The AO project has officially announced on Twitter/X that they will launch their own token on June 13th, allocating a portion of the total supply to Arweave token holders.
AO is a blockchain platform that was built on top of the Arweave network. It aims to improve decentralized application (dapp) performance via parallel processing and unbounded computation.
https://x.com/aoTheComputer/status/1796174735581315481
Notably, the token launch will have no pre-mine, pre-sale or preferential access, but instead be 100% allocated to the Arweave community and developers.
Arweave
In a previous article, we discussed how tokenized compute networks (like Render, Akash, and Flux) could end up being one of the most valuable commodities of the future.
In addition to compute, we also have projects that are working to tokenize the world's digital storage, and Arweave is a leading project in that sector.
Arweave has historically depended on external ecosystems to send data to its network. That being the case, AO was built on top of Arweave, in order to generate more demand for its distributed storage network and serve as a growth catalyst.
aoTheComputer vs. Ethereum
Ethereum was essentially a computer science experiment, that innovated atop Bitcoin to see if smart contracts could be implemented on a decentralized blockchain.
Although Ethereum proved to be successful, especially in terms of its financial valuation, user apps didn't perform well due to its inefficient processing, and excessive gas fees.
AO has learned and thing or two from Ethereum's experimental design flaws, and created their own scalable blockchain (aoTheComputer).
Dubbed a "hyper parallel computer", it allows an arbitrary number of processes to operate in parallel, sharing all the available computational resources.
Sam Williams
The creator of Arweave and CEO of Forward Research, Sam Williams, stands out as a principled and passionate project founder.
One of the most important characteristics of a crypto project is that the founder be passionate about the technology, and its potential for disruption.
Sam explains in a presentation (posted below) how computer science has been a passion of his since a young age, and wholeheartedly wanted to find a solution to Ethereum's scalability and performance issues.
In the video he goes over his educational background, how he was introduced to Ethereum, and how AO and Arweave work together to solve the blockchain trilemma problem:
https://x.com/aoTheComputer/status/1795574864730091667
Competition
AO is just another runner in the race for who can create a smart contract platform that scales well.
We also have projects like MultiversX, Alephium, Cosmos, Polkadot and multiple others that are trying to build scalable blockchain systems.
However, in the case of AO/Arweave, their community and its founders really stand out as leaders in their field, and the passion is palpable.
This upcoming airdrop may be worth participating in, or at least getting some tokens when they hit the market.
If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Until next time...
Resources
Arweave Logo [1]
AO Logo [2]
Further Arweave Info [3]
Seth Bloomberg's Tweet Thread [4]