Highlights One Month After the Release of the Highly Anticipated Hyper-Parallel Computer - Arweave AO, as the Ecosystem Begins to Take Shape

Author: Kyle

Translator: Kyle

Reviewer: Jomosis

Since the announcement of the testing network launch of the AO Hyper-Parallel Computer on February 27th, it has garnered significant market attention. The price of AR coins has surged three times against the market downturn, reaching as high as $47.5 during this period, marking nearly a 13-fold increase from last year's bear market bottom. Following the launch of AO, some have started referring to Arweave as the 'Ethereum killer,' while others define it as the computational layer of AI. It is foreseeable that Arweave AO may alter the direction of the future crypto world.

Simultaneously, within three and a half weeks after its release, AO attracted over 3,000 developers to join the Arweave ecosystem, leading to a surge of AO applications within a short period, maintaining a growth momentum. To comprehensively understand the recent developments of AO, this article will focus on various dimensions such as the AO network overview, ecosystem projects, and key events achieved within one month of AO's release.

Primer on AO

The AO computer is the actor oriented machine that emerges from the network of nodes that adhere to its core data protocol, running on the Arweave network. This document gives a brief introduction to the protocol and its functionality, as well as its technical details, such that builders can create new implementations and services that integrate with it.

The AO computer is a single, unified computing environment (a Single System Image), hosted on a heterogenous set of nodes in a distributed network. AO is designed to offer an environment in which an arbitrary number of parallel processes can be resident, coordinating through an open message passing layer. This message passing standard connects the machine's indepedently operating processes together into a 'web' -- in the same way that websites operate on independent servers but are conjoined into a cohesive, unified experience via hyperlinks. ——《AO Cookbook》

To better understand AO intuitively, let's compare it with a simple example while contrasting it with the EVM.

Imagine a task requiring the calculation of the sum of all integers from 1 to 100.

• For AO: The task can be assigned to different node computers to execute independently, then collaborate through the AO network. For instance, the task of calculating the sum of 1 to 50 could be assigned to node 1, while the task of calculating the sum of 51 to 100 could be assigned to node 2.

• For Ethereum EVM: Each node must execute the same computing process, i.e., calculating the sum of all integers from 1 to 100. This not only leads to computational redundancy but also requires waiting for all nodes to complete the calculation even if some nodes have finished, before proceeding to the next task.

This illustrates the imaginative space brought about by hyper-parallel computers. To delve deeper into understanding AO, let's explore some important concepts related to AO:

• Messages — The basic data protocol unit (interactive medium) in AO, compliant with the Arweave native ANS-104 data standard.

• Processes — Responsible for receiving and sending messages, with communication between different processes achieved through message passing.

• Units — Messenger units (MU), scheduler units (SU), and compute units (CU).

• AOS — The operating system on AO, allowing developers to easily write code and interact with other AO processes (Processes).

For more information on the architecture, operating principles, and development guidelines of AO, please refer to the AO Cookbook.

Overview of AO Network

The AO test network for hyper-parallel computing has remained active since its release, with its messages reaching 1,000,000 on the sixth day post-launch. Subsequently, the message volume has steadily increased, reaching 11,000,000 on AO's "one-month" anniversary.

Simultaneously, the number of active developers in the AO network has reached over 2,000 in a single day, with more than one-third of the time maintaining over 500 active developers.

Overview of AO Ecosystem Projects

Labs: Forward Research, everVision, Community Labs

Forward Research, everVision, and Community Labs are all leading companies in the Arweave ecosystem. Among them, Forward Research was officially established during the 2022 Arweave in Asia event, with Arweave founder Sam serving as CEO, focusing on incubating and supporting new projects within the ecosystem.

everVision is a company dedicated to providing infrastructure for Web3, offering various products such as everPay, Permaswap, and Web3Infra, and initiating the PermaDAO organization to build a complete community-driven financial ecosystem.

Community Labs is a software development company and venture studio aiming to help developers seamlessly enter Arweave to increase the ecosystem's impact. Its products include Arconnect, Protocol.Land, and Astro Protocol, among others.

