GM fellow Arweaver!
2025 was a massive year for the permaweb, as we celebrated 7 years of uptime, crossed 24 billion transactions on Arweave, and witnessed the launch of AO mainnet. While the technical progress is indeed impressive, we want to switch things up for this Year in Review and reflect on the human effort behind these wins.
With so much talent in the permaweb, we can’t list every single person and project, so if we missed a specific shoutout, please know that we ❤️ you. This is by no means a comprehensive list; think of it more like a celebration of our shared journey.
Celebrating the humans of Arweave 👩🏻👨🏼🦰👩🏽🦱👨🏾
Humanity is woven into Arweave’s DNA, dating back to the very first messages in the 2018 genesis block. It’s a legacy that’s as relevant as ever in 2025, a year that got off to a flying start with Arweave quite literally heading to the moon.
For human stories to last permanently, the underlying architecture needs to be unbreakable. Let’s look at the technical leaps that strengthened our foundation in 2025.
Technical advances for Arweave and AO
Arweave’s protocol was upgraded to version 2.9.5 not too long ago, addressing bug, stability, and performance issues from the previous alpha versions. For the technically curious among you, see here for the full release notes. Meanwhile, Arweave’s endowment continues to grow, inching closer to 300k $AR as we close out the year.
A big thanks to the Digital History Association for stewarding our protocol upgrades, and congratulations to all the Arweave miners for another successful year safeguarding humanity’s collective memory.
AO Computer had a transformative year, finally going live in February. The development team recently checked off milestone 3, signalling full legacynet compatibility. 2025 also saw the introduction of the Permaweb Index and several fair launch tokens, with hundreds of millions in cross-chain assets bridged over to bootstrap activity on the hyper parallel computer.
A massive shoutout to the entire AO developer team. Your countless days and nights handling billions of transactions and orchestrating huge migrations are highly appreciated!
A year of partnerships
Alongside the protocol-level technical progress, 2025 saw a wave of new partnership announcements with exciting projects and initiatives. Autonomous Finance, Forward Research, and Christian Zumrovski all played influential roles in the success of Onboard Arweave.
With collaborations across areas like health, art, AI, payments, and more, Onboard’s work is a living testament to the variety of use cases the permaweb can serve. Here’s to more partnerships in 2026 and beyond.
Arweave India
We could write an entire book about what Arweave India achieved this year. From the energy at Arweave Day India and the Hacker House, to the high-intensity Buildathon, Stealth House, and Product Launch Sprint, and insights shared in the HyperCast podcast, the community’s impact on the ecosystem has been massive.
A huge congratulations to Ashutosh and the entire team for a stellar 2025. We can’t wait to see what’s next in 2026.
PDS: Stewards of the permaweb
It was a monumental year for the team at Permanent Data Solutions (PDS). AR.IO’s mainnet went live, several partnerships were announced, and the network scaled to almost 700 gateways. No other decentralized frontend service comes close to this level of resilience. Beyond core infrastructure, AR.IO also hosted a jam-packed grants program, including impressive contributions such as RandAO’s Rewind app.
As for ArDrive, who remembers the moment when they saved the day for one of Web3’s most iconic NFT collections, RTFKT? Congratulations to Phil and the team!
Community gatherings
The permaweb is nothing without its awesome community, and 2025 saw us come out in force across the globe. Team-building activities were aplenty, from the Berlin Fragments campaign, securing city-wide memories, to Arweave Day Asia, which saw a strong Arweave Oasis turnout, and also featured a morning hike, a football tournament, and a Singapore harbor boat trip.
Several other events and gatherings took place throughout the year, from representing Arweave at large-scale events like ETHDenver and Devconnect Argentina, to smaller interactive sessions like OLTA’s UK art show. A special mention goes out to the Arweave Philippines crew, who started 2025 off with a bang on their nationwide roadshow.
But perhaps the true heroes of 2025 were all the participants at the grassroots Permabites meetups. These local gatherings, from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia to India and the U.S., are living proof that the permaweb is constantly growing and open to everyone. A huge shoutout to El Tío and the Bazar team for helping support these local chapters.
