Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Arweave has officially launched its mainnet following a year-long testnet phase.
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Native AO tokens will now be transferable following the mainnet launch.
Arweave’s AO Platform Launches on Mainnet
Decentralized storage project Arweave has officially launched the mainnet release of its computing platform, AO. This latest development comes after a year-long testnet phase.
According to the development team, native tokens previously minted and distributed to AR holders and testnet depositors are set to become transferable following this mainnet launch.
The AO platform is a distributed computing environment with parallelized processing capabilities. While speaking with The Block, Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, said,
“Arweave’s decentralized data layer ensures the long-term availability and integrity of AO’s on-chain computations, enabling efficient scaling of AO’s shared ledger of messages.”
AO is set to be a key component in the Arweave ecosystem by driving demand for Arweave’s storage services. The developers pointed out that AO will support a new wave of dapps, including on-chain autonomous agents focusing on AI coordination.
With the AO mainnet completed, the team has officially released its native token, which differs from Arweave's AR token. Like Bitcoin, the AO token has a maximum supply cap of 21 million.
The team adopted a fair launch distribution model, issuing tokens to users who bridge assets to the platform and existing AR token holders. Over time, 36% of the total token supply will be distributed to AR holders.
The remaining 64% has been set aside for economic growth incentives, particularly for bridging assets into AO, which includes rewards for users who deposit assets like DAI and stETH into the AO ecosystem.
The mainnet launch comes roughly a year after Arweave rolled out the public testnet for AO. In June 2024, the team announced its native token, $AO, and token economics and reward mechanisms.
Over $700 million in assets were pre-bridged to the AO testnet before this launch to mine AO. Thanks to the mainnet release, users can now transfer and trade these tokens.
