GM!
Last week was ETHDenver, and with it came AO Conf - a dedicated stage for builders and enthusiasts in the AO ecosystem. Presentations were held by many different teams to showcase some of the biggest projects building on the Permaweb.
Let's take a look at what happened, and what it means for AO.
AO Conf and ETHDenver 🐘
ETHDenver has just wrapped up with its usual #BUIDLathon and guest speakers, as well as serving as a meeting place for developers and creators to talk all things crypto.
With it also came AO Conf, a stage dedicated for builders and those interested in everything AO.
Sam's "The Internet and Trust" presentation
Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, kicked things off by talking about "the internet and trust". Where on the traditional web most transactions aren't visible to any other parties (and don't need to be), blockchains offer transparency. And with this transparency and global shared state comes poor scalability.
AO is a radically different approach compared to a lot of other blockchains - parallel execution is baked in, Arweave acts as the state layer, but with AO no global shared state is needed.
This means we can go back to the era of Web2 in terms of scalability, but with the guarantees of decentralization, immutability, and more. Sam nails this point by saying "we are trying to build trustlessness on top of the existing layers of the internet, not build from the ground up", which is what a lot of other blockchains are doing.
This goes hand in hand with AO Core, the software for AO nodes which builds upon HTTP.
Sam goes into a lot more detail on all of this - check it out in his talk here.
AO Conf Highlights
At the dedicated AO Conf stage, Sam Williams kicked things off by going into a lot more detail on the internals of AO, and building on his main presentation for ETHDenver.
This was followed by other builders in the ecosystem, including from teams such as Basejump, Apus Network, AR.IO, Community Labs, Liquid Ops, Astro Labs, FusionFi and more.
Patrick Skinner also gave a live demo of the ZeroToArweave Starter Kit, for the aspiring builders out there.
All of these projects went into detail about what problems they are solving, and just as importantly, why they are building on AO.
At the core of most of these projects is Arweave as the storage layer (such as for game assets, or a state layer), AO as the compute layer, and the modularity of AO (such as Apus Network building on it with a dedicated GPU network).
AO is truly proving itself, and giving users and developers something special. As Matt Mason of Basejump put it, "we kind of realized that everything else is legacy tech". This is what AO aims to achieve with hyperBEAM and other aspects of its scalability.
You can check out the entire AO Conf and all of the presentations here.
ICYMI 👀
- AO Node Workshop released
- BetterIDEa gets AI-assisted coding integration
- Apus Network joins Permaweb Index page
- AR.IO hosts mainnet launch party
- $AO listing soon coming to ByBit
- StarGrid Battle alpha playtest
The Longview Insider Update 🔭
We actually presented at AO Conf discussing fair tokens - you can find the timestamp in the full video here.
We also demoed the aoDevBot where users can create their own fair tokens.
We'll be releasing this to the Permaweb soon - don't miss it!
Thanks for Reading!
If you know anyone else who would find this information and our insights helpful, please share this newsletter with them.
Follow us on X to stay up-to-date. Pro tip: 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.