Team of builders archived ~24 TB of 2b2t Minecraft data including a 1,024,000² Overworld area, completed over 109 days using custom bots, proxies, and a bespoke file format.
Key Takeaways
Scale: Four datasets captured: 1m² Overworld, 512k² Overworld, 256k² End, 100k² Nether; total ~24 TB stored in a custom zvcr format to reduce storage overhead.
Custom toolchain: crayne wrote PlaceProxy, a world download server, elytra autopilots (Boost exploit + Pitch40), a datamining program, and zvcr region file utilities from scratch over 1.5 years.
Operational cost: Over $3,000 spent on priority queue purchases and server rental; 28 bot accounts on BMProxy used for the 512k² phase alone.
Public services live now: 2b2t Wayback Machine (wayback.2b2t.place) and map viewer (2b2t.place) are in public beta; torrent pending due to dataset size.
Open source incoming: PlaceProxy, the world download server, and zvcr format are being released publicly, enabling community contributions to the archive.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters with 2b2t familiarity note spawn is deliberately brutal by design, framing the archive as preservation of a uniquely hostile player-shaped environment rather than a typical server backup.
Discussion flagged the unfortunate timing collision: a separate group released a 200k² world download days earlier, overshadowed despite being a legitimate independent achievement.
Several commenters pointed to the nocom exploit history as context for 2b2t’s technical depth, suggesting the server has a long track record of producing serious infrastructure-level hacks.