Individual efforts
It’s impossible to list every personal contribution, but there are many stories worth highlighting from the past 12 months. Merdi Kim pushed himself to new heights on The Archive show and gave a notable presentation during ETHNile, while Prasan Singh brought his unique flair to The Winston Show and his new Humanity & Heritage series. Other standout creative endeavors include El Tío’s reporting from NFT.NYC, Taylor Lamprecht’s impressive daily video streak, and Alex Fisher’s launch of the Permaweb Journal, where Pierre Stein Claysky penned numerous thought-provoking pieces. Shoutout as well to Jajablinky and Peter Caires for their creative innovations.
On the application side, we’ve seen countless contributions to permaweb utility, most recently with the Arweave Tax Man’s tool: Gus’s Guts. Throughout 2025, Jonny Ringo continuously improved his Eye of AO explorer, while Phil Mataras and AR.IO team members worked on several standout apps like Roam, Unruggabull, and Perma Butler. Kemp did an amazing job giving ecosystem presentations, hosting interviews, and even sparing some time to stream the occasional build.
A big thanks goes out to Sam and Drew for keeping everyone informed on the latest protocol developments. And finally, a massive shoutout to every single developer, creator, builder, and individual working behind the scenes in operations, marketing, and all the other roles that keep the Arweave and AO ecosystem running so smoothly. As we said above, we can’t list every single individual, but just know that we ❤️ you all.
Project highlights
The activity across Arweave and AO has been incredible to watch in 2025, spanning everything from AI and gaming to cross-chain infrastructure. Here’s a small selection of things that stood out to us:
- AI & Search: Apus Network launched the popular Digital Twin app. Wuzzy Search won the Agents of the Permaweb hackathon. Wuzzy’s mastermind Jim Toth, also contributed to Anyone Protocol’s progress as it worked on a grant from Forward Research.
- Storage & Infrastructure: Load Network launched its S3 temporary storage service. Community Labs had a busy year, especially with the introduction of Wander Network and Wander Pools. Other notable Community Labs milestones include their Care Bears partnership, Basejump’s partnership with Rainforest Foundation U.S., and the Liquid Ops mainnet launch. Vela Ventures ran a successful Hacker House in Lisbon, and also paid the community a huge service with the development of the Beacon Ledger recovery tool.
- Gaming & Media: Stargrid Battle Tactics had a breakout year, gaining the attention of the wider crypto gaming community thanks to the release of its fully onchain game. Meanwhile, Odysee further cemented its spot as the leading Web3 video platform and also launched Portal, now home to the Permaweb Journal. Bazar built upon their Atomic Asset platform, recently announcing the introduction of ebooks.
- Technical Tools: The WeaveDB team released WAO, a high-performance SDK for AO development. We also saw numerous x402 cross-chain integrations, bringing Arweave’s utility to a much wider audience of Web3 builders. We also want to highlight the efforts of Ivan Morozov and the Autonomous Finance team, whose work has been foundational to the success of AO.
There are dozens of other projects and apps we could mention, but it’s too much to fit into a single email. If we left anyone out, we ❤️ you!
aoDevBot shines
It was a supercharged year at Longview, too. Alongside updating the community every day through our Only Arweave and ao Computer Club channels, our team put a ton of effort into making aoDevBot a powerhouse of knowledge and utility for anyone exploring or building on the permaweb.
We organized a successful aoDevBot competition in the lead up to Arweave Day Asia and recently announced another challenge for this holiday season. There’s still time to participate in the $500 Holiday Jam 2025 challenge. Just go to aodevbot.ai, create a game or mini-app in the challenge section, and submit your design by January 2.
Outlook for 2026 and beyond
We’ve only scratched the surface of this year’s achievements, but there’s a common thread that runs through every story. Arweavers are high-intent builders, mission-driven, and empowered by purpose to enhance a multi-century-long protocol. While the technical advances are impressive, the collaborative human effort behind them is the true sight to behold.
We’re glad to have you in this amazing ecosystem as we continue to scale the foundation for permanent data storage and the countless types of apps that can be built upon it. Here’s to another productive year ahead.
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.