Infrastructure

everPay: Millisecond, 0 gas Cross-Chain Payment Protocol

everPay is a financial protocol built on the SCP paradigm, providing performance and user experience comparable to Web2 applications, with smooth operations. Following AO's release, everPay plans to adjust all components to AO's MSG standard to achieve complete decentralization, permissionless, and censorship resistance for everPay. Consequently, anyone can easily access everPay through the AO network using EverID to complete asset transactions.

0rbit: AO-Based Oracle

0rbit is a decentralized oracle built on AO in the Arweave ecosystem, transmitting any data from on-chain and off-chain worlds to AO Processes and allowing users to retrieve any data from any URL.

0rbit quickly introduced the new POST feature, supporting the publication of any data from AO Processes to the off-chain world. Additionally, 0rbit issued its test token $0RBT, listed on the decentralized exchange Bark, which can be converted to native tokens upon mainnet launch. To obtain $0RBT, besides exchanging with $CRED on Bark, users can also complete bounty tasks released by 0rbit (such as building price feed bots) or contribute to the development of the 0rbit network in other ways.

Arconnect: Arweave Native Wallet

Arconnect is the native wallet of the Arweave ecosystem, sometimes referred to as the "Little Hedgehog" wallet. Following AO's launch, Arconnect quickly announced support for all AO native tokens, and users can also receive messages sent on AO after enabling the wallet's "Notifications" feature.

AOVM: First EVM-Compatible Blockchain on AO

AOVM is the first EVM-compatible blockchain system built on AO, aiming to give users their own personal AO, akin to having a dedicated server in a computer matrix, ready to execute commands at any time.

DeFi

Permaswap: Arweave's First Cross-Chain DEX

Permaswap is the first cross-chain DEX in the Arweave ecosystem, built on the everPay protocol, with atomic orders executed in real-time by everPay, featuring zero gas fees, zero front-running slippage, and millisecond transaction speeds. With everPay's adaptation to AO, all Permaswap features will also automatically adapt to AO, introducing multi-chain assets to the AO ecosystem and providing atomic transaction capabilities. Additionally, Permaswap launched the CRED/AR trading pair (CRED is the AO testnet token).

Astro and Bark: AO Stablecoin Protocol and DEX

Astro and Bark are both products developed by Community Labs on AO, launched simultaneously on the day of AO's official release.

Astro is a stablecoin protocol on AO, with its native stablecoin USDA adopting over-collateralization, minted by Arweave's native token $AR. USDA will open up new opportunities for innovation and growth in decentralized finance platforms and digital markets within the Arweave ecosystem.

Bark is the first decentralized exchange on AO, featuring low latency and high throughput. Thanks to AO, Bark supports parallel trading pairs, with settlement speeds much faster than centralized exchanges. Additionally, developers can interact with Bark through AO's unified message format, allowing those building Ethereum Virtual Machine or Solana Virtual Machine on the network to interact with Bark. Due to Bark's high composability, developers can also build autonomous agents on it. Currently, Bark has listed assets such as $CRED, $0RBT, $TRUNK, and $BRKTST.

Development Tools

Liteseed: A New Bundler Network

Liteseed is a new bundler built on AO, using bundle technology (similar to Rollup) to bundle data and upload it to Arweave. What sets Liteseed apart is that it operates a group of bundlers on AO simultaneously, randomly selecting one bundler to upload data to Arweave when a user makes a request.

Warp Contracts: Smart Contract Platform Based on Arweave

Warp Contracts is an enhanced smart contract platform built on Arweave, capable of easily creating atomic NFTs and serving as the underlying layer for distributed databases. After AO's release, Warp will run as an independent process on AO, fully utilizing AO's scalability and interoperability.

Molecular Execution Machine: Serverless Platform

The Molecular Execution Machine (MEM) is a serverless platform in the Arweave ecosystem, allowing developers to focus on writing code without worrying about managing underlying servers. MEM is advancing bidirectional integration with AO, serving as AO's open computing oracle on Arweave. Additionally, MEM plans to bridge interactions between different virtual machines and blockchain networks into AO processes. Currently, its ERC20 cross-chain bridge has passed security audits, allowing ERC20 tokens to be introduced to AO soon.

