Permanent storage + AO super parallel computer: Building data Consensus infrastructure

A key problem that Web3 is now facing is the Equity Confirmation and exchange scheme of massive data assets cannot be solved! To generate economic activities of data assets, Equity Confirmation of data is required, and data can only be confirmed through Consensus! The emergence of arweave permanent storage + AO super parallel computer is expected to solve this key problem, and accelerate the landing of Web3 value internet!

One of the most important features of Web3 is that users control their own data, which is a significant difference from Web2, where Internet giants control user data. Now, the Block chain technology initiated by BTC frees us from the control of traditional banks or Internet banks, allowing users to control their own electronic cash and conduct peer-to-peer transactions. ETH and other public chains for Smart Contracts enable users to control and trade various contracts and Derivatives in a peer-to-peer manner.

However, in addition to financial assets, there are other types of data assets on the Internet that do not yet have mature solutions to enable users to control and achieve peer-to-peer transactions on their own. So, Web3 users currently do not have complete control over their own data. The reason for this is that we lack the infrastructure for data equity confirmation. In order for users to take control of their own data, data equity confirmation must be achieved! In order for data to achieve equity confirmation, it must reach consensus. Since data states are divided into dynamic and static, consensus must be reached at both the transmission and storage ends in order to establish data asset consensus and enable data to achieve equity confirmation.

Data can only achieve Equity Confirmation by reaching Consensus. Only by achieving Equity Confirmation can data exchange or transactions be generated. Only when data exchange or transactions occur can value be reflected, and then the Value Internet can be created. One important reason why Web2 has such a serious data island phenomenon is that data does not have Equity Confirmation. The emergence of Arweave permanent storage + AO super parallel computer is expected to change this situation and help us achieve Consensus at both ends of data storage and transmission. As shown in the figure:

Arweave has achieved Consensus in permanent storage after several years of development (Note: there is already a lot of detailed information about this online, so I won’t go into detail here). Here, we will focus on how the ao parallel computing machine achieves Consensus at the transmission end (Note: Many articles studying ao mention that ao stores the holographic state of processes in Arweave, but there are few articles that explain the specific details clearly. They only briefly mention it, so I want to clarify the general implementation path here).

In order to achieve Consensus at the transmission end, it is necessary to ensure the integrity, consistency, verifiability and transmission efficiency of the data. Before introducing it in detail, let’s introduce the design principles of the AO economic model, which can help us understand how AO ensures data security from a top-level design perspective. There is a paragraph in the AO White Paper that roughly means:

Typical economic models for blockchain networks such as BTC, Ethereum, and Solana revolve around the concept of purchasing scarce block space, with security as a subsidized byproduct. Users pay transaction fees to incentivize miners or validators to include their transactions in the blockchain. However, this model inherently relies on the scarcity of block space to drive fee revenue, which in turn provides funding for network security. Against the backdrop of BTC’s security architecture, which is fundamentally based on block rewards and transaction fees, consider a hypothetical scenario where block rewards are eliminated and transaction throughput is assumed to be infinitely scalable. In this case, the scarcity of block space would be effectively offset, resulting in the lowest possible transaction fees. As a result, the economic incentive for network participants to maintain security would be greatly reduced, thereby increasing the vulnerability of transactions to potential security threats. Solana provides an example of this theoretical model in practice, demonstrating that as network scalability increases, fee revenue correspondingly decreases. In the absence of significant transaction fees, the primary source of security funding comes from block rewards. These rewards are essentially a tax on tokenholders, manifested as operating expenses for those who choose to stake their tokens themselves, or as a gradual dilution of proportional ownership in the network for those who choose to forego staking. Earlier, we proposed the need for the $AO token as a unified representation of economic value to support security mechanisms within the network.

The above paragraph shows me the significant difference between the economic model of ao and the economic model of other mainstream blockchains. The ao economic model is primarily focused on protecting network security, because the characteristics of non-financial data assets require that the underlying infrastructure security must be ensured, while also ensuring efficiency.

The data types of non-financial assets are diverse, and the security, scalability, and timeliness requirements for each type of data transaction scenario are different. This requires that the security model of the ao network must be flexible, and cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach like traditional blockchain to ensure security. If ao adopts such a security model, it will not only cause significant waste of computing resources, but also seriously affect the scalability of the ao system.

