AI+Crypto Landscape Explained: 7 Major Tracks & Over 60+ Projects

Summary

AI applications combined with blockchain technology are attracting increasing attention in the market. ChatGPT has gained hundreds of millions of users in a very short time, and Nvidia’s stock price increased by 8 times in 2023, with a market value exceeding one trillion dollars. AI has become the absolute mainstream of humanity, and its narrative and capital are also beginning to spill over into related fields, attracting increasing attention in the market.

Crypto, as an important complement to AI, has a wide range of applications and enormous development potential, but it is currently in its early stages. At present, many institutions and practitioners still have a tentative attitude towards the combination of AI and web3, mainly starting from the most direct use case of Crypto, namely “assetization”: computing power assetization (computing power cloud, computing power market), model assetization (AI Agent), data assetization (storage).

From the current perspective, the decentralized attributes unique to Crypto technology do not necessarily improve efficiency and reduce costs in the training process of AI, requiring a large amount of infrastructure construction. However, assetization reduces the friction of market transactions and introduces more previously unused computing power, which is profitable in the context of scarce computing power; model assetization allows the community to own or use AI in a decentralized manner, with relatively simple technical implementation and low barriers to entry, but the narrative of democratizing AI corresponds to the anxiety of AI centralization; decentralized data can indeed reduce costs to a certain extent, but even in the context of crypto, its assetization is still difficult, requiring a lot of business exploration.

Although the market has not fully reached a consensus on AI + Crypto, the distribution of its tracks has become clear. Trustless Labs has traversed over 60 projects in the primary and secondary markets. This article will horizontally explore seven modules including computing power cloud, computing power market, model assetization and training, AI Agent, data assetization, ZKML, and AI applications, to explore the future development of AI and cryptocurrency and discover investment opportunities.

Computing Cloud

With the overall growth of the artificial intelligence market represented by companies such as Nvidia and the trend of GPU supply shortages, computing power cloud and related computing power market projects have become one of the first areas to benefit from the growth of the AI ​​industry. Computing Cloud attempts to solve the shortage of GPU computing power by integrating the idle computing power of existing cloud service providers into a centralized computing network, which reduces computing power costs compared to traditional cloud services. Each of these projects has its own focus, and most of them focus on GPU computing power. However, each project focuses on different areas and technology implementation methods. Some are based on container technology such as Akash Network, and some provide implementation on virtual machine level.

For computing power cloud projects, the growth of users and business is the basis for its value growth. These projects are often considered high-PE AI computing power companies because they do not rely on a decentralized narrative. Since GPU resource scarcity is likely to be a long-term phenomenon, it becomes particularly important for primary market players to examine the commercial capabilities of these projects.

Akash Network

Akash Network is a decentralized cloud computing marketplace based on Cosmos SDK and Tendermint technology, dedicated to leveraging underutilized resources in data centers. Since its founding in 2015, Akash Network has become one of the earliest projects in the field, initially supporting only CPU computing resources. In September 2020, Akash launched the mainnet supporting CPU computing, and successfully launched the mainnet supporting GPU computing in September 2023, further expanding its service scope and performance. Akash is designed to tap into and capture the huge market of underutilized resources in data centers.

Akash Network uses a unique reverse auction mechanism that allows users to choose the supplier with the lowest bid to reduce cloud computing costs. Its average price is only about one-third of that of mainstream cloud service providers such as AWS and Azure. This pricing strategy not only saves users a lot of costs, but also increases the competitiveness and attractiveness of the market.

The underlying architecture of the project uses the Akash container platform built on k8s to orchestrate and manage containers to meet users’ various cloud computing needs. This design allows users to flexibly deploy and manage containers, further improving resource usage efficiency and flexibility.

Akash Network successfully raised US$2 million in 2020, led by Cypher Capital, showing market recognition of its technology and business model. The founder of the project, Greg Osuri, has extensive experience in serial entrepreneurship and cloud architecture experience since 2008, while Adam Bozanich serves as Co-founder & CTO.

Currently, $AKT has a market cap of $130 million and a fully diluted value (FDV) of $220 million.

Ritual

Ritual It is a cutting-edge project dedicated to integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and smart contract technology. It has established an open AI infrastructure network. The project is driven by an experienced team, including Eva Zhang, who has worked at top companies such as Socket, Apple, and Google and conducted machine learning research at Stanford University, as well as co-founders Niraj Pant and Akilesh Potti, who have a background in Polychain. Ritual’s vision is to enable developers to seamlessly integrate AI into any on-chain application or protocol, including the ability to fine-tune, monetize and conduct inference, aiming to facilitate the development of fully transparent DeFi, self-improving blockchains, autonomous agents and generated content, etc.

Although in its early stages, Project Ritual has already achieved a number of results, including the launch of its first phase product. Infernet is a lightweight library that can introduce calculations to the chain, supports any EVM-compatible chain, and allows smart contracts to natively access AI models for various on-chain use cases and tasks. Infernet can not only optimize the decentralized oracle network, but also enable DApps to implement functions such as DAO proposal risk detection and NFT image generation through its SDK. Ritual also plans to launch its second phase product, Ritual Chain, in the coming months, which will be a sovereign chain with custom virtual machines dedicated to more advanced AI-native applications.

Although Ritual has not yet launched a testnet, and there is no economic model, currency issuance and staking mechanism, the project’s open source code, team background, technical roadmap, strategic direction and community-shared concepts all show its huge potential and industry attention. In addition, Ritual has successfully completed $25 million in financing, led by Archetype, with participation from Accomplice and Robot Ventures, etc., demonstrating the investment community’s recognition and support for its technology and vision.

Render Network

Render Network is a decentralized GPU rendering platform designed to utilize globally distributed high-performance GPU nodes to provide artists and developers with on-demand scalable rendering capabilities. This platform not only focuses on the field of rendering, but also supports AI computing and promotes the development of next-generation rendering and AI technology. Render Network founder Jules Urbach, who serves as OTOY’s strategic visionary and chief architect of its technology roadmap, is a pioneer in computer graphics, streaming and 3D rendering. He has over 25 years of industry experience. Since its establishment in 2002, OTOY has completed 4 rounds of financing as of 2020, and made a $50 million Series B investment in Light Field Labs in February 2023.

Since launching its first ICO in October 2017, Render Network has grown into an early but highly promising project. The project was subject to a private sales period between January and May 2018. Currently, Render Network’s native token $RNDR has a market capitalization of $4.3 billion, while its FDV is $6.1 billion, and has been listed on the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and OKX.

On November 2, 2023, the Render Foundation announced that the Render Network has successfully completed the core infrastructure upgrade from Ethereum to Solana. This transfer is designed to take advantage of Solana’s high performance and low cost advantages to further promote the development of the platform. In the process, Render Network launched a new token, RENDER, while being minted on Solana, and the old token, RNDR, will still exist. During the upgrade process, 1 RNDR can be exchanged for 1 RENDER. In the future, the Render Foundation will focus on and fully support the RENDER token, marking an important milestone for the Render Network to move into a new stage.

NetMind.AI

NetMind.AI is a huge artificial intelligence ecosystem, consisting of four core modules: computing power market, ChatBot, Agent, and life assistant. Its core, NetMind.Power, is a computing power market module based on Ethereum, providing a GPU inference and training platform. NetMind.AI’s training/inference load management platform has entered the testnet stage since September 2023. NetMind.Power supports a wide range of GPU models, integrates Google Colab’s one-click import function, has a good user experience, and is currently in the free beta testing phase.

