Arweave's computing platform AO goes live on mainnet

Decentralized storage project Arweave has officially launched the mainnet release of its computing platform, AO, following a year-long testnet phase.

Native tokens previously minted and distributed to AR holders and testnet depositors are set to become transferable following this mainnet launch.

AO, dubbed a “hyperparallel computer” by its developers, introduces a distributed computing environment with parallelized processing capabilities.

Arweave’s permanent data storage underpins AO's operations, ensuring that data is immutable and permanently accessible.

“Arweave’s decentralized data layer ensures the long-term availability and integrity of AO’s on-chain computations, enabling efficient scaling of AO’s shared ledger of messages,” Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, told The Block.

Inversely, AO is expected to contribute to the Arweave ecosystem by driving demand for Arweave’s storage services.

According to the core developers, AO will support a new wave of dapps, including on-chain autonomous agents focusing on AI coordination.

AO tokens to become transferable

The launch of AO’s mainnet is accompanied by the final release of its native token, which is separate from Arweave's AR token.

The AO token's maximum supply cap is 21 million, echoing Bitcoin’s model. The AO team says it adopted a fair launch distribution model, handing out tokens to users who bridge assets to the platform and existing AR token holders.

Based on their holdings, 36% will be distributed to AR holders over time. The remaining 64% has been set aside for economic growth incentives, particularly for bridging assets into AO, which includes rewards for users who deposit assets like DAI and stETH into the AO ecosystem. Over $700 million was pre-bridged to the AO testnet prior to launch.

Arweave rolled out the public testnet for AO in February 2024. By June, AO had announced its native token, AO, along with token economics and reward mechanisms.

Over $700 million in assets were pre-bridged to the AO testnet before this launch to mine AO. With the mainnet release, users can transfer and trade these tokens.

The AO token’s primary function is to secure message passing within the network by incentivizing attestations through a system.