So ao can achieve the customization of security mechanisms based on different data types, data values, and customer autonomy, in which the economic model plays an important regulatory role. In short, high-value data can customize high-level security mechanisms during transmission, while low-value data can customize security models with lower security costs. This can not only save computational resources but also meet the security requirements of different data categories. When we analyze this, we can see why blockchains like Ethereum, BTC, Solana, etc., are not very suitable for Web3 data transmission. Because their security models are unified, not flexibly customized, which does not conform to the transmission characteristics of non-financial data assets. Next, let’s analyze the details of the mutual adjustment between ao’s economic model and security model.

1. Maintaining the consistency, integrity, and verifiability of the data:

a. Technical Support: In the ao super parallel computer, the messaging mechanism is a core component, ensuring effective communication and collaboration between different computing units (such as CU, SU, etc.). The following is the main process of message transmission:

Message generation: Users or processes initiate interaction requests by creating messages. These messages must conform to the format specified by the ao protocol to be correctly transmitted and processed in the network.

Messenger Unit (MU) Receive and Forward: The Messenger Unit (MU) is responsible for receiving messages generated by users or processes and relaying them to the appropriate SU Node within the network. The MU will manage the routing of messages to ensure that they reach the SU accurately and without error: in this process, the MU will perform a Digital Signature on the messages to ensure data integrity.

Scheduler Unit (SU) Processing: When a message arrives at the SU Node, the SU assigns a unique incremental nonce to the message to ensure its orderliness within the same process, and uploads the message and assignment result to the Arweave Data Layer for permanent storage.

Calculation Unit (CU) processing: The Calculation Unit (CU) receives a message and performs the corresponding calculation task based on the message content. After the calculation is completed, the CU generates a signature proof with the specific message result and returns it to the SU. This signature proof ensures the correctness and verifiability of the calculation result. The specific workflow is as shown in the figure:

（Note: This image is from the ao White Paper）

The core principle of the ao super parallel computing machine is to decouple computation and Consensus. Ao itself does not solve the problem of message verification, but ensures the verifiability of all messages and states by storing the complete state of all processes on Arweave. Anyone can verify the consistency of messages through Arweave, which means anyone can question the correctness of ao messages and initiate challenges through Arweave to verify messages. On the one hand, this allows ao to break free from the constraints of traditional blockchains: in traditional blockchains, the computation and verification of all nodes are parallel, which enhances system security but also greatly consumes computing resources and cannot achieve high scalability. For example, in the ETH system, adding more nodes will not significantly increase the system processing speed. However, it is precisely because of this characteristic of ao that it can have highly scalable features. On the other hand, it can ensure that all data is verifiable, which is the cleverness of ao design, transferring the verification cost off-chain while ensuring verifiability.

**b. Economic Model Guarantee: **The above process is the general process of message passing in ao super parallel computing. In addition, MU\SU\CU and other three types of Nodes need to stake $AO, and corresponding solutions are provided for various unexpected situations that may occur for these three types of Nodes. For example, if it is found that MU has not made a Digital Signature or has signed invalid information, the system will reduce MU’s stake assets. If MU finds that CU has provided invalid proof, the system will also reduce CU’s stake assets. Various problems that may arise from MU\SU\CU and other Nodes are addressed in the ao White Paper with corresponding solutions based on the economic model, thereby ensuring that these three types of Nodes will not behave maliciously. In addition, the ao super parallel computer also allows MU to aggregate proofs from multiple CUs through an equity aggregation mechanism to ensure the integrity and credibility of information transmission (for specific process, please refer to ao White Paper 5.6 ao sec Origin Process and 5.5.3 Equity Aggregation).

In addition, SIV sub-staking Consensus Mechanism allows users to achieve Consensus or partial Consensus on the results: clients can independently set the number of participants or validators, thus controlling the impact of Consensus on cost and latency.

In summary, the ao super parallel computer ensures the integrity, consistency, and verifiability of data through the combination of technical and economic models. And because the security of various types of data varies, ao provides a flexible and customizable security model.

2. Prevent data leakage:

ao encourages MU/SU/CU Nodes to enhance security measures through the introduction of an economic stake model, and ensures data security and flexibility through mechanisms such as security level purchase, equity exclusivity period, and equity time value. In general, customers can insure the purchased messages, and the value of this insurance is related to the value of the message, the expected return rate of the stakers, and the security guarantee time of the message. On the one hand, this can ensure the security of data transmission and motivate stakers to provide higher security guarantees. On the other hand, it can also ensure the interests of message recipients in the event of message leakage, thereby enabling both buyers and sellers of messages to reach Consensus, thereby promoting the trading of data assets.

