In this post we’ll describe AO’s main components and what their significance is to the system. We will cover:

1. AO-Core: Blockchains expressed inside the HTTP layer of the internet.

2. Hashpaths: The atomic units of verifiability.

3. HyperBEAM: An Operating System for AO devices.

Finally, we’ll conclude with an overview of the current and upcoming state of development of AO-Core, as well as how best to get involved.

1. AO-Core: Blockchains expressed inside the HTTP layer of the internet

AO-Core is a new primitive for the internet. In essence, it is a simple but powerful protocol for describing how programs transform state from one form to another, while providing security guarantees and attestations of correctness. In doing so, it is a meta machine. AO-Core boiled down the main characteristics of what blockchains really are, and instead of using bespoke, unique chains and languages, it is expressed inside the protocols and languages that are already popular and widespread.

At the heart of this architecture is the new internet standard HTTP Message Signatures. This new standard, which became a ratified member of the HTTP protocol specification family last year, simply provides an open framework and language that allows HTTP request messages and responses to be signed with cryptographic keys. Arweave data responses have similar headers and responses to HTTP Message Signatures, which allows us easily use them as a new form of data item that can be uploaded to the network.

AO-Core adds new capabilities to these primitives: An open representation of blockchain semantics inside HTTP message. The crucial addition that AO-Core adds in order to make this possible is the revolutionary concept of hashpaths: A means of verifying and attesting to program state-transformations using HTTP Signed Messages. Unlike traditional internet systems where transactions exist in isolation yet causes downstream changes to other systems in a non-verifiable way, hashpaths allow us to track downstream effects of messages throughout the entire network, stacking attestations of correctness on top of one another as messages move around the system.

Hashpaths tell you who claimed what, when, and why. They are pre-computable, global references to states of computations, available to all without needing to perform any computation.

When data from one execution is used in another, their hashpaths merge together, creating a single Merkle root for both executions. This process happens recursively, such that any single hashpath from a popular computation contains a Merkle tree root of almost all other computations that have occurred in the system. Almost the entire network’s history, represented inside a single 32 byte value. Because this merkle root is constructed iteratively as interactions occur in the system, its benefits come with zero communication overhead. This stands in radical contrast to traditional blockchain networks, in which the process of state consensus requires interactions by a large proportion -- often all -- of the nodes in the system.

3. HyperBEAM: An Operating System for AO Devices

HyperBEAM is a host environment for AO-Core executions. It is an Operating System that allows its operators to choose which AO devices they would like to run, and offer them to users for a fee. Devices are small modules which offer blockchain-like services. Any number of devices can be combined and composed together to create new types of applications. You can think of it like a lego kit for building blockchain-like services, recombinable by anyone to create new exciting applications easily, yet still utilizing the same decentralized network of nodes. Devices can be added and updated over time and operators can change which devices they are running, just like applications in an app-store.

HyperBEAM’s design is powerfully modular, giving node operators flexibility over the services they want to offer to their users, while also commoditizing provision of the hardware to run them via market mechanisms.

Today, you can already use HyperBeam nodes to:

• Render dynamic webpages and make AOS processes browsable via the URL bar.

• Offer full HTTP API’s for AO processes without dry-runs. HyperBEAM’s architecture allows developers to call data from other sources without having to do simulated executions of messages on processes, giving developers and users drastically improved performance.

• Run web assembly containers of any size as decentralized, serverless functions. This offers developers a similar experience to services like AWS’s compute offerings (Lambda, etc) while being able to instantly switch between providers. This means that if you find a better offer for your compute, you can instantly take it. No more cloud platform ‘lock in’.

4. Current state of development

HyperBEAM and AO-Core are hyper modular. As such, their base installation offers around 25 devices for you to start playing around with, but can be extended by anyone to provide additional functionality.

Table 1 below provides an overview of the current state of the devices built on AO-Core in HyperBEAM. The elements in green are “candidate” phase: robust and stable, releases which are not expected to change much over time, if at all. Orange elements are “preview releases”, which developers can already use and try but that are not yet sufficiently robust to be depended on for all production use-cases.  Lastly, red elements are “Early Access releases” that have partial functionality, with components still being developed or missing.