The NetMind chain is fully compatible with EVM, and its token $NMT has a market value of $444 million and FDV of approximately $13 billion.

CUDOS

CUDOS Similar to Akash, is a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) blockchain using Tendermint Core on the Cosmos SDK, with cross-chain capabilities for Ethereum and L2. Cudos Blockchain Compute is designed to provide multi-chain EVM support and provide GPU computing power.

$CUDOS has a market cap of 161 million and an FDV of 275 million.

Nuco.cloud

Nuco.cloud is a decentralized computing cloud service based on blockchain technology, aiming to provide diversified cloud computing solutions, including use cases such as artificial intelligence training, data analysis, scientific research, and efficient rendering. The project runs on the two major blockchain platforms of Ethereum and Telos, taking advantage of decentralization to provide users with flexible and efficient computing resources. By participating in Nuco.cloud, users can contribute their computing resources in exchange for computing power, and miners who provide computing power can receive NUCO tokens as rewards. The token is generated based on a proof-of-stake (POS) and proof-of-research mechanism and is supported by Eagle Capital GmbH. It is worth mentioning that Nuco.cloud has established a cooperative relationship with CUDOS to jointly promote the development and application of blockchain technology.

In order to meet the needs of different users, Nuco.cloud has launched a variety of product lines, including nuco.cloud SKYNET, nuco.cloud GO, nuco.cloud PRO and CUSTOM, etc. Each product is targeted at specific user needs and usage scenarios. These products utilize advanced blockchain technology and intelligent pricing mechanisms to provide users with a unique, efficient and decentralized cloud computing service platform.

Since its inception in 2017, Nuco.cloud launched a testnet in August 2023 and is still in the testing phase. In the 2024 roadmap, Nuco.cloud plans to rebrand and release a PRO version of the product for the B-side, while seeking to be listed on the CEX exchange to further expand its market influence.

In terms of compliance, Nuco.cloud complies with the EU’s GDPR standards and relevant German standards, which makes it stand out among many competitors, including centralized computing cloud services such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as GLM, Akash, RNDR , IExec RLC and other decentralized computing projects. According to the project information (Deck), the cost of Nuco.cloud is lower than that of several other decentralized computing clouds. Compared with AWS of the same specifications, its price is only about 30%, showing that it has an extremely competitive price advantage.

Currently, the market value of Nuco.cloud’s token $NCDT has reached $44 million, and its FDV is 68 million.

Dynex

Dynex is a neuromorphic supercomputing blockchain based on the DynexSolve chip algorithm and proposes a Proof of Useful Work (PoUW) method to improve the speed and efficiency of decentralized networks. Dynex hopes to provide computing power for artificial intelligence, machine learning, financial technology, and biomedicine on this basis. What it mainly uses is the computing power of the GPU.

Dynex was launched in 2020. It was originally a project to design neuromorphic chips, and then evolved into a blockchain. The mainnet was launched in Q4 of 2022, and Gate.io was launched in Q1 of 24.

$DNX launched equitably in August 2022, using a deflationary model, with a market cap of approximately $86 million and FDV of $110 million.

OctaSpace

OctaSpace It is an open source and scalable distributed computing cloud node infrastructure that allows access to distributed computing, data storage, services, VPN, etc. OctaSpace includes CPU and GPU computing power, serving disk space for ML tasks, AI tools, image processing, and rendering scenes using Blender.

OctaSpace launches in 2022 and runs on its own Layer 1 EVM-compatible blockchain. The blockchain uses a dual-chain system that combines Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanisms. $OCTA FDV is about $73 million and uses fair launch.

AIOZ Network

AIOZ Network is a Layer1 decentralized computing platform for AI, storage and streaming media that can achieve interoperability with Ethereum and Cosmos. AIOZ is powered by a decentralized content delivery network (dCDN), AI computing and thousands of individual nodes operating globally. Users can share computing resources for storing, transcoding and streaming digital media content and support decentralization ized AI computing.

The project was launched over 6 years ago and the mainnet was launched in December 2021. The infrastructure built includes AIOZ dCDN, AIOZ IPFS, AIOZ W3S, AIOZ W3AI, and AIOZ Web3 Streaming, which provides support for web3 storage, decentralized artificial intelligence computing, live broadcast, and video on demand (VOD).

According to its Roadmap, the project will implement AIOZ Transfer dApp, AIOZ multi-chain wallet browser extension, AlOZ Node V3, and AIOZ W3IPFS infrastructure in Q1; AIOZ W3AI in Q2; AIOZ W3Stream, and various AIOZ token standards in Q3; AIOZ DEX in Q4.

Phoenix

Phoenix It is a blockchain infrastructure platform for decentralized AI, computing expansion and data-driven networks. Its products include AlphaNet, an AI platform for the cryptocurrency trading market, and AIGC Metaverse project NYBL. Phoenix’s AI computing layer is a Web3-based infrastructure designed for scaling AI computing tasks and easily deploying AI-enabled applications, including deep learning, predictive analytics, LLM, federated learning, and AI edge computing. Phoenix’s artificial intelligence vertical solutions cover multiple fields.

Recently, Phoenix has cooperated with Helium to launch the AI ​​computing mining machine PhoenixNode, and its PhoenixLLM large language model service has been launched on Telegram. Additionally, Phoenix will be integrated with the full Telegram ecosystem.

Aethir

Built based on Arbitrum, Aethir is focused on building scalable decentralized cloud infrastructure for games and artificial intelligence. The project was launched in 2023 and is currently in the testnet stage. The usage experience is close to web2’s cloud gaming platform, and meets the testing, cross-platform, and distribution needs of AI and games. The main use cases in artificial intelligence include delay-free reasoning, language interaction, and visual interaction. Checker node licenses will be available on the whitelist at 10:00 am (UTC) on March 18th and 19th. The public sale will begin at 10:00 am (UTC) on March 20th. The starting price of each node is 0.1259ETH. It increases step by step and can also be purchased as ERC721 at the second level. Checker nodes can be installed and run in 2024 Q2, and it is expected that coins will be issued and the mainnet will be launched in Q2. 15% of $ATH will be used to reward Checker nodes.

Lagon

Iagon is a decentralized storage and computing market based on Cardano. The testnet will be released in 2023 and the project will be open source.

OpFlow

OpFlow is a decentralized computing power cloud platform focusing on AI and rendering. OpFlow Hosting is a decentralized deployment cloud service compatible with TG Bot. Its rendering service exclusively uses NVIDIA L40 GPUs. According to its Roadmap, the first phase of the plan is to issue tokens on Uniswap, as well as launch OpFlow hosting (Telegram Bot) and network nodes such as ETH, Linea, and Eigen Layer.

$OpFlow is an ERC20 Token, and more details have not yet been announced.

OpSec

OpSec is a set of decentralized cloud computing solutions. Designed to build the next generation of supercomputers, and its solutions include Cloudverse, Cloudsec, OpSec networks, one-click node setup, DePIN hardware, managed services and more.

The project is relatively new and has not released a testnet yet. Currently, $OPSEC is online on DEX.

Computing power market

The computing power market relies on a decentralized mechanism, allowing users to provide their own GPU and CPU resources to participate in computing power leasing or network training projects. Although the emergence of this market has not theoretically significantly reduced the cost or improved efficiency of AI training, its openness and threshold-free characteristics enable a large number of GPU resources to be mobilized in a short period of time to provide the network with Powerful computing power support. This approach not only leverages huge asset endorsements, but also realizes the leveraged tokenization of GPU assets, bringing new value and significance to the computing power market.