In addition, ao has collaborated with PADO, allowing users to encrypt their data using PADO’s zkFHE technology and securely store it on Arweave. Also, because Arweave is decentralized, it can prevent single point of failure. These mechanisms ensure full protection of data during transmission and storage.

3. Ensure data transmission efficiency:

Unlike networks like Ethereum, where the base layer and each Rollup run as a single process, ao supports any number of processes running in parallel, while ensuring the verifiability of the computation remains intact. In addition, these networks run in a globally synchronized state, while ao processes maintain their own independent state. This independence allows ao processes to handle a higher volume of interactions and maintain the scalability of the computation, making it particularly suitable for applications with high performance and reliability requirements.

In addition, because the process on ao can be holographically projected onto Arweave, the message log on Arweave can trigger the execution of the ao process in Reverse. Once a single process interruption is detected, the process can be immediately reactivated via Arweave, which can prevent single point of failure and restore the ‘process’ state in the shortest possible time, thereby ensuring the efficiency of message transmission.

This article elaborates on how ao ensures the integrity, consistency, verifiability, efficiency, and anti-leakage of message transmission from the transmission end in a simple and in-depth manner. When these aspects are guaranteed, data Consensus can be achieved at the transmission end. Arweave has been operating for several years at the storage end, ensuring permanent data storage and Consensus on the storage end. Therefore, the combination of Arweave’s permanent storage and ao’s super-parallel computing solution is expected to solve the Consensus problem of a large amount of data at both the storage and transmission ends.

If this problem can be solved, it will bring about revolutionary changes: massive non-financial data assets can generate Consensus and greatly accelerate the Equity Confirmation of data assets, thereby helping to solve the problem of Equity Confirmation of web3 data assets. Only after the data assets are Equitably Confirmed can they generate a large amount of economic activities, thus achieving a true value internet.

Now BTC solves the issues of Equity Confirmation and transactions in electronic cash, enabling each of us to control electronic cash, while Ethereum addresses the Equity Confirmation and transaction issues of various financial assets through Smart Contract and blockchain; Arweave’s permanent storage + ao super parallel computer is expected to help solve the Equity Confirmation and transaction issues of data assets. Of course, the focus of this article is from the perspective of data asset Consensus, as this is the key to the Equity Confirmation and transaction of data assets. Personally, I believe that Arweave’s permanent storage + ao super parallel computer is expected to be on par with BTC and Ethereum, forming a good complementarity and jointly solving the key issues of Web3, thereby helping us move towards the value internet. As shown in the figure:

Project Risk:

• The connection between ao and Arweave: ao’s hyper-parallel computing may bring huge throughput and challenges to Arweave, which may result in messages not being able to achieve holographic projection or lead to instability in other aspects of the system.
• MU/SU/CU is the key Node of the ao system, which may exhibit centralization characteristics, leading to corruption and causing instability in the project. It is hoped that the ao official website can establish a reputation assessment system for Decentralization, allowing DAO members to independently evaluate the superiority of the three Nodes, thereby forming a fair and transparent evaluation and competition mechanism for the three Nodes.
• Arweave focuses on permanent data storage. As its scale expands, it may face scrutiny from governments around the world. It remains to be seen whether the official has corresponding strategies or solutions for this.
• The design of the economic model needs to be verified: The security model of ao has a relatively high dependency on the economic model. Although ao also ensures the security of some data through the above technical means, if the economic model cannot function well, it will drop the security of each stake link, and then cannot guarantee data security. The security model of ao is different from the traditional blockchain security model: the core principle of blockchain is to make attackers pay a heavy price to ensure security, specifically by combining economic models, Consensus Mechanism, Longest Chain Rule, etc. through mathematical principles to make the attackers’ losses greater than their income, thus having strong security guarantees; while the design of ao’s security model is similar to the design principles of traditional web2 security models: by strengthening defense measures to resist external attacks, and the strength of defense measures is more regulated through ao’s economic model to motivate and pressure each stakeNode to enhance security. Therefore, if the economic model design is unreasonable, it can be said to be fatal to the implementation of the ao project.

Of course, the above analysis is only from the perspective of technical models, economic models, etc. If you want to consider the potential of a project, you also need to consider the technical strength of the project team, comprehensive background, and the ecological status of the project, as well as the potential of the track or direction to which it belongs, and many other factors. These aspects will also be discussed gradually with everyone later.