AI Arena: An AI Model Training Factory Disguised as a Game, TGE Coming in May (with Airdrop Tutorial)

TL;DR

Whether attending industry events in Hong Kong or Dubai, one conclusion can be drawn: AI is the greatest consensus between East and West in this bull market.

We make no secret of our bullishness on the AI narrative, but most AI concepts currently focus on infrastructure, far removed from users, like castles in the air. Is there a real application that can make users perceive the existence of AI?

The answer is YES, AI Arena, a blockchain game that fuses AI, backed by Paradigm in its seed round.

As a 90s kid, my childhood happiness was accompanied by classic fighting games like “The King of Fighters” and “Street Fighter.” Whether it was human vs. machine or player vs. player, the core operation was still human.

In the AI era, let’s open our imaginations. What if, in a human-machine battle, the machine side is an intelligent entity with thoughts? By injecting our thoughts, we can give the game character a digital soul, becoming a digital projection of someone. Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? This is what AI Arena aims to do.

AI Arena is a PVP fighting game where players can continually evolve their game characters through AI learning. Through the training platform provided by AI Arena, combined with artificial intelligence, we can store our operations, consciousness, and thoughts in an AI model. This way, the characters in the game will be able to fight according to the way we set. In other words, in AI Arena, the ones truly participating in the fights are the game characters imbued with our digital souls, another version of ourselves.

The combat mode in AI Arena is similar to Nintendo’s “Super Smash Bros.”

Currently, there are two game modes for players to choose from: Research Competition and Gaming Competition.

In the Research Competition, the competitors are the best machine learning (ML) models created by researchers. Researchers will train their AI models in the Python environment created by AI Arena, and upload them to the chain to battle against AI models from other researchers. Outstanding researchers will be rewarded with AI Arena’s native token.

In the Gaming Competition, the competitors are players. Players from around the world compete to develop the best training strategies to maximize the performance of their NFT characters in the arena. As mentioned above, each NFT game character contains an AI model that can mimic your actions to learn how to fight, driving your NFT game character to battle. As players climb the AI Arena global leaderboard (ranked matches), they can also earn the game’s native token as a reward.

If we define AI Arena as a simple Web 3.0 game applying AI, I would find its scope a bit small. AI Arena is more like an AI model training camp disguised as a game, allowing more users to access, understand, and experience AI through the gaming scenario and enabling AI engineers to provide various AI algorithms based on AI Arena.

If you treat AI Arena as just a game, then the token economy is the traditional “Play to Earn.” If you treat AI Arena as an AI model training project, then the token economy is “Train to Earn.”

AI Arena’s native token is called N, which simultaneously incentivizes researchers and players to participate in this AI competition and is the foundation of AI Arena’s economic flywheel.

Players:

• Players train AI characters to participate in game-ranking matches. Participation requires staking $N, with a chance to earn more $N rewards.
• Game props: Players can use $N to purchase batteries to charge their NFTs and then battle in ranked matches.
• Players can deposit $N into the merging pool to obtain more powerful NFTs (details below).

Researchers:

• Researchers can stake $N to participate in research competitions (AI algorithm models), with a chance to earn more $N rewards.

The merging pool is a unique mechanism in AI Arena, primarily aimed at controlling the inflation rate of NFTs, consuming $N, and giving players a chance to obtain more powerful NFT characters.

Before entering a round of ranked battles, players can choose to deposit a certain percentage of the $N rewards they earn in that round into the merging pool. The more rewards deposited into the merging pool, the higher the chance of winning an NFT, and all $N deposited by players into the merging pool will be burned.

As the name suggests, the system will select NFTs staked in a specific round of ranked matches and have them compete against each other. Through this competition, the system can select which NFTs to merge to create more powerful NFTs.

Once the merging is complete, a new batch of enhanced NFTs will be obtained, inheriting the skills from the original NFTs, and then competing again in a cycle. The NFTs will continually evolve and become more powerful.

So, overall, the main use cases for $N are: staking for ranked battles, burning in the merging pool, and consumption for in-game props.

ArenaX Labs, the parent company of AI Arena, announced in October 2021 that it had completed a $5 million seed round led by Paradigm, with Framework Ventures participating.

On January 9, 2024, ArenaX Labs completed a $6 million funding round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from SevenX Ventures, FunPlus/Xterio, and Moore Strategic Ventures. Compared to the front-facing AI Arena, the developer ArenaX Labs is perhaps more noteworthy.

AI Arena is the first flagship AI game launched by ArenaX Labs. As an AI company, ArenaX Labs has launched two underlying AI platforms:

• ARC platform allows other game developers to use its core technology to create AI games, where human players can imbue AI-powered skills through imitation learning. AI Arena is a typical game case.
• SAI platform gamifies complex machine learning competitions/games, enabling the AI community to solve real-world problems through an engaging game environment.

Through these two platforms, other traditional game studios can also quickly build their own AI game models using the underlying technology.

Gaming is the best scenario to reach users, but ultimately, ArenaX Labs hopes to change gaming through AI and change AI through gaming. So I call it an AI company disguised as a game company.

According to previously released official information, its token $N is planned for TGE in May, with 0.8% of the total supply allocated as an airdrop to participants in the “TGE Points” event. Users only need to complete relevant social tasks to earn points and redeem tokens in the future. For example, writing a tweet with the theme “Why $N is AI Gaming” and the hashtag #Nisaigaming on X will earn TGE points. Participation is open to everyone, not just KOLs.

Participation link:

https://hub.aiarena.io/ref/2A66MW9N

ArenaX Labs was co-founded by Brandon Da Silva, Wei Xie, and Dylan Pereira. Brandon Da Silva and Wei Xie both previously worked for several years at OPTrust, one of Canada’s largest pension funds. Dylan Pereira is the art director and previously worked as a designer at Titmouse, an independent animation studio in the US with close collaborations with Netflix.

Among the currently issued tokens, the AI game-related asset with the largest market value should be $PRIME. Whether AI Arena can succeed $PRIME and become a new AI game star is worth looking forward to.

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