However, such projects are often regarded as “more virtual than real”. Their core does not lie in the actual utility of technology or services, but relies more on their decentralized attributes and the creation of related narratives (for example, from traditional AI to the process from decentralized reasoning to decentralized training). In fact, the business models of these projects largely revolve around this narrative.

In terms of technical support, projects that enable decentralized GPU operations in computing power markets are typically combined with the concept of DePin. The combination of computing power markets represented by io.net and nosana, along with DePin, combined with the high-performance chain Solana, demonstrates significant growth potential. Therefore, we recommend investors to pay long-term attention to early-stage projects that combine Solana and AI. These projects not only have the potential to bring about technological innovations but also may become investment hotspots.

From an investment perspective, early participation in the GPU computing power market, especially when the market shows FOMO effects, may lead to higher returns. This type of participation not only enables obtaining incentives but also has the potential for high input-output ratios, bringing considerable economic benefits to investors.

Clore.ai

Clore.ai is a platform based on PoW that provides GPU computing power rental services. Users can rent out their own GPUs for tasks such as AI training, rendering, and mining. With an optional proof-of-hold (PoH) mechanism, the more tokens a provider holds, the more CLORE they receive.

$CLORE market cap is $90 million, FDV is $110 million. Each block is 50% owned by miners, 40% owned by custodians, and 10% owned by the team, with a cap of 1.3 billion tokens.

Nosana

Nosana is a cloud computing service provider focusing on GPU on Solana, and the project is open source. Nosana was established in 2021 and currently has no financing information. Co-founder Sjoerd Dijkstra has rich DevOps experience, Jesse Eisses has a good technical/ML background, and Laurens Verspeek also has a technical background and has rich development experience. In mid-October 2023, Nosana announced a shift from CI/CD use cases to AI inference. Its platform is currently in the early stages of development. There is very little data on nosana explorer. Current statistics show that there are 94 GPU nodes and 160,000 completed inferences. It needs further research to validate the project.

Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion’s AI inference workloads will be integrated into the network. The test network is divided into three phases. It is currently in the first phase. According to official Twitter data, more than 1,000 devices have signed up for the second phase. The data and revenue model have not been made public. It plans to launch the mainnet in the first half of the year and improve consumer-level node support; in the second half of the year, it will implement community connector libraries and official connectors for PyTorch, HuggingFace, TensorFlow, etc.

The currency will be issued in January 2022. The current market value of $NOS is $510 million and FDV is $608 million.

io.net

io.net is an innovative AI decentralized computing power market based on Solana blockchain technology and is currently in the testnet stage. The platform, which aims to provide users with access to cloud computing resources at a lower cost than traditional centralized services, has been valued at $500 million. The core attraction of io.net is that it can support various AI computing needs, such as batch inference, parallel training, hyperparameter tuning, reinforcement learning, etc., and its back-end infrastructure is composed of a series of modular layers, being able to achieve effective management and automated pricing of resources. It currently offers NVIDIA RTX 3090 computing resources priced at $0.20 per hour.

In terms of project background, io.net was founded by Ahmad Shadid, who built a GPU computing network for Dark Tick, a machine learning quantitative trading company, in 2020. As for the financing situation, io.net has been led by Hack VC, and has also received support from a number of well-known investment institutions and individuals, including Multicoin Capital, Solana Labs, Aptos Labs, etc., as well as some well-known figures in the industry such as the founder of Solana Anatoly Yakovenko.

In terms of participation opportunities, io.net provides a variety of ways for users to participate in its network, including mining income and staking income. From March 1 to April 28, 2023, the platform launched the first round of points incentive program and expects to issue its token $IO in April. In terms of mining income, the platform calculates points by detecting the node’s Internet bandwidth, memory, CPU clock speed and floating point computing power to provide rewards to users. Additionally, users can earn revenue by staking IO Coin, with stakers receiving 1-3% of all rewards earned by participants.

It is worth mentioning that the io.net team drew on RNDR’s airdrop rules to design its own points calculation method, emphasizing the importance of bandwidth in calculating rewards. The analysis shows that high-bandwidth devices have a clear advantage in the final reward distribution, suggesting that users should pay special attention to improving the bandwidth performance of their devices when participating in the io.net network.

Gensyn

Gensyn is an L1 protocol focused on training deep learning models. Its main goal is to improve the efficiency and accessibility of deep learning model training through innovative design and technical solutions. Since the launch of the project, Gensyn has completed two rounds of funding, including a $6.5 million seed round in March 2022 led by EdenBlock, and a $43 million Series A round in June 2023 led by a16z.

The core of Gensyn’s technology lies in its verification system and computing power supply solution, as well as a set of efficient solutions. Its verification system consists of four main roles: submitter, problem solver, verifier and whistler, which together ensure the trustless nature of the system, that is, a trustless distributed verification mechanism. In addition, Gensyn is committed to making its computing network easily accessible to a variety of devices, including everyday gaming-grade GPUs and GPUs once used for ETH PoW mining. Its efficient machine learning training solution is based on probabilistic learning proofs, graph-based precise positioning protocols, and Truebit-style incentive games, aiming to significantly reduce training costs and improve training efficiency.

When it comes to cost, Gensyn demonstrates significant competitiveness. The average hourly cost of its machine learning training is about US$0.4, which is not only lower than the US$1.5 per hour GPU call cost provided by Akash, but also within the cost range of US$0.1-1 provided by io.net, reflecting Gensyn’s competitiveness in cost control.

Gensyn’s code has not yet been open sourced, and there are currently no plans to issue coins. The development of Gensyn will be divided into three stages: testnet, canarynet on the Kusama relay chain, and mainnet on the Polkadot relay chain. Currently, the project is still in the testnet stage. Over the next 3-6 months, Gensyn plans to continue optimizing its technology and prepare to enter the next phase of development. Its vision is to become the base layer for machine learning computing, similar to Ethereum for smart contract execution, which demonstrates Gensyn’s long-term plan for the future development of deep learning and blockchain integrated applications.

Nimble

The core vision of Nimble project is to create a decentralized AI ecosystem that covers the three major markets of data, computing power and builder. Through this design, Nimble aims to lower the threshold for training AI models and enable more participants to contribute to the innovation and development of AI. This project is positioned as a Composable AI Project, which means that it emphasizes the composability of various AI resources and components under a decentralized framework.

The Nimble mainnet was launched on March 21, 2024, and was selected into the seventh season of BinanceLabs Most Valuable Builder (MVB) Incubator Program on March 1. A full security audit report has not yet been seen. Nimble is valued at $30 million, with $6 million raised in funding.

The mainnet went live last weekend, allowing users to mine by contributing GPU power, with 1500 GPUs currently connected to the network.

Morpheus AI

Morpheus AI is a decentralized computing power marketplace. Built based on Arbitrum, it aims to help users build agent AI based on large language models, and then call smart contracts through agent AI. This design not only broadens the potential functions of decentralized applications (DApps), but also creates an incentive mechanism for multiple participants such as computing power providers, stETH stakers, protocol development contributors, and community API operators. In the process of participating in the Morpheus AI ecosystem, users can obtain MOR tokens by staking or submitting code.

Kuzco

Kuzco is a distributed GPU cluster for LLM inference on Solana. Although the project is new, it is progressing rapidly. A public beta version has been launched for Mac and Linux users, and the number of online working nodes has reached 1,400. Kuzco provides an efficient environment and code support, allowing users to pre-install the required models and environments locally, and complete tasks only through network transmission. Compared with ionet, it performs better in resource usage. The usage rate of a single card can reach 90%.