The transition between legacynet and mainnet HyperBEAM nodes is progressing in a “live” way, without downtimes. This is possible since both systems share much of the same data structures, stored on Arweave, thus making them interoperable.

While the AO-Core protocol itself is a candidate release in a robust state, the HyperBEAM implementation still requires heavy testing on a large scale in order to reach the status of candidate release.

February 9th saw the release of Milestone 1, with AO-Core and many of its first devices reaching candidate-level maturity. The first batch of devices to reach this status were focused on enabling payment infrastructure for the network, such that users can opt to pay operators for ‘fast lane’ access to computation. Integrations that use milestone 1’s payments are already available in key developer tooling -- AOS and aoconnect -- with end-user facing integrations ongoing.

Today we are excited to release the early access version of Milestone 2,  which allows you to try out HyperBEAM-resident compute with embedded CUs. This means that you are able to run AO processes in preview-mode fully native inside HyperBEAM (using its native scheduling, messaging, and compute devices) for the first time. Additionally, node operators are able to execute all of these devices inside TEE-enabled secure compute environments, giving veracity to their hashpath attestations.

5. On the horizon

AO is already live, having handled over 1.5 billion user messages since launch, and with AO-Core in place our ecosystem now has a solid base from which to build. Here are some of the additions to HyperBEAM’s device landscape that we are excited about:

• Launch of the first community-built devices. While Forward Research led the development of AO-Core and HyperBEAM, an important facet of its design is that it offers an open framework in which any developer can add devices to its functionality. Already, we are seeing the development of two GPU-based devices for AO and HyperBEAM: A WASI-NN compliant deterministic GPU implementation for the accelerated execution of LLMs by Apus Network, and a WebGPU implementation by the developers of Reality Protocol.

• Legacynet process compatibility. As part of the phased migration to AO-Core, users will be able to run compute from legacynet processes inside HyperBEAM nodes. This provides a route for existing processes to make use of HyperBEAM’s multitude of differing security devices without having to re-implement or re-issue their process.

• The Green-zone. Once there are a sufficient number of TEE-resident nodes online, the ‘green zone’ device will be activated. The green zone lets many different TEE-nodes act as one in the network, signing and attesting to hashpaths and state. Node operators will use stake their AO tokens (providing Sybil-resistance) in order to join the green zone.

• WASM Ahead-Of-Time Compilation. HyperBEAM already features a native WASM execution environment that is capable of executing computations using a mechanism called ‘AOT’. AOT entails the host environment pre-compiling user-given WASM modules into native code, allowing them to execute at approximately 90% of native speeds. While this implementation already exists, certain modifications will need to be made before it can be safely used in practice.

6. Get involved!

Anyone can get involved in running HyperBEAM nodes today, as well as building new devices for this system. Community members are already beginning to contribute, with Apus Network and Reality Protocol already adding their GPU integrations to the system. We are thrilled to see such contributions and are excited to see what the community builds in the future.

Resources available for running an AO node include the HyperBEAM repository, the HyperBEAM-specific Discord for developer and user discussions, and AO on X for updates and insights.

The role of payments in AO-Core

Even in the infinitely scalable protocol that is AO, payments play an important role. This is because they provide a powerful incentivization mechanism for node operators to join the network, enabling compute to be faster and truly decentralized.

Without the appropriate incentives unlocked by payments, Legacynet (formerly known as Testnet) has only a limited number of computers attached to it, with no incentivized way to bring more nodes online. Since causing any amount of compute on the network comes at no cost, anyone can congest the network and drown out the experience of all users. This isn’t how AO works in the real world.

Using payments on AO-Core gets rid of this problem altogether. Your user experience will be vastly improved and you can now take a “fast lane” to have your compute prioritized.

Browser integrations are coming soon, but devs and automated users can start using payments today. See the full instructions here and a demo below.

ao

@aoTheComputer

Devs, ready to build on the AO mainnet? HyperBEAM relay support is now live on AOS, allowing you to send messages and handle payments directly from the command line. See how it works in this quick look from @nickjuliano20 below.

