Arweave, AO, and AI - Modular Framework with Flexible Security

Key Insights

• AO is a new protocol built on top of the permanent data storage layer, Arweave. One of AO’s core value propositions is its ability to run applications (processes in AO terminology) in parallel and maintain the associated state locally instead of requiring a shared global state.
• All applications on AO communicate via a defined message standard, enabling an out-of-the-box solution for processes to read and write data to each other.
• A unique property of AO is the ability to flexibly scale the security value underlying a process. Process developers can configure how much security their application requires and scale it by effectively paying for additional validators (Compute Units in AO terminology) to compute the state of the application.
• Due to AO's scalability properties, VM-agnostic architecture, and native cron job functionality, many teams are seeking to build automation tooling and AI-powered products on the network.

Over the course of the past couple of years, two crypto infrastructure patterns have emerged: modularity and flexible security.