Currently, participants who contribute computing power can receive $KZO points in return. Although its expected returns, development roadmap, and Token economic model have not yet been clearly announced, they have attracted the official attention of Solana. No financing has taken place yet, but the issuance of tokens may take place in the near future.

Golem

Golem It is a decentralized computing power market based on Ethereum. Since its launch in 2015, it has been focusing on providing CPU computing power sharing services based on Ethereum. Golem is one of the earliest peer-to-peer computing power network protocols and has established a network node system including providers and requesters. Starting in 2022, Golem will lay out the GPU market, launch the first phase of the GPU Beta test plan, and launch the second phase in March 2024.

The total supply of $GLM is 1 billion, which is currently in circulation, with a market value of $561 million, and the code is open source.

Node A.I.

Node A.I. is a decentralized GPU computing power market whose parent company is EyePerformance. Rental fee reference: A100 is about $0.85/h, and A10 is about $0.22/h. $GPU currently has a market value of $121 million.

GPU.Net

GPU.Net is a decentralized GPU resource network that aims to meet the computing power needs of new technologies such as generative AI, Web3 metaverse, cryptocurrency mining, and high-end graphics rendering by providing decentralized GPU infrastructure. In August 2023, GPU.Net completed US$500,000 in financing, with participation from Momentum 6 and Alphablockz, and support from NVIDIA and Taanga Studios. Early online pre-registration is currently online.

GamerHash

GamerHash utilizes the remaining computing power of players’ computers when playing high-configuration games for cryptocurrency mining. For example, a player may only be using 15% of their computing power while gaming, and GamerHash enables the remaining unused power to be automatically used to mine cryptocurrency without requiring additional action or monitoring by the user. To serve lower-end computer users, GamerHash has launched the Play&Earn feature. Users can choose to complete specific tasks, such as playing specific games or downloading apps, to earn GUSD, an internal currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, bringing a new revenue channel to users with limited hardware capabilities.

NodeSynapse

NodeSynapse is a GPU computing power marketplace that provides token holders with server hosting, Web3 infrastructure and GPU computing as well as a unique revenue sharing model.

Model assetization and model training

In the trend of combining blockchain technology with AI, an important development direction is the tokenization of AI models or running business models themselves through tokenization. This approach has gradually demonstrated its value in multiple specific application scenarios, such as in security auditing, chatbots, AI advisors, and so on. Due to the relatively low technical barriers and ease of implementation of such projects, the market includes both well-resourced top-tier projects and numerous small-scale startups. Therefore, in projects that combine blockchain and AI, identifying the quality and investment value of projects becomes particularly important.

The key lies in identifying whether the project has genuine innovation and technological barriers. Simply trading ownership or usage rights of AI models does not constitute genuine technological innovation. Genuine technical breakthroughs should focus on how to effectively validate the outputs of the models and ensure their operation in a decentralized environment.

Saharalabs

SaharaLabs aims to solve data sharing and privacy issues in AI model training through its two core products: Knowledge Agent and Data. The project promotes data sharing and decision-making by providing individuals and enterprises with semi-automated autonomous agents and data operation tools while ensuring privacy security. Currently, SaharaLabs has successfully attracted 30 enterprise customers and achieved positive cash flow, demonstrating the market viability and practical value of its solution. SaharaLabs is led by professors Sean and Tyler and has a team of over 30 people. Professor Sean is a professor at the University of Southern California and has received many honors, including Samsung AI Researcher of the Year. Tyler has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, having served as Investment Director at Binance Labs.

Its product Knowledge Agent provides users with a customized semi-automatic agent that supports sharing and processing of external or internal data to make decisions. These agents can be fine-tuned for private data, while providing privacy protection and data provenance verification tools, as well as a development toolkit to support multi-agent collaboration. Sahara Data Marketplace provides a comprehensive set of data operation tools including data collection, labeling, quality control (QA) and project management to solve data privacy issues. It has been adopted by well-known institutions such as MIT and Microsoft.

SaharaLabs has raised $600M in funding and received $6M in backing through a seed round led by Polychain Capital with participation from Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, Matrix Partners and others. The development roadmap of the project includes: the Sahara Data data market will be launched in Q2 of 2024; the test network and Sahara ID will be launched in Q3; the main network and Sahara Agent will be officially launched in Q4.

Bittensor

Bittensor project is a decentralized open source project aimed at creating a neural network protocol on the blockchain. This protocol allows the creation of AI-powered decentralized applications (dApps) and enables peer-to-peer value exchange between AI models. Bittensor was co-founded by former Google software engineer Jacob Robert Steeves and Ala Shaabana, a former assistant professor at the University of Toronto and postdoc at the University of Waterloo, with James Woodman serving as chief operating officer. The project conducted a “fair launch” in 2021 and did not conduct any pre-mined tokens, VC rounds, private placement rounds, etc. The token TAO was generated through mining by miners. Known investors and market makers include DCG, GSR, Polychain Capital, and Firstmask, among others.

The core of the Bittensor network consists of miners and validators. Miners are responsible for submitting pre-trained models to receive rewards, while validators ensure that the outputs of these models are valid and accurate, and select the best outputs to return to users. For example, when a user asks an AI chatbot to answer a question, the question can be answered regardless of how many nodes the Bittensor network is running on. Queries are sent by users to validators, who then pass the queries to miners and rank the miners’ outputs, eventually returning the highest-ranked output to the user.

The development highlights of the Bittensor project include:

1. Subnet: All of Bittensor’s AI applications actually run on its subnets, of which there are currently 32 subnets, each with specialized use cases. The threshold to participate in the subnet is 6000 $TAO, over $4 million in fees. Miners and validators can receive a daily reward of 7,200 $TAO, and if the subnet is running well, the daily income can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars; otherwise, the subnet may be eliminated.
2. Miner/Verifier: The threshold for becoming a miner or verifier is relatively high. Miners need to conduct machine performance testing, and becoming a verification node requires staking a large amount of $TAO and ensuring that the equipment remains online. For miners who fail to provide optimized models or unique large-scale LLM models, they will soon be kicked out of the network.

The total supply of token TAO is 21,000,000, all of which have entered circulation, with a market value of $4,474,463,212. The token has already been listed on exchanges MEXC, Gate.io, KuCoin, and Bitget. Retail investors can choose to stake $TAO to existing verification nodes and enjoy the current APR of approximately 15.85%.

iExec RLC

iExec RLC is a decentralized cloud resource platform based on Ethereum, aiming to change the current cloud computing model through integrated DApp, computing power market, and data market. This platform utilizes the original iExec Proof-of-Contribution (PoCo) consensus mechanism to ensure the effectiveness and security of off-chain calculations while protecting the platform from interference by dishonest participants. iExec was co-founded by Dr. Gilles Fedak and Dr. Haiwu He. Dr. Fedak serves as CEO. He has made pioneering achievements in the development of software and algorithms for cloud computing and large-scale parallel systems before entering the field of blockchain entrepreneurship, and has won several Best Paper Awards. Dr. Haiwu He, as the head of the APAC region, was one of “Hundred Professors” of the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, leading research work in high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud computing. In 2017, iExec raised $12 million through an ICO.

The core functionality of the iExec platform allows users to run containerized applications, primarily for short-running jobs and one-time tasks. While it does not currently support a wide range of use cases such as web or API-based applications, iExec has successfully powered DApps on its sidechain and has built worker pools to sequence by task size. The platform’s computing resource bidding system enables users and applications to issue work orders based on preset criteria, and cloud providers (workers) provide computing power based on the price they are willing to accept. In addition, iExec also introduces the concept of a pool to organize workers (worker nodes). These pools can be either public or private, similar to traditional cloud service providers.