Launch your processes with the HyperBEAM Relay

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7:38 PM • Feb 11, 2025

Onboarding to AO-Core

The AO Mainnet codebase is already available to those who wish to explore it alone today.

In less than two weeks, we will be holding our first Node Onboarding Workshop. At this event, our team will help the first wave of external node operators get onboarded and start offering their compute on AO.

During this time we will be preparing and improving documentation to help your onboarding journey. AO-Core introduces a huge number of new primitives and innovations, so there is a lot to dive into.

In the meantime, as a current or future node operator, you will likely want to prepare to run your compute inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). While anyone has been able to run their own compute for the network since launch, running it inside a TEE will help your compute to be  “trusted” by other nodes, increasing its usage and your rewards.

The first TEE to be supported by the system is AMD SEV-SNP, with other TEEs coming soon. We will go over the configurations you need to make in our AO Node Onboarding Workshop on Tuesday February 25th. 

Make sure to join the event to have a chance to win one of five AMD CPU’s to spin up your own AO node!

AO Node Onboarding Workshop · Luma

Join us on a workshop to get set to run your own AO-Core node, and win one of five AMD EPYC 7003 24 Core CPU's! The team behind AO will show you how to...

https://luma.com

Thank you for participating in the AO Testnet! If you own AOCRED tokens, for the next two weeks you are now able to convert them into an AO token claim, at the ratio of 1 AO for 1000 AOCRED. Because no AO tokens are pre-mined, these tokens will be offered to AOCRED holders from tokens generated by Forward Research’s holdings of AR.

You must deposit your AOCRED before the deadline in order to be eligible: 11 AM Eastern June 27, 2024

This process is only available to people outside of the United States. Claimants must attest that they are not residing in the US.

To do so, you must follow this 2 step process:

1. Deposit your AOCRED from your wallet using the AOCRED tab on the AO token mint site: ao.arweave.dev in order to confirm your AO claim.

2. Starting after approximately February 8th 2025, visit the mint site to claim your AO tokens into your Arweave wallet. You must perform this step within the year following its activation.

Please note that this second step is absolutely required in order to claim your AO tokens into your wallet. Simply doing step 1 above without step 2 is not enough to actually take possession of the AO tokens you are eligible to claim.

AO tokens will be transferable after ~15% of the total token supply has been minted (after the 100,000th 5 minute reward period), which will happen on approximately February 8th 2025.

Any tokens not claimed after February 8th, 2026 will be forfeit.

No more AOCRED will be created, and no further plans of Open Access Supercomputing Foundation or Forward Research involving AOCRED exist at this time.

Even though AOCRED will no longer be issued, new quests with wrapped AR will be added soon. In addition, many other projects in the Arweave ecosystem already have incentivized quests to perform.

Learn more by joining the AO discord: https://discord.com/invite/M2FcKZRGrC

The AO token in 8 key facts and dates:

1. AO is a 100% fair launch token following Bitcoin's economic model.

2. AO tokens will be used to secure message passing in its network. You can learn more in the new AO paper.

3. The minting mechanism runs retrospectively from 13:00 EST February 27, 2024 (block 1372724). 100% of the AO tokens minted during this period have been granted to Arweave token holders, based on their respective balances held every 5 minutes. If you held AR on exchanges or with a custodian, you should ask them how to receive your tokens.

4. Going forward, a full third (33.3%) of AO tokens will be minted to AR token holders according to their ownership, every 5 minutes. Two thirds (66.6%) of AO will be minted in the future for bridging assets into AO, in order to powerful incentivize economic growth.

5. The first phase of the bridging contracts is live today. During this pre-bridge phase your tokens will remain securely on their native network, while you earn AO tokens. Once phase 2 bridges are live, you will be able to deposit your assets in the new bridge contracts and make use of them on AO – while accruing rewards. You can deposit staked Ethereum (stETH) tokens into the audited pre-bridge contract here.

