This process is not perfect, and sometimes your files do not appear on the network.

Let’s demystify what this means and what you can do about it.

What is supposed to happen

After a file is uploaded, the Arweave network cryptographically secures the file’s transaction and distributes it across the different servers (miners) that make up the network. The file ends up “mined” in a “block” and is permanently stored and freely accessed.

End-to-end, this can take upwards of 30 minutes.

• On average, blocks are mined every 2 minutes, but can sometimes take up to 15 minutes.

• The miners building and maintaining the Arweave blockchain may periodically reorganize the transactions from last few blocks on the chain into different blocks (a.k.a. “fork recovery”), potentially dropping your transaction from the network history. However, each additional block added after the block containing your transaction, or “confirmation”, makes it increasingly less likely that your transaction will be reorganized into another block or dropped from the chain. Therefore, ArDrive waits for 15 confirmations before considering your transaction sufficiently “confirmed”.

• Arweave Gateways have to index the transaction into a GraphQL index so ArDrive can find this file in the future. For “bundled” transactions like those that ArDrive uses to get you the best possible storage pricing, Gateway “unbundling” must take place before your transaction can be indexed and searchable by ArDrive. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours during times of heavy network usage.

After files are mined and indexed, they are accessible via ArDrive and visible on any Arweave block explorer.

Tracking Upload Status

ArDrive tries to track the status of each transaction in order to let the user know when their files are stored on the network.

• Green status means the file was successfully replicated and mined on the network.

• Orange status means the file upload transaction to the network has completed, but ArDrive is awaiting a sufficient number of confirmations and any potentially necessary unbundling to complete.

  • It could take up to 30 minutes for this process to complete, so please be patient.

• Red status means the app believes the file upload transaction may have failed.

  • NOTE: If a file’s transaction is not mined or is dropped by the network, the AR payment made for this file is effectively “refunded” by the network. However, this is not the case for failed or omitted unbundling by the Gateway.

Troubleshooting “Red” Status

While it does not happen often, uploaded file transactions may not be “mined” successfully during periods of high network congestion or dropped by the network during a fork recovery. This could result in a “Red” file status icon.

We recently began packing all ArDrive transactions into bundles to improve ArFS reliability and reduce overall transaction costs for users. One tradeoff of this approach is that bundled transactions have to be unbundled by the Arweave Gateway, and this can sometimes take more time than expected. Soon we'll be making updates to the web app that will allow for more "unbundling" time at the Arweave gateway so that ArDrive transactions don't appear as 'failed' for the period of time that they are yet to be unpacked.

If your file status is red, the transaction may have failed and your file may not be permanently stored on the Arweave network. Use turbo-gateway.com/ plus your transaction id to see if your file made it to Arweave 5–15 minutes after you upload your data through the web. If your file fails to reach Arweave, the fees you paid for uploading this data are not spent, and the funds return to your ArDrive wallet.

If the transaction later appears on the gateway but the file is still missing from your drive or its status stays red or orange, try manually syncing your drive. Start with regular sync, then use deep sync if the file still does not appear. See Sync Your Drive.

Using an Incognito Tab or logging out of ArDrive will clear your local cache of data, including files that have not been mined. If you log out and back in, the files marked red will disappear.

Using the Arweave Block Explorer

A block explorer is another way to validate your transactions and their status on the Arweave network. Search your ArDrive wallet address to see every transaction you have made, or look up a single transaction ID to check whether it was mined into a block.

See Block Explorers for the URLs to use, what the different transaction types mean, and why a confirmed transaction can still take time to appear in ArDrive.