The PoCo consensus algorithm serves as the defense mechanism of the iExec market, ensuring trustful execution on the decentralized network and preventing possible adverse results and unreasonable objections. As of now, $RLC has a market cap of $322M, while its fully diluted value (FDV) is $387M. iExec has made significant achievements in the field of decentralized cloud computing since its launch in 2016, and became an important member of the Intel AI ecosystem in 2020.

iExec is continuously developing its technology and service scope, and future plans include: Research and Development (R&S) of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs); Research and Development of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PET); iExec Oracle IDE development; Privacy Pass activity; second round of Worker Pass issuance; release of Dapp store web interface; season 3 Questbook bounty task; season 3 and 4 Exec Web3 incubator; and PoCo consensus algorithm upgrade.

Allora

Allora is a self-improving, decentralized artificial intelligence network that can obtain more accurate inferences by building a probability market. AI/ML agents in the Allora network use their data and algorithms to broadcast their predictions across the peer-to-peer network, and each reference these predictions to evaluate the predictions of all other agents. The network consensus mechanism combines these predictions and evaluations and allocates rewards to agents based on the quality of their predictions and evaluations. This carefully crafted incentive structure allows Allora to continuously learn and improve, adapting as the market evolves.

Allora builds its independent chain based on Cosmos and implements POS, rewarding verifiers and AI working nodes. Its nodes verify the accuracy of each other’s reasoning while performing reasoning, and predict the reasoning quality of each agent by directly evaluating each other, and distribute rewards based on evaluation results.

Allora’s internal test network Edgenet was released on March 5. It is currently running test nodes in cooperation with multiple project parties and institutions, and plans to launch the main network in Q2. Its investment institutions are also very big, including Polychain, Framework, Blockchain Capital, CoinFund, Delphi Ventures, dao5, and Distributed Global.

lPAAL AI

lPAAL AI is an AI ecosystem built using custom data sources and LLM. Users can create personalized AI, conduct professional strategic transactions, obtain market intelligence, etc., and deploy it to multiple platforms such as Telegram and Discord. PAAL AI tools include MyPaal, AutoPaal, and AutoPaal X. It is invested by Google Cloud, Coingecko, OKX, etc. The total supply of PAAL is 1 billion, the circulating supply is approximately 650 million, and the market value is approximately US$100 million.

MyShell

MyShell is an AI platform based on opBNB that allows users to create chatbots, allows creators to call different models and external APIs in the same way, and allows third-party model providers and API providers to integrate their services into the platform for developers use. It incentivizes creators and users to be active through Shell Points and Shell Coin (Shell Coin is an airdrop voucher, and points can be exchanged for Coin). In October 2023, it raised US$5.6 million in seed round financing, led by INCE Capital, with participation from Folius Ventures, Hashkey Capital, SevenX Ventures, TSVC, OP Crypto and others. Binance Labs also officially announced that MyShell has entered the sixth phase of incubation camp. Its evaluated value is approximately $57 million. Currently, it is in the testnet development stage.

Qubic

Qubic is an L1 PoW platform that uses PoW computing power for AI training. The mainnet will be launched in April 2022. Founded by Sergey Ivano and also known as Come From Beyond or CFB, CFB is the third person in history to mine Bitcoin. The NXT he founded was once one of the most successful ICOs. At the same time, he is also the founder of Iota.

1. Quorum Protocol: This protocol uses 676 computers (validators) to process transactions and execute smart contracts, ensuring the finality and reliability of the results.
2. AI Aigarth: This is an AI software running on top of Qubic that takes information from tens of thousands of Qubic-AI miners who use their computing power to create billions of artificial neural networks.

AI Agent

An AI agent can be understood as an intelligent agent with the ability to autonomously understand, remember, make decisions, use tools, and perform complex tasks. This kind of intelligent agent can not only guide users “how to do it”, but also actually help users complete tasks. The AI ​​agents specifically referred to here are those projects that use AI models to interact with blockchain technology, such as conducting transactions, providing investment advice, operating bots, enhancing decentralized finance (DeFi) functions, and conducting on-chain data analysis, etc.

This type of AI agent has a specific and direct application scenario, that is, conducting transactions. They are particularly closely integrated with blockchain technology and can directly create revenue, introduce new transaction scenarios, and optimize the blockchain usage experience. This combination is actually an advanced narrative of decentralized finance (DeFi), which creates profits through trading activities, attracts capital investment, and creates opportunities for speculation, thus driving the operation of the Ponzi flywheel effect.

AI trading agents typically start from the community at a relatively low market value, with low participation costs, thus offering good potential for investment returns.

Morpheus

Morpheus is an AI decentralized computing power market built on Arbitrum to help users build agent AI based on large language models, and the agent AI calls smart contracts. Incentives include miners who provide computing power, stETH stakes, protocol development contributors and community API operators. The project team used character names from the Matrix movies (Morpheus, Neo, Trinity) as pseudonyms on the website.

The core developer is David Johnston, who has many years of experience in investing and serving as CEO. He has been involved in the Bitcoin Foundation since 2013, then joined Multicoin Capital and Space Fund, and has been working at DLTx since 2021. In 2023, he created the “intelligent agent” framework and began investing in the development of Morpheus.

Morpheus has a high level of community attention and is distributed in the form of fair launch. The stake code in the first phase is well completed and has undergone security audits. There is also a bug bounty in the community and the code security is strong. However, the code update for the AI ​​Agent is slow and the progress of the core module is unclear. The main methods of participation include: staking stETH to participate in the distribution of the capital part; providing code support for Morpheus; participating in mining after the computing network is launched on May 8; making some network boards and tools and becoming a community contributor.

QnA3.AI

QnA3.AI provides full-scenario services of full life cycle such as information management, asset management and rights management. Technically, QnA3 uses RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) technology, combined with LLM understanding, pre-training, scalability and reasoning capabilities, to optimize information retrieval and generation, and improve timeliness and accuracy. At the same time, the team emphasizes the concepts of AI+Trading and AI+DePIN in asset management and rights management, and promotes the practice of decentralized machine learning. QnA3.AI was incubated by Binance Labs and received investment from the Solana Foundation on February 25, 2024.

The QnA3.AI project started in January 2023 and has experienced rapid development in just one year. The project launched a question and answer function in June, and the number of users increased rapidly; in September, it launched an intent-centered Telegram bot, and the number of users surged to 300,000; by December, the number of daily active users reached the first place on BNB Chain, and the total number of users exceeded 2 million. So far, the number of users has exceeded 10 million.

Autonolas

Autonolas is an open marketplace for the creation and use of decentralized artificial intelligence agents. Autonolas also provides developers with a set of tools for building off-chain hosted AI agents with the ability to connect to multiple chains including Polygon, Ethereum, Gnosis Chain and Solana. They currently have a number of active proxy proof-of-concept products, including products for prediction markets and DAO governance.

David Minarsch is CEO and co-founder of Valory, the parent company of Autonolas. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge and specializes in multi-agent services. Previously, he served as head of multi-agent services at Fetch.ai. Its investors include Signature Ventures, Semantic Ventures, True Ventures, Proof Group and others.

SingularityNet

SingularityNET is an open, decentralized artificial intelligence service network whose mission is to create a decentralized, democratized, inclusive, and beneficial general artificial intelligence. Developers can publish their services to the SingularityNET network, where they can be used by anyone with internet access. Developers can charge for the use of their services using native AGIX tokens.