6. Bridging rewards start at 11:00 AM EDT June 18, 2024.

7. You can withdraw tokens from the pre-bridge at any time, but you will only start earning AO after rewards begin on June 18. Rewards are distributed once every 24 hours.

8. AO tokens will remain locked until ~15% of the supply has been minted. This will occur on approximately February 8th, 2025.

Overview:

AO is a 100% fair launch token modeled after Bitcoin.

Like Bitcoin, AO has a total supply of 21 million tokens and a similar halving cycle of 4 years, with AO being distributed every 5 minutes, at a monthly rate of 1.425% of the remaining supply. As of June 13, there are 1.0387 million AO in existence. This makes them ultra scarce. For comparison, there are 120 million Ether, 461 million Solana, and 55 billion Ripple tokens.

AO’s minting mechanism means that although the amount of newly minted tokens halves every 4 years, there is no abrupt “halving event”. Rather, the number of new tokens decreases slightly every month producing a smooth release schedule.

While most token allocations models favor insiders over the community, AO’s model adheres to the principles of fairness and equal access, which are at the core of what the crypto revolution is supposed to be. There are no presales or pre allocations. Instead, the AO token reward mechanism incentivizes two crucial aspects of successful ecosystems: economic growth and the security of its base layer.

It works like this:

~36% (100% of the first 4 months + 33.3% going forward) of AO tokens are minted over time by Arweave token holders, whose tokens incentivize the security of AO’s base layer – Arweave.

~64% of AO tokens are minted over time for providing external yield and bridging assets into AO to incentivize its economic growth. This creates an extremely strong incentive to grow the liquidity of the ecosystem, leading to an economic flywheel.

At the same time, without any token sales, the network provides funding for its own ecosystem development in two ways:

Permissionless Ecosystem Funding

After bridging is live, developers that attract users who deposit eligible assets in their apps will gain the corresponding AO token rewards. This gives the developers a permissionless, long-term revenue stream without having to apply for grants, external investment -- or even necessarily tokenize their projects. These developers can also choose to share part of their AO rewards with their users, if they prefer -- allowing users to continue earning AO tokens while using the apps in the ecosystem.

Permaweb Ecosystem Development Guild

Additionally, a number of dedicated ecosystem growth organizations and builders will also split the native yield of assets stored in the bridges. These organizations and builders work on the core protocol of AO, marketing operations, as well as critical infrastructure developments. This funding phases out over time, inline with the decaying rate of the network's mint -- allowing the network to bootstrap, but leaving it as a neutral, shared protocol.

How to Check your AO Balance

The AO token mint for Arweave token holders has been applied retroactively from the launch of the AO testnet on February 27th 2024 at 12:00AM UTC. Minting AO tokens since the start of the testnet will ensure a sufficient float of tokens before they circulate, targeted to be ~15% of the total supply (3.15 million) on approximately February 8th 2025.

If you have been holding $AR over the months since testnet launch, you have accrued approximately 0.016 AO tokens per AR as of June 13, 2024. Keep in mind that the current supply of AO is 1/65th of that of AR.

Major exchanges are currently looking into if and how to pass through $AO to their users. Please contact your exchange or custodian to determine how they are administering this process.

If you have been self-custodying your $AR tokens, you can easily check your balance by visiting ao.arweave.dev. Click on the Arweave tab and connect your self-custodial wallet (like ArConnect).

Earn AO by Holding AR

New AO tokens are minted every 5 minutes. Before the launch of the pre-bridge on June 18th, 100% of all AO tokens were minted by AR token holders. After the launch of the pre-bridge, 33% of AO tokens are allocated and divided proportionately to AR holders, averaging to ~36% of total AO supply minted by AR token holders over time This process happens automatically.

The list below shows approximately how many AO you can expect to accrue for a given balance of AR over the next 12 months:

1 AR: 0.016 AO

10 AR: 0.16 AO

50 AR: 0.8 AO

100 AR: 1.6 AO

500 AR: 8.0 AO

1000 AR: 16.0 AO

The number of newly minted $AO decreases over time, until all AO tokens are minted. AO tokens will become transferable on approximately February 8th, 2025.

