Sandpile models have a long history in the statistical mechanics literature as paradigms of self-organized criticality. Of particular importance is the Stochastic Sandpile Model. This abelian variant of Manna’s model is widely believed to exhibit universality. Since the Stochastic Standpile Model gained popularity in the mathematics community the prime challenge has been to prove that the critical density for the one-dimensional Stochastic Sandpile Model is less than one. In this talk we will discuss the recent proof of this conjecture. Based on joint work with Christopher Hoffman, Yiping Hu, and Jacob Richey.