GM!
Welcome to this week's Arweave Weekly Digest.
Last week many in the Arweave ecosystem were celebrating the 20 billion transaction mark - with Arweave crossing over 22 billion transactions as of last week.
In this issue we'll take a look at how Arweave got to this milestone, what it means, and what's coming next.
Let's get into it.
What 20+ billion really means
Over 22,000,000,000 transactions since Arweave's mainnet in 2018. What makes this number all the more interesting is the almost hockey stick-like growth Arweave has experienced since around 2023.
In July 2023, Arweave first hit somewhere around 1 billion transactions, which means only in the last two years has Arweave managed to process and store tens of billions of additional transactions.
To put it in perspective, Visa processes around 150 billion transactions globally each year. The nature of decentralized systems differs, but illustrates the scale of Arweave's transaction growth.
Mapping the adoption
Part of the reason for Arweave's growth in transactions is due to the launch of AO Computer, a decentralized compute platform which is built on top of Arweave.
AO allows for much more general-purpose decentralized computation which logs each action as a transaction on Arweave.
AO turned Arweave from being used primarily as a long-term storage platform to also acting as a state layer for computation (as storage can be anything - not just photos or files, but websites, code, and more).
As AO provides the infrastructure for things like DeFi applications, games, and more, it means more transactions are being settled on Arweave.
This also aligns with some of the research from others in the AO and Arweave ecosystem, which have seen the growth in number of transactions, while the average size of transactions has decreased - representing Arweave's new use cases for computation log storage.
The infrastructure
Key pieces of infrastructure which have allowed Arweave to scale so well are bundles and bundlers.
Bundlers group transactions together and post them as a single transaction on Arweave, which means Arweave can keep a reasonable block size and increase its overall TPS.
Bundlers also cache files and make them instantly available while transactions are settled on mainnet (generally improving UX).
One of the most popular bundlers in the ecosystem is ArDrive Turbo, being used not only by ArDrive themselves but also many others in the ecosystem, such as Load Network, to upload data to Arweave.
What's next?
As AO Computer continues to grow and update through its mainnet, the popularity of applications deployed on AO likely determines how many transactions Arweave will continue to grow by. And as AO has a unique architecture allowing for many parallel transactions, if utilized it could help Arweave's transaction count continue to grow.
Transaction count isn't the only important metric of a network, nor should it be viewed on its own - but a significant amount of transaction growth over a short period of time is something for the Arweave ecosystem to celebrate.
ICYMI 👀
- Vento SDK updates
- Ankush provides sneak peek of BetterIDEa features
- AO hosts multi-agent workshop
- LiquidOps ambassador program
Thanks for reading!
If you know anyone else who would find this information and our insights helpful, please share this newsletter with them.
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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.