The creators are Dr. Ben Goertzel and Dr. David Hanson, one of the core developers of the earlier famous intelligent humanoid robot Sophia. SingularityNET’s investors include Fundamental Labs. In May 2022, SingularityNET and Singularity DAO received a $25 million investment commitment from investment group LDA Capital.

SingularityNET’s services can provide inference or model training across multiple domains, such as image, video, speech, text, time series, bio-inspired AI and network analysis. These services can be as simple as packaging well-known algorithms, to complete end-to-end solutions to industry problems, or to standalone AI applications. Developers can also deploy autonomous AI agents that interoperate with other services on the network. For example, promote trust and automate transactions through multi-party custody, launch new AI services and organizations on the blockchain, track successful API calls, and define pricing strategies.

Fetch.AI

Fetch.AI is one of the first deployed AI agent protocols and has developed an ecosystem for building, deploying and using agents on-chain using its FET token and Fetch.AI wallet. The protocol provides a comprehensive set of tools and applications for working with proxies, including in-wallet functionality to interact with proxies and issue commands.

Most of the Fetch development team graduated from prestigious schools or came from Fortune 500 companies, and they are all experts in AI or algorithm-related fields. It is worth mentioning that the CEO and CTO are all related to Deepmind, an AI company owned by Google. Its signature product Alphago once defeated Korean Go champion Lee Sedol and also defeated professional players in StarCraft 2. Most of the consulting team are professors from prestigious universities with strong academic backgrounds. In terms of financing, in March 2021, Toronto digital asset company GDA Group invested US$5 million; in March 2022, Fetch launched a US$150 million development fund to encourage developers to develop projects in its ecosystem. The fund is led by MEXC Global Huobi and Bybit also participated in the investment.

Humans.ai

Humans.ai is an AI blockchain platform that brings together an ecosystem of stakeholders around the use of AI for large-scale creation, integrating a library of AI tools into a creative studio suite where users can pick and realize their own ideas. Individuals have the right to create and own digital likenesses of themselves, which can be used by themselves and others to create any number of digital assets. Synthetic media, AI applications, and other digital assets can leverage blockchain technology to generate NFTs. The total supply of Humans.ai token HEART is 7.8 billion, the circulating supply is approximately 5.12 billion, and the market value is approximately US$85.96 million.

Metatrust

Metatrust It is an AI Agent network powered by Crypto. MetaTrust builds the world’s first comprehensive set of Web3 security solutions that covers the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). It is founded by Nanyang Technological University’s world-renowned research team. It raised $10 million in seed round financing led by M23 Fund, with participation from Redpoint, ABCDE, LongHash Ventures, and Hash Capital.

AgentLayer

AgentLayer is based on the core chain structure of OP Stack+EigenDA and is a decentralized agent network built by the Metatrust team. EigenDA can take into account the efficient availability of data and greatly improve the overall performance and security of AgentNetwork. As a complete toolbox for layer 2, OP Stack supports Optimism and other Rollup implementations, and provides key components such as sequencers, nodes, contracts, etc., which can be independently applied to different expansion implementation plans.

DAIN

DAIN is building agent2agent economy on Solana. The goal of DAIN is to allow agents from different enterprises to seamlessly interact with each other through a common API, thereby greatly opening up the design space of AI agents, with a focus on implementing agents that can interact with web2 and web3 products. In January 2024, DAIN announced its first cooperation with Asset Shield to enable users to add “proxy signers” to their multi-signatures, who can interpret transactions and approve/reject according to rules set by the user. DAIN is developing an Agent that can obtain information on the chain and conduct transactions, analyze and process the data on the chain, and give purchase and other suggestions in the form of chat.

ChainGPT

ChainGPT is an AI model designed for blockchain and encryption, and its products include AI NFT generator, AI generated news, AI trading assistant, smart contract generator, smart contract auditor, etc. ChainGPT won the BNB Ecosystem Catalyst Award in September 2023. The market value of the token CGPT is approximately $40.63 million.

Data capitalization

The data track combines AI and crypto technology and is regarded as an area with huge potential. Its core value lies in data and computing power as the basic production materials of AI. Unlike the decentralization of computing power, which may reduce efficiency, it is reasonable to decentralize data processing to a certain extent because the production of data itself is decentralized. Therefore, in theory, the data track has great development potential in the field of combining AI and crypto technology.

However, the core challenge facing this field is the lack of mature data trading markets in traditional markets, which makes effective valuation and standardization of data extremely difficult. It is difficult for project parties to attract large amounts of capital through token incentives, because in the absence of an effective evaluation mechanism, the value of data is difficult to be reflected in token prices. This situation has led to a potential rupture of the “flywheel effect”. Even projects with great potential within the data track have difficulty leveraging large-scale capital through low-cost token incentives.

Despite the challenges, there are also projects that are trying to approach the data track from different angles and explore new models and solutions. For example, projects like Sapien focus on providing a market for labeled data needed for AI, trying to solve the problem of access to AI training data. In addition, considering the high demand for bandwidth for AI decentralized training, bandwidth providers have become a new entry point in the data track. Traffic is an easily quantified asset, and projects such as grass.io are trying to build a decentralized bandwidth ecosystem to indirectly provide data for AI training. This demonstrates attempts to find new opportunities and solutions within the data track.

Synesis One

Synesis One is a data crowdsourcing platform on Solana that allows anyone to earn $SNS by completing microtasks for training AI. The off-chain annotation is passed to the on-chain verifier for verification and rewards will be issued.

The Korean development team was reorganized on October 11, 2023. Isaac Bang, former head of growth at Synesis One, serves as CEO. Synesis One is currently working with Mind AI, which will use the data collected by Synesis One to train AI, and is expected to support audio, video and image data as well as RPA (robotic process automation) in the future. Mind AI has signed cooperation agreements with General Motors and the Indian government. It has raised up to $9.5 million.

Grass.io

Grass.io is a decentralized bandwidth market. Users can sell their excess bandwidth to artificial intelligence companies that use it to scrape data from the internet. There are currently more than 2 million personal IP network addresses, and only users who are online in real time can obtain Grass points.

It has received $3.5M in seed round financing, led by Polychain Capital and Tribe Capital, with participation from Bitscale Capital, Typhonv and others. Tokenomics has not been announced, but according to team members, tokens are expected to be issued by the end of the year.

GagaNode

GagaNode is a next-generation decentralized residential bandwidth market designed to alleviate the global IPv4 address shortage through Web3.0 technology. Currently, it has good support for clients of all major systems (including mobile terminals). The code has been open sourced.

Ocean

Ocean Protocol allows anyone with a sought-after dataset to tokenize their data and make it available on Ocean Market. Users can create data NFTs representing their data and purchase them using data tokens. You can participate by building an AI trading robot, staking tokens, and participating in data challenges.

Founder Bruce Pon has been working at Mercedes Benz for over 5 years. He gave a guest lecture at MIT, Oxford University, NYU and the European School of Management (ESMT) and has given over 200 public lectures on blockchain, cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies. The project has over 35 consultants worldwide.

ZKML

By introducing ZK into the field of machine learning, it allows the computational correctness of the model to be quickly verified without revealing information. The trustless verification of the model allows zkml to be used as a trustless proxy, or be used in some privacy scenarios, such as the application layer represented by Worldcoin.

At the same time, machine learning may be run in smart contracts through ZK, allowing smart contracts to achieve greater automation and flexibility. At the same time, as the ML model is a “black box”, its trust problem can also be solved through ZK verification.

