GM fellow Arweaver!
Sam Williams dropped some exciting updates regarding AO Computer progress in his recent talk with Drew Pierson. This is the perfect time to look back at the major development milestones achieved this year.
Let's jump right in.
AO updates and milestone 3 completion 🏁
HyperBEAM Milestone 3 has been tagged as “final”, but what exactly does that mean? Arweave and AO inventor Sam Williams broke it down in his recent interview with Forward Research’s Drew Pierson.
Considering the complexity of launching a hyper parallel supercomputer, the AO team identified three major phases to tackle in the process of rolling out the AO mainnet. With applications running live on legacynet (AO’s earlier development environment) the shift to mainnet required a careful and deliberate approach to ensure various computation types transitioned smoothly.
Let’s take a look back at what each one achieved.
Milestone 1
Following a successful testnet phase, AO Computer entered its mainnet era back in early February 2025. Feeling nostalgic? You can relive the vibes by watching this launch video.
Milestone 1 enabled the fundamental execution of AO-Core within the mainnet environment. It provided builders with the relay system, payment system, the device execution mechanism, as well as some individual device modules. Essentially, it provided a solid foundation for the core infrastructure to get up and running.
Milestone 2
Shortly after mainnet launch, the AO development team began work on Milestone 2. This phase allowed users to run full AO processes beyond basic AO-Core executions. This enabled paths for any computation program, using HTTP signed messages, ANS-104 bundling, or even Arweave transactions. Such paths form Merkle lists that append state transformations, supporting both AO processes and unscheduled functions. Milestone 2 also introduced the Scheduler and Process devices to bolster execution capabilities.
For the technically curious among you, this article about AO-Core offers more insight into the state of the project during the transition from Milestone 1 to 2.
Milestone 3
Milestone 3 tackled full legacynet compatibility, enabling the seamless migration of existing computations to mainnet. It was a tremendous effort for all involved, during which time the best possible solutions were sought out to preserve permaweb compatibility.
Almost all legacynet computations have now transitioned to HyperBEAM nodes. In addition, the GraphQL dependencies used in legacynet, which temporarily involved third-party endpoints, have also been replaced by HyperBEAM.
The technical process of legacynet being deconstructed and replaced in real-time has been a fascinating engineering feat to observe.
What’s next?
Looking back, this three-milestone pathway gave a clear indication of what was required to roll out core infrastructure and get processes onto mainnet. But AO Computer offers so much more, and there are many potential avenues of development yet to explore.
One of the important points that Sam and the team are thinking about is the wider application of verifiability. How can you apply verifiable compute to everything your computer can do? TEEs registered and run by community members offer a way to serve traffic to end users, advancing decentralized access, but with a high level of security guarantees and data correctness.
AO is extremely modular. With an ever-increasing number of stackable devices that each do finely-scoped tasks extremely well, over time, it becomes less about building and more about configuration.
Are you itching to get started building on AO? Take a look at the devices library maintained by Decent Land Labs, which offers a filtered overview of 63 devices, built by Decent Land Labs, Apus Network, Entity of Code, and Forward Research.
ICYMI 👀
Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s been unfolding across Arweave and AO.
- $ARIO is bridging to Base
- Satoshi chosen as next Digital Twin
- Interest resurges in 1,000 $AR puzzle
- Prasan launches Heritage & Humanity
This week's community feature 🧑💻
Arweave Architect Lorimer Jenkins is on a content creation spree, documenting his nomadic lifestyle as a permaweb founder.
Lorimer recently unveiled a personal website that dives deeper into his personal development journey. Check it out at lorimer.arweave.net.
Thanks for reading!
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Follow us on X at @onlyarweave to stay updated on all things Arweave. Want to dive deeper into AO? Check out @aoComputerClub.
The Longview Team
This is not investment advice. No profit guarantees. If in the U.S., ensure compliance with U.S. laws and seek professional advice.