On April 16, AO, a scalable blockchain network based on Arweave, announced the launch of its 'Network Availability Staking Alpha (NASA)' test program. According to BlockBeats, this initiative marks a significant step in the AO ecosystem, aiming to improve the availability and reliability of decentralized data networks through a staking mechanism. Currently in its Alpha phase, users can participate in network availability verification and earn rewards by providing data services to Arweave gateways and staking AO tokens.

In the initial trial, AO introduced an 'availability staking' mechanism, requiring node operators to stake 25 AO tokens to participate in the network and compete in terms of speed and stability in responding to user requests. The system allocates rewards from a monthly pool of 1,000 AO tokens based on nodes' performance in data services. This mechanism leverages the next-generation HyperBEAM architecture, enabling higher verifiability and trustlessness for gateway and routing services while significantly reducing operational costs.

The project team stated that NASA aims to establish a stronger decentralized economic model for the entire permanent network infrastructure, paving the way for future expansion into areas such as computational scheduling, data indexing, and network services. Although the current reward scale is small and still in the testing phase, the program is seen as a crucial starting point for the AO-Core economic system and will gradually expand to more network infrastructure services.