*Forward the Original Title‘Weak AO airdrop and ecological stagnation: Has Arweave’s new “decentralized computing” narrative failed?’

Whether the “loss of voice” of former stars Arweave and AO, which should have sparked discussion, is caused by the decline of the ecosystem, or is it another gem that has been ignored by the market.

On February 11, the veteran decentralized storage protocol Arweave launched its decentralized computing platform AO and released an official announcement stating that the first mainnet token minting had been completed, with new token minting scheduled daily at 18:20 Eastern Time. Unlike the airdropped tokens Story and Solayer, AO’s launch did not seem to generate much buzz on social media. However, in terms of vision, AO is closely related to the hottest topic of the moment—AI—and Arweave, as a mature decentralized storage infrastructure, can provide significant support at the underlying network level.

The lack of discussion surrounding Arweave and AO, once prominent names, raises the question: is this silence a sign of ecosystem decline, or is AO yet another hidden gem overlooked by the market?

Low Airdrop Expectations Lead to Market Apathy

One possible reason AO has been overlooked is that this token issuance did not generate much market anticipation. According to the official introduction, AO has a total issuance of 21 million tokens and adopts a halving mechanism similar to Bitcoin. In the initial reward distribution, 36% was allocated to AR holders, while 64% was used to incentivize cross-chain asset bridging (such as DAI and stETH). As of February 12, data shows that 3.214 million AO tokens have been minted.

As of February 11, 2025, the total issuance of AR tokens stood at 65.65 million. Based on this ratio, the current issuance ratio of AR to AO is approximately 20.78:1. Pre-market trading has begun on exchanges such as LBank and MEXC, but there is a significant price discrepancy between the two. LBank’s pre-market price is around $92, while MEXC’s price is only about $35, a difference of more than 100%. However, in terms of trading volume, LBank recorded a 24-hour pre-market trading volume of $1.97 million, higher than MEXC. Therefore, LBank’s price may better reflect market expectations. Based on the higher $92 pre-market price, AO’s circulating market cap is approximately $290 million.

According to previous official data, the average AO allocation per AR holder is estimated at 0.016 AO per AR token. Using the $92 pre-market price, each AR holder would receive approximately $14.72 worth of AO per token over the past few months, which exceeds the current value of a single AR token. However, considering AR’s significant price drop over the past six months—from a peak of $49.55 in May 2024 to $9.52 on February 11, 2025, a decline of over 80%—holders would need AO’s opening price to rise to around $500 just to offset their losses.

As of February 11, the total number of AR holding addresses was 211,000, meaning each address could receive approximately 4.44 AO tokens, worth $409 at a $92 pre-market price (though the actual allocation depends on airdrop rules). Current official data shows that the top 100 AO holding addresses collectively own 2.21 million AO tokens, accounting for 70% of total supply, indicating a high concentration among large holders. Overall, if AO’s pre-market price remains at $92, the total airdrop value could reach $290 million. However, if the price drops to $35, the airdrop value would shrink to just $110 million. Considering AR’s sharp decline in value, it is understandable why the market enthusiasm remains subdued.

Network Activity Has Increased but Remains at a Low Level

In reality, the overall activity level of the Arweave network has never been particularly high. For example, on February 11, the number of daily active addresses on the Arweave network was 3,366. Compared to historical data, this is actually considered a high activity level. Before 2023, the network’s daily active addresses were typically around 1,000. In 2024, this number increased to the 2,000 range. After entering 2025, possibly due to expectations surrounding the AO airdrop, daily active addresses have generally exceeded 3,000, with a peak day surpassing 5,000.

Additionally, as a decentralized storage network, data upload volume is perhaps one of the most important indicators of network activity. On-chain data shows that since the end of 2023, Arweave’s daily data upload volume has been steadily increasing, rising from an average of 100+ GB per day to over 400 GB per day. Although this is still far from the 2.02 TB single-day peak recorded in 2022, the overall trend shows a steady upward climb.

In terms of network activity, ArDrive is the most active application on the Arweave network, accounting for about 90% of daily data uploads. ArDrive is a permanent storage application on the Arweave network, allowing users to store their files permanently without censorship. In 2022, ArDrive raised $17.2 million in seed funding. Besides ArDrive, another ecosystem project, Irys, contributes approximately 10% of total data uploads.

A peculiar data anomaly has also emerged within the Arweave ecosystem. Since June 1, 2024, the total number of Arweave addresses has remained frozen at 211,366, with no new addresses being added. It remains unclear whether this indicates a complete stagnation in user growth within the ecosystem or if it is an issue with block explorer data maintenance. However, much like the lukewarm reception of AO, these minor bugs and anomalies have largely gone unnoticed and unmentioned.

AO Ecosystem Still in Its Very Early Stage

According to official data, the Total Value Locked (TVL) on the AO network is currently around $315 million. This marks a significant decline compared to the $700 million during the testnet phase. This suggests that users may not be highly enthusiastic about staking incentives on the AO network moving forward.

From an ecosystem perspective, several related projects are still in their early development stages. For example, AOX, the primary cross-chain bridge in the AO network, announced on February 11 that its trading volume surpassed $8 million, while its TVL exceeded $3 million. Another ecosystem project, FusionFi, reported that its settlement volume surpassed $10 million.

Based on social media interactions, several projects within the AO ecosystem are already in operation:

Marketverse AI – AI agent project
StarGrid Battle Tactics – On-chain game
Decent.land – EVM virtual machine
AOX – Cross-chain bridge
FusionFi Protocol – AgentFi
Permaswap – Decentralized Exchange (DEX)
Astro Labs – Liquidity provider and issuer of the USDA stablecoin
RedStone Oracles – Oracle project

Overall, the AO network is still in its infancy. It currently lacks a dedicated block explorer, has no official ecosystem roadmap, and has not yet announced when AO will officially launch for trading. Despite undergoing a year-long testnet phase, the ecosystem still appears unfinished and underdeveloped. As a result, public expectations for AO remain unclear.

From another perspective, AO’s core appeal may have initially stemmed from its technological innovation. However, judging by its mainnet launch, it feels like only half of the work has been completed—with some progress on tokenomics, but no clear results on its AI potential or performance upgrades via permanent storage, which were its core narratives. For AO, the key to success lies in translating its technological vision into real-world applications, rather than relying solely on token incentives.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [PANews]. Forward the Original Title‘Weak AO airdrop and ecological stagnation: Has Arweave’s new “decentralized computing” narrative failed?’. All copyrights belong to the original author [Frank, PANews]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
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