Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm, transforming every industry from healthcare to finance. AI is powering cutting-edge innovations like self-driving cars, real-time language translation, and personalized recommendations. According to a PwC report, AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
The AI revolution has now reached the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The unique capabilities of AI are being combined with the advantages of blockchain such as transparency, security, and decentralization. This is giving rise to a new generation of AI crypto projects that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
In this guide we dive into the top AI crypto projects leading this revolution. These are the projects at the cutting-edge of research and development in AI and blockchain. They either utilize AI directly or provide infrastructure for other AI projects.
Keep an eye out for these coins, as they could be the AI crypto winners of the future.
1. The Graph
The Graph is a decentralized protocol that allows applications (dApps) to efficiently query data from blockchains and decentralized storage networks.
The key components of The Graph protocol are:
- It uses a decentralized network of nodes to index and cache blockchain data to make it easily queryable. This removes the need for dApp developers to setup their own centralized servers for indexing and querying data.
- It enables querying the network using GraphQL, which is a flexible querying language well-suited for applications compared to SQL.
- It has an economic incentive model based on tokens. Nodes stake tokens to participate in indexing and serving query requests. Users pay tokens to nodes to query data. This incentivizes nodes to provide reliable and low latency service.
- It has on-chain governance of data schemas and data sources, enabled through staking and voting using the tokens. This allows the community to collectively decide what data to index.
- It has dispute resolution mechanisms using token bonded validators, to resolve disputes over incorrect query responses without needing a centralized authority.
- It uses payment channels for low cost microtransactions between nodes and users. This enables high throughput without paying gas fees for each transaction.
The Graph protocol aims to provide a decentralized infrastructure layer to enable a new generation of data-intensive dApps, while removing their need to rely on centralized servers. It uses crypto-economic incentives aligned across users, developers and node operators to make the network robust and self-sustaining.
2. Render Network
The Render Network is a decentralized platform that allows people to access extra computing power to create complex 3D graphics and animations.
Creating very detailed 3D graphics requires a lot of computing power that most individual artists and studios don’t have access to on their own computers. Renting time on centralized cloud computing services can be extremely expensive.
The Render Network connects individual artists or studios who need extra computing power (called Creators) with people who have spare computing power available on their own computers (called Node Operators).
Node Operators contribute their spare computing power (from their GPUs or graphics cards) to the network. When Creators need extra computing power for a project, their request gets distributed across many Node Operators. This allows the rendering job to be completed very quickly in parallel across the network.
Creators pay for the computing power with RNDR tokens. Node Operators earn RNDR tokens for contributing their computing power.
This platform allows Creators to access computing power that would normally be too expensive, and allows Node Operators to earn money from their spare computing power.
The transactions are recorded on a blockchain to keep track of payments and reputation scores. Good performance from Node Operators increases their reputation score and ability to earn.
By distributing rendering jobs across many computers, the Render Network makes high-end 3D graphics and animations more accessible for Creators. It provides a decentralized alternative to centralized cloud computing services.
3. Fetch
Fetch.ai is a company building technology to enable smart infrastructure and autonomous economic agents. Their goal is to create an open, decentralized digital economy where autonomous software agents can perform useful tasks on behalf of individuals, organizations, and IoT devices.
To achieve this vision, Fetch.ai has developed an “autonomous economic agent” (AEA) framework. AEAs are intelligent software agents that can operate independently to generate economic value for their owners. The key components of an AEA include:
- Skills – These encapsulate the business logic and capabilities of the agent. For example, a skill could allow an AEA to provide weather data or trade financial assets.
- Wallet – The wallet holds the AEA’s digital assets and allows it to transact autonomously. AEAs use crypto wallets and blockchain technology to enable decentralized transactions.
- Decision Maker – This component manages the goals, preferences and economic behaviors of the AEA. It decides which actions the agent should take to maximize its owner’s interests.
- Connections – These enable the AEA to interact with external systems like blockchains, data sources and other agents.
- Protocols – Define structured communication formats that AEAs can use to interact with each other and external services.
The AEA framework is open source so anyone can use it to build an intelligent software agent. The decentralized nature enables AEAs from many different developers and organizations to interoperate.
Some potential applications of AEAs include:
- Automated trading of financial assets
- Buying and selling IoT sensor data
- Optimizing supply chains and logistics
- Personal assistants and recommendation agents
Fetch.ai operates an AEA registry and test networks to support development. The goal is for AEAs to eventually interact through decentralized networks rather than a centralized platform.