Pre-bridge your stETH To Swap Yield for AO

Note: AO bridging rewards not available to persons in the US

During this initial period, stETH (ETH staked with Lido) can be deposited to accrue token rewards in AO. Other proof of stake assets will be eligible as we start opening up AO to more ecosystems.

Pre-bridged assets will not be usable in applications on the AO network during this initial period. Once the phase 2 bridge is live, you will be able to use your stETH in AO applications while still accruing AO token rewards.

When pre-bridging your stETH to AO, your original stETH deposit stays in an audited contract on the Ethereum network, while the native yield is split amongst dedicated ecosystem development organizations and builders in the AO ecosystem, in order to fuel growth. Upon launch these organizations are Open Access Supercomputing Foundation, Forward Research, Autonomous Finance, Warp Contracts, Longview Labs, and ao/acc. More organizations will be added as the ecosystem grows.

You can withdraw your initial stETH deposit at any time.

New AO tokens are minted every 5 minutes after 11 AM EDT June 18, 2024, precisely 16 weeks after the launch of AO’s testnet. After rewards begin, 66% of newly minted $AO are allocated and divided proportionately amongst wallets that pre-bridged to AO. This process happens automatically.

The exact number of AO tokens a yield provider receives is determined by the proportion of assets they deposited in the contract relative to the total assets deposited. As AO opens up to more ecosystems and more than one proof of stake asset can be provided, the number of AO tokens received will not only depend on the proportion of assets provided but also on the yield generated by each asset.

The list below shows how many AO tokens you can expect to accrue for holding a given percentage of of the total yield bearing asset pool over the next 12 months, assuming the only asset provided is stETH:

0.01% : 210 AO

0.1%: 2,105 AO

0.5%: 10,524 AO

1%: 21,049 AO

5%: 105,243 AO

AO tokens will become transferable on approximately February 8th, 2025.

How To Deposit stETH to Accrue AO

Note: AO bridging rewards not available to persons in the US

You can begin depositing stETH into the pre bridge today. Rewards start accruing on June 18, 2024 at 11am EDT. Rewards are distributed once per day, so it may take up to 24 hours before you earn your first rewards.

Follow these simple instructions to swap your stETH yield for AO tokens:

1. Go to the mint page on the AO website.

2. Click on the Ethereum tab and connect your Ethereum wallet (Metamask or Rabby).

3. Enter the Arweave wallet address on which you want to receive your AO tokens.

4. Deposit stETH into the audited contract by inputting the amount you want to provide. These tokens will stay in the trustless contract on Ethereum and can be withdrawn at any time. If you don’t have stETH in your wallet, you will need to swap other tokens to get some stETH before depositing.

5. Sign the transaction in your ETH wallet to deposit the stETH in the contract.

6. You will earn AO tokens directly to the Arweave wallet you specified.

Smart contract security

The pre-bridge contract has been extensively audited and is trustless: Nobody has access to your tokens apart from you. The only privileged right of any kind is that Open Access Supercomputing Foundation (the organization that has launched AO’s token, in coordination with Arweave ecosystem organizations) is able to eject tokens from the contract – sending them back to their original owners – in the event of a security incident. This functionality offers an additional layer of safety, without putting the pre-bridged assets under the control of any centralized entity.

The contracts themselves are a minor modification of the MorpheusAI deposit contracts. These contracts were used in order to provide a battle-tested base, lessening any security risks.

Conclusion

The AO token minting process introduces a radically different model that rewards both users and developers, grounded in principles of fairness and equal access. The diverse teams behind this initiative have drawn inspiration from the groundbreaking innovation of Bitcoin and the foundational principles established by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Over the past fifteen years, the crypto industry has experienced tremendous growth. However, this expansion has not always aligned with broader societal benefits. To truly advance the mission of creating a permissionless and decentralized web that guarantees users’ rights, it became essential to rethink how value and incentives are integrated to achieve these goals. We hope that the principles we advocate resonate with you and may inspire you to join this movement too.