Swarm Community Call January - Recap

The first Swarm Community Call of 2026 focused on what’s shipping next in Bee 2.7, what the Research track is stabilizing at the protocol level, and two concrete ecosystem integrations: the Swarm Plugin for Hedera/Hashgraph and an x402 payment flow that makes “pay → upload → share” feel native for apps and agents.

Core Development Updates

Bee 2.7 is scheduled for February and is designed as a safe drop-in upgrade: no migrations, no required configuration changes, and all new features are opt-in. The earlier delay was due to a backward-compatibility bug, which has now been resolved.

Bee 2.7 focuses on three themes:

• Browser connectivity foundations: AutoTLS + secure WebSockets enable Bees to obtain and manage TLS certificates and expose secure WebSocket endpoints themselves. The practical implication is laying groundwork for standard browsers to connect to Bee without custom proxies or manual certificate setup, supporting future in-browser client implementations.
• Network flexibility: Support for multiple underlay addresses (opt-in) enables nodes to advertise and store more than one transport address, paving the way for smarter transport selection later (performance, reliability, and different connectivity environments).
• Improved durability & node stability: Erasure coding improvements are aimed at real-world retrievability, alongside stability fixes (e.g., pinned chunks no longer evict, ENS resolution failures no longer crash nodes, and ultra-light nodes start correctly without relying on postage snapshots).

One-line summary: Bee 2.7 is a meaningful step toward browser-native connectivity, more adaptable networking, and more robust retrievability.

Research efforts are continuing to reinforce retrievability, syncing, and network behavior under change. Key threads mentioned:

• Pull-sync protocol work (via SWIPs): targeting improvements in syncing generally, especially around depth changes, sample creation, and stability.
• Withdrawable stake + a queue system for real-time withdrawals: closer alignment between protocol mechanics and incentive/tokenomics work, informed by community feedback.
• Node rebalancing (SWIP): improving how the network rebalances when depth changes occur, to support smoother stability over time.

The framing here was explicit: Research is “battening down the hatches” so client teams can build applications on top of a protocol that behaves predictably.

In Focus — When Ledgers Meet Storage: Swarm × Hashgraph (Hedera)

At the end of last year, the Swarm plugin was accepted into the Hashgraph repository, enabling a straightforward architectural split: Hedera as a verifiable ledger of events and Swarm as a user-run storage + delivery layer for the associated data.

During the Call, Andrei Mitrea demoed the next step: a desktop integration (pending review before PR) that brings Swarm functionality into the Hashgraph desktop app. A previously merged piece (from last year) covers the Conversation Agent integration; this demo focused specifically on desktop.

What the demo showed in practice:

• Enabling the Swarm plug-in and configuring it (local Bee URL vs. gateway limitations, feed key, auto-select postage batch, deferred uploads, etc.).
• An example “AI gallery” workflow in which an agent:
  • Creates and extends postage batches.
  • Uploads images to Swarm and returns links and references.
  • Downloads content back from Swarm.
  • Writes and reads a Feed as an append-only metadata log.

The key point: Swarm becomes persistence and “owned data” for Hedera-facing agents and apps, with concrete UX around stamps, uploads, and Feeds.

Community Talk — x402 payments + Swarm

Community member Octal presented a hackathon project that combines x402 payments with Swarm uploads: pay in USDC → upload → get a public link.

How x402 works (high level):

• The client hits an x402-enabled API endpoint.
• The server responds with HTTP 402 and payment details (supported token/chain).
• The client retries the request with a signed payment; a facilitator submits the transaction so users can pay without holding gas, as long as they have the token.

Octal’s flow:

• A /prepare endpoint: the user selects a storage duration (1/7/14 days). Payment is verified, then the service purchases a stamp and returns an upload token.
• An /upload endpoint: the user uploads files (currently up to ~100MB), supplies the token, and the content is client-side stamped and uploaded via a gateway; a shareable link is returned.

Discussion highlights:

• The upload token is intentionally one-time use for simplicity at this stage.
• The service acts as a pragmatic bridge: it abstracts stamps away from users but does so via a hosted API and a wallet that funds stamp purchases (a centralized touchpoint, by design, as a starting point).
• Octal teased a next project: using yield to automatically fund stamps, aiming at longer-lived or potentially “permanent-ish” storage depending on payouts.
• He also mentioned Swarm Router: domain-to-Swarm mapping via DNSLink, reducing gateway reconfiguration overhead for users with many domains.

As Discord remains the main space for developer discussions, tech support, and connecting directly with the Swarm team, we encourage you to post any follow-up questions there—and to keep an eye on the ongoing public threads if you’d rather just follow along.

The next Swarm Community Call will take place on Thursday, 26 February (the last Thursday of the month) at 17.00 CET – broadcast on the Swarm Foundation’s X.