(Yijing) mentioned: 'What is above form is called the Dao, what is below form is called the instrument.'

An instrument without the Dao is just an empty shell.

History has proven time and again:
The instrument itself is not the key; the system and model are the decisive forces.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, iron tools became popular, but what truly brought agricultural take-off was the loosening of the land system;
At the turn of the Tang and Song dynasties, the invention of woodblock printing occurred, but what allowed poetry and prose to spread widely was the imperial examination and cultural circulation;
At the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, a large inflow of silver occurred, but the real prosperity of the market depended on a mature commercial order.

Instruments + system will release productivity.

Today’s data world seems to have entered a 'period of abundance.'
But the problem is that data is filled like a granary but cannot circulate.
What Filecoin and Arweave are doing is 'preserving history':
They are like the records of dynasties and inscriptions on stone tablets—able to prove existence, but hard to be called upon.

If data can only sleep, its value is like dust-covered gold and jade.

(Mengzi) said: 'Merely following the law cannot lead to self-action.'
The same goes for data:
There is storage, but no agency;
There is potential, but lack of system.

What Irys wants to change is precisely this logic.

It is not 'recreating a storage hard drive',
but designing data invocation as a system:
Commercial invocation → Payment of authorization fees.
Each invocation → Automatically triggers protocol profit-sharing.
High-frequency users → Must hold and lock tokens.

This means:
Data is no longer a 'one-time transaction', but a 'sustainable production factor.'
Its value lies not in passive preservation, but in continuous use and flow.

This model will naturally form a flywheel:
More invocation → Stronger network → Deeper moat.
The system changes behavior, and behavior ultimately changes the pattern.

This is not just a blueprint on paper. Irys has already launched its mainnet:
600 million on-chain transactions.
5 million active addresses.
150TB of institutional data is flowing.
Applications like SCAI, Warden, and Plena are connected.
Brickroad predicts that this year’s orders will exceed 100 million USD.

The numbers indicate: the system has begun to operate.

Historically, bronze vessels for dynasties, printing technology for the Renaissance, and steam engines for the Industrial Revolution were all 'catalysts for the final push.'

Today, what is truly scarce in the AI era is not data storage, but data invocation.

What Irys is attempting to establish is the institutional foundation for this generational leap in civilization.

The time has come, the system is established,
Next, it depends on people.