Author: ChainFeeds Founder Pan Zhixiong
After a long period of anticipation, the Arweave team finally announced the launch of a parallel computing solution called AO at a press conference. The development of AO took one year from conception to implementation, but its origins can be traced back to SmartWeave, a permanent storage-based smart contract solution proposed by Arweave four years ago. The choice of these technological solutions is very different from Ethereum or other Ethereum-like networks. Ethereum started with a Turing-complete virtual machine and gradually expanded its territory, while Arweave began with a network that provides permanent storage and gradually added computational capabilities.
There are many technical topics worth comparing and exploring in this regard, and it is unlikely that the Arweave team will be able to explain all the technical highlights and ideas in just one hour. After watching the press conference, I have compiled these questions and topics worth paying attention to:
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What is AO?
Why is it called AO?
What are the components of AO?
What is the relationship between AO and Arweave?
What is the relationship between AOS and AO? What kind of programming language is Lua?
What are the applications of AO?
Will AO be updated quickly?
Does AO have its own token?
AO is a type of super parallel computer that functions as a decentralized computing environment, allowing for the concurrent execution of any number of processes. In comparison to previous decentralized computing systems, AO not only increases the number of verifiable computations but also achieves verifiable computations at any scale. By constructing three different subnetworks and building upon the Arweave base layer, AO achieves a high degree of parallel processing capability and scalability.
Derived from the concept of “Actor Oriented,” the abbreviation AO stands for Actor Oriented.
The Actor Model is a concurrency model in computer science used to design and implement distributed systems, where the basic unit is an “Actor”. Actor Oriented design or programming refers to the use of the Actor model as a basis for design or programming. This approach is suitable for constructing highly concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems.
Arweave founder Sam Williams believes that AO is a programming paradigm completely different from smart contract systems, and it is essentially the best solution for all distributed systems and the Web2 era.
An interesting fact is that the title of the paper that proposed the Actor Model in 1973 was “A Universal Modular Actor Formalism for Artificial Intelligence”. At that time, it was for the study of artificial intelligence.
AO consists of three subnetworks: Messenger Unit (MU), Scheduler Unit (SU), and Compute Unit (CU). MU is responsible for receiving and processing information; SU is used for scheduling and ordering information; CU is used for processing computations.
As a decentralized computing environment, AO utilizes Arweave’s scalable chain storage as its permanent host for storing data during runtime. AO allows for the simultaneous execution of any number of concurrent processes and coordinates them through message passing, similar to how computing is done in data centers and on the Internet through sending data packets.
In summary, AO is built on top of the Arweave base layer and utilizes the chain storage functionality provided by Arweave to fulfill its decentralized computing environment’s persistent storage requirements.
AO is an architecture for parallel computing, while AOS is a specific operating system based on this parallel computing solution. Developers can develop applications (write smart contracts) in AOS using the Lua language.
Lua is a beginner-friendly high-level language that is very concise and easy to use. Interestingly, I wrote some scripts in Lua about four years ago, even though I had zero prior knowledge of Lua. I needed to use the automation tool HammerSpoon to implement some functions for retrieving prices and information, and I was able to accomplish it in just a few days. If I had the assistance of GPT, it would have been even easier.
Currently, two applications have been developed by the community: the decentralized exchange Bark and the decentralized stablecoin protocol astro, which can be compared to Uniswap and MakerDAO. Bark has already been launched on the testnet, while astro will be released later.
Outprog, the founder of EverVision, also appeared at the press conference and was frequently mentioned by Sam. They developed the decentralized trading platform Permaswap long before AO was proposed and will have the opportunity to further develop and expand within the AO architecture.
Sam stated that in the future, only updates similar to the Bitcoin style (i.e., very low-frequency updates) will be needed. Over time, the core functionality and rights of users will remain unchanged with minor upgrades. There is no “trust me, brother” roadmap here. There is only a complete and transparent protocol that you can audit and decide whether to use it yourself.
Information regarding this part has not been made public.
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