As mentioned above, ZkML’s infrastructure is divided into on-chain ML represented by Modulus Labs, trusted inference proof services represented by Giza and EZKL, and co-processors represented by Risc Zero and Axiom. This track is still in its early stages, and its technical capabilities and team background need to be considered.

WorldCoin

WorldCoin is launched by OpenAI. It requires users to scan their irises to generate a unique ID. In the future, biometric IDs could be self-secured by being stored on personal devices using encryption, with the required model used to locally verify these biometric information. Users can provide proof of their biometric information without revealing their identity, thus resisting Sybil attacks while ensuring privacy. It is currently the leader in the field of AI. Worldcoin has raised over $250 million across multiple rounds from investors including a16z, Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, and Tiger Global.

There are currently over 1 million active users. It authenticates on DRiP using a device-verified World ID or an Orb-verified World ID and instantly unlocks reward Droplets.

EZKL

EZKL is open source and proves that a model produced certain results by generating zero-knowledge proofs without having to reveal the model itself. Over the past few months, EZKL has made significant progress in enhancing its zkML solution, primarily focused on reducing costs, improving security, and speeding up proof generation. For example, in November 2023, EZKL integrated a new open source GPU library that can reduce aggregate proof time by 35%; in January this year, EZKL released Lilith, a software solution for when using EZKL proof Integrate high-performance computing clusters and orchestrate concurrent job systems. At present, it is officially announced to cooperate with OP.

Jason Morton is the CEO of EZKL. He also has a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in economics from the University of Michigan.

Giza

Giza is a machine learning platform built on StarkNet. In addition to providing tools for creating verifiable machine learning models, Giza also plans to implement a web3 equivalent of Hugging Face, open a user marketplace for zkML collaboration and model sharing, and eventually integrate decentralized computing products. Giza Datasets is a Web3 dataset framework optimized for ML workflows and structured for the purpose of model training.

Giza was founded in October 2022 by Cem Dagdelen, Fran Algaba and Renç Korzay. It completed $3 million Pre-Seed round financing led by CoinFund, with participation from StarkWare, TA Ventures and Arrington Capital. Giza has not issued coins yet.

RiscZero

RiscZero provides a new type of ZK virtual machine (ZKVM) that enables developers to perform arbitrary computations while protecting privacy. Brian Retford is co-founder and CEO of RISC Zero. Previously, he served as co-founder and CTO of Vertex.AI. and worked as a software engineering manager at Google. It completed $40 million in Series A financing, with participation from Blockchain Capital, Bain Capital Crypto, Geometry, Alchemy Ventures, and IOSG Ventures.

The two main products of RISC Zero are zkVM and Bonsai. zkVM is a RISC Zero zero-knowledge virtual machine that allows users to prove the correct execution of arbitrary Rust code. The bottom layer is zk-STARK; Bonsai Network is the L2 of RISC Zero. The application sends the co-processing request to the Bonsai Relay, which then forwards the attestation request to the Bonsai attestation service. RISC Zero zkVM executes a program and generates proofs to verify the correct execution of the code, which anyone can verify. Bonsai Relay then publishes the proof on-chain and the application receives the result through a callback function.

Modulus

Modulus is developing a new zk-proof technology tailored for AI models. Modulus launched Remainder in November, a specialized zero-knowledge prover built specifically to reduce AI model costs and proof times, aiming to make it economically feasible for projects to integrate models into their smart contracts at scale.

Modulus Labs’ leadership team includes Daniel Shorr, Nicholas Cosby, and Ryan Cao. Daniel Shorr is the company’s co-founder and CEO. He attended Stanford University and was known for his leadership and public speaking skills.

Financing: Raised $12 million in seed round led by Bain Capital Crypto; completed $40 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Blockchain Capital, galaxy, DELPHI VENTURES, Figment Capital IOSG CENTURES.

In 2024, Modulus Labs will release the Modulus API and its code base will be open source. Modulus Labs plans to integrate the product into various dApps in Q1 and Q2 of 2024.

Pi Squared

Pi Squared uses zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology to verify the correct execution of any program without relying on a specific programming language (PL) or virtual machine (VM). It is based on the K framework and matching logic to provide a general and efficient verification method. It is designed to enable seamless interoperability of blockchains, languages ​​and applications.

K framework is a framework similar to formal verification. The process is to write the spec for source code execution according to the requirements of the K framework. K framework can prove whether the source code complies with the spec. It is compatible with multiple languages, which is also the underlying support of Pi Squared general verify; Proof implementation logic is K framework. Formal verification will output “mathematics proofs”. Pi Squared will verify the process of mathematics proofs using zk circuits, and can generate proofs. The proof can be verified on the chain; therefore, Pi Squared can be used to make on-chain trustworthy proofs for smart contracts: by generating proofs through the off-chain K framework and zk-ifying the verification process, the proof of proof can be verified on the chain, which is equivalent to formal verification for smart contracts, that is, verifiable code auditing on the chain. This is also the function expected to be implemented by the Near term of the Pi Squared project, providing contract auditing and developer verification tools. The benchmark displayed on its official github also proves that this logic is indeed feasible for the most part, but overly complex logic will consume more time or computing resources.

Based on this set of verification logic, transaction verification can be achieved, that is, the process of transactions, contracts, execution and proof generation are all placed off-chain, and zk proof is generated through K framework and proof of proof services. All validators no longer maintain a chain, but instead verify zk proof to perform state transfer and complete the off-chain business logic of on-chain verification.

Currently, it has raised $5.3M and is valued at $50M. The FDV is $200, 000, 000. The team shares 12%. The FDV growth factor for years 1-4 is 1.5.

AI Application

This refers to introducing AI capabilities into existing crypto businesses, such as introducing AI into DeFi to realize automatic investment and obtain more efficient profitability, introducing cloud games into Gamefi, or using AI’s production capacity to produce game resources. AI Role playing and more. There are many such projects, and they need to be analyzed in conjunction with their specific businesses.

DeFi

1. inSure DeFi is a decentralized insurance protocol where users can purchase SURE to insure their crypto asset portfolios. inSure aims to allocate cryptocurrency ownership risk across liquidity pools, with insurance premiums determined by leveraging Chainlink’s dynamic pricing model.
2. SURE has a market capitalization of approximately $130 million.
3. Hera Finance is an AI-driven multi-chain DEX aggregator integrated with Arbitrum, Metis, Avalanche, Base, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Fantom, Mantle, Optimism. The total supply of Hera Finance token HERA is 10 million, the circulating supply is 3.766 million, and the market value is approximately US$18.1 million.
4. SingularityDAO is an AI-driven DeFi protocol and decentralized portfolio management protocol that has launched AI Launchpad. In May 2022, the decentralized artificial intelligence network SingularityNET and Singularity DAO received a $25 million investment commitment from the investment group LDA Capital to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence tools, expand the ecosystem, and promote the development of DeFi applications powered by AI. The total supply of SingularityDAO token SDAO is 100 million, the circulating supply is 86,303,603, and the market value is approximately US$47.08 million.
5. Arc is an innovative technology company committed to changing Web3 through its AI-driven Reactor, DeFi ecosystem and DApp. In the spring of 2023, ARC acquired Lychee AI; in July, Arc launched ARC Swaps AI; in August, Arc joined Google Cloud’s AI Start the plan. The market value of the token ARC is approximately $37.76 million.
6. AQTIS is an intelligent liquidity protocol powered by Quant-Tech and AI. Its goal is to build a sustainable and powerful real-yield ecosystem. The main use of $AQTIS is a bit like Gas on ETH. FDV: $69,927,812.
7. Jarvis Network is a DeFi platform that uses AI algorithms to provide optimized trading and investment strategies for cryptocurrencies and other assets. Its native token is JRT, with a total supply of 565 million, a circulating supply of approximately 397 million, and a market value of US$3 million.
8. LiverFi is an on-chain leverage trading protocol. In August this year, LeverFi said it was working with Microsoft to develop the AI ​​DeFi solution Morpheus, which is based on the Microsoft Azure OpenAI service. It is an artificial intelligence portfolio management assistant that provides valuable investment portfolios. Management insights and real-time on-chain monitoring through intuitive machine learning help users make investment decisions. In September 2023, LeverFi announced a $2 million investment from DWF Labs. The investment has a lockup and release period of two years. LeverFi also secured an additional $2 million in OTC commitments that can be executed at any time over two years if needed. The total supply of LeverFi token LEVER is 35 billion, the circulating supply is approximately 28.8 billion, and the market value is approximately US$37.81 million.
9. Mosaic is an automatic income farming protocol based on LayerZero and combined with AI concepts. Its FDV is $126,648,136.

