Arweave: Building an Innovative Smart Contract Computing Environment through Decentralized Computing Network

Decentralized storage protocol Arweave officially launched its decentralized computing network ao testnet yesterday, offering unique technological innovations including parallel computing mechanisms, long-lived active contracts, and native integrated storage facilities, shaping a new brand image of storage + computing in the blockchain development market.

Table of Contents
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Arweave launches decentralized network ao
Technological features
Parallel computing
Modular architecture
Native integrated storage facilities
Long-lived active contracts
Business development strategy
Product line gradually completed
Unique selling points
Biggest challenge: market acceptance
Two weeks ago, Arweave founder Sam announced on Twitter that they would launch a computing network that allows parallel processing of existing PoS networks, and today the network officially launched its testnet.

ao aims to provide an environment for coordinating arbitrary amounts of computation through an open messaging layer for parallel processing.

Unlike the design architecture of existing blockchain nodes, ao uses Scheduler Units, Compute Units (CUs), and Messenger Units (MUs) as the operating components of the network, together with Arweave storage facilities, to fundamentally create a new computing environment.

Compared to Ethereum and other EVM blockchain networks, there are often many limitations in contract design due to the inherent conditions of network architecture and account models, such as being unsuitable for writing loop-type applications or contract codes with large amounts of code.

Through the message-passing layer based on the actor model, ao coordinates the nodes. Unlike traditional blockchains, it can provide efficient computing performance between different systems, executing any program or smart contract without restrictions. Therefore, there is no need to limit the size and form of the protocol, while maintaining the verifiability and decentralization of the network itself.

ao integrates the design of smart contracts without trust and traditional computing environments (such as Amazon EC2).

By integrating various traditional computing environments as the node design, based on the unique message structure mentioned above, ao can have many technological advantages, creating an environment for innovative application and contract development.

ao can simultaneously run any number of smart contracts or programs. Based on the actor model, ao does not allow shared memory between execution processes, but allows them to coordinate through message passing. It keeps these execution processes running at full speed without interfering with each other.

Through message passing, ao can achieve a scaling mechanism that is closer to traditional Web2 and distributed system environments than smart contracts.

ao does not strictly define the computing environment conditions and is modular, allowing developers to choose different modular functions, including virtual machines, sorters, message transmission models, and fuel fee mechanisms, to assemble different environments according to their needs.

And by settling all messages in the same format to Arweave’s decentralized data layer, it unifies the modular environment. It is suitable for a wide range of applications and provides a unified computing environment, where each execution process can easily transmit messages and collaborate.

In addition, ao’s distributed and modular architecture allows existing smart contract blockchain networks to integrate message transmission with ao.

ao will natively access Arweave, seamlessly loading and executing any size of data directly into memory and writing it back to the network. This configuration eliminates typical resource constraints and achieves a fully parallel execution environment, greatly expanding the possibilities of application development.

ao may break through the limitations of traditional blockchain networks, especially for complex applications that require a large amount of data processing and computational resources, such as machine learning and high-computation autonomous agents.

In traditional smart contract environments, contracts are “awakened” to perform calculations based on user transaction requests. Unless users interact with the application, the program will not remain online, thereby narrowing the possibilities of building innovative applications on it.

ao eliminates this limitation by allowing contracts to have scheduled interaction times, which automatically wake up the contract and perform calculations at set time intervals. Any user or execution process itself can pay the node to “subscribe” to the execution process in advance in order to trigger calculations at the appropriate frequency.

Arweave will not be limited to storage, but will also enter decentralized computing, creating a more complete ecosystem with a complete infrastructure and integration, which has the potential to attract more developers to join and have more opportunities for innovative applications.

Unlike most infrastructure development teams in the industry that are still bound by the architecture of blockchains, the ao team can think outside the box more easily due to Arweave’s design, creating a more efficient decentralized network through a new message communication mechanism.

Recommended reading:
Not only blockchain! How stateless infrastructure brings efficient decentralized networks
Reason for recommendation: Not only blockchains can provide decentralized networks and trustless functions. Arweave and ao demonstrate this well, which is a typical example of stateless infrastructure.
For development teams, ao can provide more efficient computing mechanisms and an environment for potential innovative applications, which is an attractive soil for developers and a unique selling point for ao.
Although its technological features and business strategies make sense, whether existing ecosystem developers are willing to transition from familiar ecosystems and tools to a completely new development environment depends on whether the benefits are sufficient, which will be determined by actual market testing.
On the other hand, the current testnet is invitation-only, and the number of integrated protocols is still very limited. There are still many unknowns about whether Arweave will move the existing market demand as planned.
However, the price of its token AR has already reflected market sentiment, with an increase of nearly double in the past seven days.