GM!
Welcome to a special edition of the Arweave Weekly Digest. Arweave and AO have come a long way this year, and this week we'll take a look at some of the biggest highlights of the year in the ecosystem.
Let's get into it.
An Overview of AO 💻
Can you believe that the testnet of AO launched only in February of this year?
A mere 10 months ago, AO Computer was announced to the public. AO, as most readers are probably aware, is a "hyper-parallel" computer built on top of Arweave.
Since the release of testnet, AO has amassed over 1 billion messages sent (or smart contract interactions), over 120,000 $stETH and 130M $DAI bridged, and hundreds of apps launched.
The release of AO this year has also had a direct impact on Arweave.
An Overview of Arweave 💾
Arweave not only stores all of the state logs for AO, but has continued to act as a long-term storage solution for data over the past year.
Arweave processed over 10 billion transactions this year.
To put it in perspective, in 2023 Arweave processed under 2 billion total transactions. Look at that beautiful hockey stick. 🏒
Arweave is also witnessing its first ever 1 billion transaction month - currently registering 1.1 billion transactions for December, with one day to go. In October of 2023 Arweave only had ~120M for comparison!
Arweave has continued to grow by almost all metrics YoY, and AO has helped catapult this even further with its testnet release.
Let's take a look at some of the sectors established on AO this year, some of the applications launched, and the big events that took place.
An Overview of the Ecosystem 🐘
DeFi
Although smart contracts previously existed on Arweave, now with AO teams can launch more complex applications (such as DeFi protocols) which actually scale thanks to AO's hyper-parallel processing.
This year AO-native DEX Botega launched, and thanks to AO's built-in features has already set up DCA and agent-driven trading strategies.
We also got an AO-native stablecoin ($USDA) and Arweave-to-AO bridging infrastructure from Astro Labs, broader ecosystem bridging (AOX), and lending and borrowing protocols (Liquid Ops).
This is only to name drop a few, and there's plenty of other great projects being built too!
Atomic Assets (NFTs)
Arweave has always had a unique approach to tokens with its Atomic Asset standard.
With the release of AO, Bazar migrated their marketplace architecture to make use of AO processes, and we saw the launch of some of the biggest NFT collections yet in the AO and Arweave ecosystem.
The main launch that comes to mind is DumDumz. They've built a solid community around their project, so lots of promise for the NFT narrative and any other aspiring projects in the ecosystem.
There's lots more out there, so be sure to check out DumDumz and other collections on Bazar.
Metaverse and Gaming
Possibly one of the biggest narratives on AO this year has been onchain worlds.
Frankly, LlamaLand has been absolutely incredible in what they've achieved. An MMO with actions computed on AO, and a frontend hosted on Arweave. Quite literally, an onchain world (with, btw, AI-driven NPCs, minigames, and more).
On the 3D side of things, Permaverse have also been building out a metaverse for the AO ecosystem. We’ve also had tons of teams building out either infrastructure for onchain gaming such as Loom, or actual games themselves.
AOGAMES have been supporting the AO gaming ecosystem with a game jam hosted alongside Forward Research, and curating different worlds and games. Another prominent game is Cyberbeavers, which is actually being built out by the Warp team and they’re experimenting with custom CUs another AO architecture for real-time gaming.
Check out some of the other games being built out here.
Community
We've had a big year for events in the Arweave and AO ecosystem.
Here at Longview Labs we hosted our very own Fullstack Hack with a Demo Day and 30+ submitted builds, Weavers did their 24 hour Berlin hackathon, Arweave Asia 2024 Singapore was a hit, and tons of events representing over a thousand attendees via Arweave India, Arweave Philippines, and Arweave Oasis.
The buzz in the Arweave ecosystem has definitely been larger than last year, with lots of new faces here to stick around and build something for the long-term.
Infrastructure
ArConnect officially launched their mobile app this year, which is massive considering how many of us trade crypto on our phones every day. This is a big launch for onboarding more users into the Arweave and AO ecosystem.
We also got our first look at ArFleet, which is a new time-based storage network built on top of AO. This will help round out the network with Arweave for long-term storage, ArFleet for temporary or time-limited storage, and AO for compute.
ArFleet also provides infrastructure for helping to onboard Odysee into the ecosystem, who were acquired by Forward Research this year and have 7M monthly viewers.
AR.IO, who have been running Arweave gateways (and bundlers) powering the Permaweb, also announced their V2 whitepaper and have changed their ArNS domains to a “Permabuy” system.
Conclusion
It has been an absolutely massive year for AO and Arweave, and this recap barely scratches the surface of everything that has happened.
There is no better time to build in the Arweave and AO ecosystem than today. As we say in crypto: "we're so early."
From everyone here at Longview Labs, we hope you have a wonderful New Year.
We will continue to post daily updates for the Arweave ecosystem on X, and subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't already to stay up to date.