CosmWasm: Cosmos Ecosystem Smart Contract Platform Launched on AO

CosmWasm is a smart contract platform designed for the Cosmos ecosystem, recently launched on the AO network. It enables messaging between AO and other smart contracts. CosmWasm has also released the cosmwasm-ao (CWAO) tool, allowing developers to easily build smart contracts on AO using the Rust language.

BetterIDEa: Next-Generation IDE for AO

BetterIDEa is the next-generation IDE tailored for the AO ecosystem, providing Web3 developers with an online platform similar to Colab. It seamlessly integrates with AO's on-chain computing engine, allowing developers to efficiently write smart contracts in Lua and build Web3 applications effortlessly.

DataOS: AI-Driven Blockchain Explorer

DataOS is an AI-driven blockchain browser built on an open data lake, launching the real-time AO message browser AOLink promptly after AO's release, presenting users with intuitive data on messages, processes, modules, and user activity.

ViewBlock: Primary Blockchain Explorer for Arweave

ViewBlock is the primary blockchain browser for Arweave, becoming the second AO browser besides DataOS. Users can access relevant data of the AO network by visiting http://viewblock.io/ao.

Key Events

Launch of AO Technical Document Cookbook

The concept of AO hyper-parallel computing is novel to many non-technical individuals, and the technical details are somewhat obscure. However, the official release of the technical document Cookbook swiftly followed, covering conceptual explanations, operational principles, and development tutorials, providing a hands-on approach to understanding. Additionally, the PermaDAO development guild participated in translating the AO Cookbook, resulting in English and Chinese versions.

Launch of AO Testnet Token $CRED and Bounty Tasks

$CRED is the native token of the AO testnet, with the quantity held equivalent to the contribution to the AO testnet. Currently, $CRED is mainly obtained through completing bounty tasks, including tasks such as completing Begin tasks, building Web UIs using AOS, outputting content related to AO on X platforms, designing and deploying OA games, and writing a library in Lua for AO.

AO Online Hackathon — Hack The Weave Hackathon

Hack The Weave Hackathon is an 11-day online hackathon organized by the Arweave community. Unlike previous editions, this hackathon mainly focuses on AO, offering multiple awards such as "Full-Stack Permaweb Applications," "Indexers/LLMs," and "MemeFrame Championship," with a total prize pool exceeding $10,000.

Community Launches Two AO Memecoins — $WHAT and $TRUNK

$WHAT, introduced by developer Andy (@cryptowanderer), can be exchanged using $CRED on its official website. Holders of $WHAT can exercise proposal rights through staking.

• $WHAT Website: https://e77j4jjahy2z6am6m5mvnvxxxu2n3v7synkbroh5zyqk2xxglbtq.arweave.net/J_6eJSA-NZ8BnmdZVtb3vTTd1_LDVBi4_c4grV7mWGc/

$TRUNK, launched by the Sarcophagus project community manager, can be exchanged with $CRED on the decentralized exchange Bark. The token's gameplay and empowerment are similar to $WHAT.

• $TRUNK Website: https://trunkao.xyz/

Continuous Improvement of AO Social Media App AO Twitter

Contributors from the PermaDAO development guild, led by iamgamelover (@digyourinsight), are building AO Twitter on AO. Features such as chat rooms, profile picture settings, and bookmarking have been gradually introduced, with plans for a MUD game in the future.

Conclusion

The launch of AO has transformed Arweave into a platform integrating storage and computing, capable of hosting any application. As long as it follows the AO protocol specifications, whether it's Web3 full-stack applications, AI applications garnering recent market attention, or even Web2 applications, all can run on AO and interoperate with other AO applications. From market reactions, it seems that there is a tendency for Arweave to be closely associated with AI concepts, and its scalability and unlimited storage capacity create optimistic conditions for AI applications. Of course, not limited to AI applications, the birth of AO has brought about new possibilities for the entire blockchain world.

Just over a month since its launch, AO has attracted a large number of investors and developers, and the ecosystem has begun to take shape. This may be a technological innovation that changes the future direction of blockchain.

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