Gaming

1. Sleepless AI is a virtual companion game based on AI blockchain, using AIGC and LLM to create rich story-based gameplay and organic interaction with characters. The project is currently developing three games. The first game is “HIM”, which is a virtual boyfriend otome game (note: an otome game is a love simulation game targeting female groups) with unique features. SBT roles are these roles immutable and based on the chain. Binance lists Sleepless AI token AI through Launchpool. Its FDV is $1,541,188,206.
2. Phantasm is a Layer1 public chain for games, entertainment and content creation. It provides Unity SDK, smartNFT technology, and AI smart contract encoder. Users can build DApps without code through Phantasma AI. The Phantasma token SOUL is fully circulated and has a market capitalization of approximately $27.75 million.
3. Delysium is an AI-driven open world framework and Web3 game publisher that aims to use AGI to build an AI-driven virtual society. It has launched the AI-driven Web3 operating system Lucy, which can use various DApps through natural language. Everyone can create their own AI-Twins virtual person through Delysium AI, and players can interact with the AI ​​virtual person to learn about cryptocurrencies, examine and trade crypto assets, discover cryptocurrency opportunities, and get early risk warnings through natural language conversations. Delysium is also the first AAA playable game [Delysium: Center City] to be available on the Epic Games Store. Its FDV is $723,377,08424.
4. Mars4.me is an interactive 3D metaverse project that will promote the development of AI-driven metaverse games. There are multiple plots in the Mars4 metaverse, and each plot consists of an NFT token. The Mars4 development team drew a detailed three-dimensional map of Mars terrain based on NASA Mars data. In May 2023, Mars4.me received long-term financial support from DWF Labs, and the specific investment amount has not yet been disclosed. Token MARS has a market capitalization of approximately $9.04 million.
5. GamerHash utilizes the remaining computing power of players’ computers when playing high-configuration games for cryptocurrency mining. For example, a player may only be using 15% of their computing power while gaming, and GamerHash enables the remaining unused power to be automatically used to mine cryptocurrency without requiring additional action or monitoring by the user. To serve lower-end computer users, GamerHash has launched the Play&Earn feature. Users can choose to complete specific tasks, such as playing specific games or downloading apps, to earn GUSD, an internal currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, bringing a new revenue channel to users with limited hardware capabilities.
6. Gaimin, founded by the e-sports team gaimin gladiators, is different from io.net’s general-purpose GPU decentralized network. Gaimin starts from the gaming field and aims to combine cloud computing power and gaming platforms to build a dAPP that can also provide games, download, login and rent out the GPU computing power of your own hardware when they are idle, allowing players to obtain additional rewards. Moreover, it uses the high-performance GPU computing power of most players to build a decentralized distributed supercomputing platform gaimin. cloud, which can provide customers with data processing services such as video rendering, AI deep learning, and blockchain computing power. Gaimin announced its plan for an L2 game public chain last week. It will build an L2 public chain using opBNB Stack technology on BNB and cooperate with MovementLab to use Move technology to achieve a throughput of over 150k TPS, reduced latency, and the lowest Gas costs and enhanced user experience for Web3 games.
7. Cerebrum Tech is a generative AI, gaming and Web3 solution. In October 2023, Cerebrum Tech announced the completion of a $1.8 million financing round at a valuation of $15 million, led by Boğaziçi Ventures and with participation from venture capital fund Inveo Ventures Coinvestment. No coins have been issued yet.
8. Ultiverse is a Metaverse gaming platform that has launched Bodhi, an open Metaverse protocol powered by AI. In March 2022, Ultiverse completed a seed round of financing, led by Binance Labs and Defiance Capital, with participating investors including Three Arrows Capital and SkyVision Capital. The amount of financing was not disclosed. That month, Binance Labs made an additional $5 million in equity investment into Ultiverse. No coins have been issued yet.

NFT

1. NFPrompt is an AI-driven Prompt artist platform that allows users to use AI to generate NFTs. On December 19, 2023, Binance launched the Launchpool project NFPrompt (NFP), which supports users to stake BNB, FDUSD and TUSD. In September 2023, NFPrompt was selected into Binance Labs’ sixth season incubation program. The total supply of NFPrompt token NFP is 1 billion, with FDV $513,189,180. The initial airdrop and Binance Launchpool account for 21% of the total supply, which will be unlocked immediately from creation.
2. Vertex Labs is a metaverse, Web3, and AI infrastructure provider that previously completed the acquisition of NFT series HAPE PRIME’s development studio Digimental Studio for $12 million. Vertex Labs has launched Caduceus, a Layer1 blockchain dedicated to metaverse development (providing Caduceus TrustedAI), a Layer3 network with distributed real-time rendering, and an AI computing platform Vertex Network, as well as the 3D virtual world platform LightCycle, and the Web3 brand Hape Prime, which integrates fashion, music, and culture. The Caduceus token CMP is part of the DWF Labs portfolio, with FDV$7,393,545.

Education

Hooked Protocol is a Web3 gamified social education platform that began building Hooked AI at the end of 2022. This product includes the Hooked Avatar NFT supported by AIGC and the perceptual artificial intelligence mentor Hooked Academy supported by ChatGPT. The total supply of Hooked Protocol token HOOK is 500 million, with a circulating supply of approximately 110 million, and a market capitalization of around $130 million.

System

Terminal OS is a Web3 operating system based on an open and proprietary blockchain-edge node-client (BEC) architecture developed by ByteTrade. In this architecture, the client is lightweight software for users, deployable on browsers, mobile devices, or any device, achieving Proof of Intelligence (AI POI) for the AI era. Terminus OS has not yet been issued. In June 2022, ByteTrade Lab completed a $50 million Series A financing, with participation from SIG Haina Asia Venture Capital Fund, INCE Capital, BAI Capital, Cloud Nine Capital, BlueChi Ventures, PCG, and others.

Conclusion

The integration of AI and cryptocurrency technology brings innovative opportunities to various industries, from computing power clouds to AI applications, from data assetization to zero-knowledge machine learning, all demonstrating the profound impact of technology integration. With the emergence of more innovative projects, we have reason to believe that the future of the AI-crypto field will be more diverse, intelligent, and secure. In the future, we look forward to witnessing more cross-border cooperation and the birth of innovative technologies, jointly driving artificial intelligence and blockchain technology towards broader application prospects.

Disclaimer：

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