The use of crypto wallets, blockchain transactions and decentralized communication enables AEAs to have real economic autonomy. This could enable new decentralized business models and services in the future.
4. SingularityNET
SingularityNET is building a decentralized network and marketplace for artificial intelligence (AI) services. The goal is to make AI more accessible and beneficial for everyone.
On SingularityNET, anyone can contribute an AI service to the network. For example, a researcher could take an AI algorithm they developed and turn it into a service that others can access and pay to use.
Services on the network can also call each other to request work and exchange data. This allows them to combine their abilities to solve more complex problems. The network aims to foster an AI “global brain” that is more capable than any individual service.
The services are coordinated by smart contracts on the blockchain. This allows transactions to happen automatically based on pre-defined rules. Users don’t need permission to join or use services.
There is also a democratic governance system and reputation system to incentivize beneficial services and behaviors. A portion of the network’s resources are allocated to solving problems that benefit humanity.
Overall, SingularityNET is trying to build an open, decentralized platform that lets anyone monetize or utilize AI services. By combining many AI minds together, the goal is to create an intelligent, self-organizing system that can tackle humanity’s greatest challenges. The project aims to accelerate technological progress and ensure the benefits are shared by all.
5. Akash
Akash Network is creating a decentralized marketplace for cloud computing resources. It aims to make cloud computing more efficient, affordable and accessible.
Akash allows anyone with a computer to become a cloud provider by offering their unused computing power in a marketplace. Companies or developers that need computing power (called tenants) can lease this computing capacity at much lower costs compared to traditional cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, etc.
Akash uses blockchain technology and crypto tokens to create this marketplace. There are two main tokens:
- AKT token – This is used for securing the network, paying fees, and determining prices. People stake AKT tokens to help secure the network. In return they earn part of the fees and can vote on governance decisions.
- Settlement tokens – Tenants can pay for computing leases using a variety of cryptocurrencies, not just AKT. This provides more options and stability.
Some key benefits of Akash Network:
- Lower Costs – By better utilizing spare computing capacity, prices are much cheaper than centralized cloud providers.
- Flexibility – Tenants can easily switch between providers in the marketplace to get the best deal. Not locked in.
- Faster/Global – Compute jobs can be distributed globally to improve speed and redundancy.
- Secure – The decentralized blockchain model avoids centralized control over data and jobs.
- Permissionless – Anyone can join by staking AKT tokens and add compute capacity to the marketplace.
By creating a decentralized marketplace for cloud computing, Akash aims to make cloud services cheaper, faster and more accessible on a global scale. The use of crypto tokens provides security and incentives to grow the network.
6. Ocean Protocol
Ocean Protocol is building a decentralized data exchange platform to enable the sharing and monetization of data in a secure and private way, with a focus on AI applications.
The main components are:
- Data Tokens – These are ERC-20 tokens that represent access rights to a dataset. Owning 1 full token allows you to access that dataset. Tokens are fungible, meaning they are interchangeable. This allows easy sharing and trading of dataset access.
- Data NFTs – These are ERC-721 (non-fungible) tokens that represent ownership of the original dataset. This is like the “master copy”. The owner can issue data tokens against the data NFT to share access.
- Compute-to-Data – This allows analysis algorithms to run on private datasets without exposing the raw data. For example, a data buyer can train a machine learning model on a private dataset without seeing the data directly. Only the trained model leaves the premises. This preserves privacy.
- Metadata – Dataset details like title, date, author etc. are stored on-chain. This enables discovery in data marketplaces.
- Marketplaces – Data can be published and sold in marketplaces. Ocean Market is a reference community marketplace, but many types of marketplaces can be built. Marketplaces connect data consumers and publishers.
- Wallets – Existing crypto wallets for ERC-20 tokens can be used as data wallets to hold and transfer data tokens.
Ocean provides tools and incentives to publish, exchange, and consume data assets in a decentralized yet private and secure way, with a focus on enabling AI development. Data tokens and NFTs allow integration with the broader DeFi ecosystem. Marketplaces enable monetization of data for AI. And compute-to-data preserves privacy for AI applications. The goal is to spread the benefits of data by giving more people access, especially for AI.
Conclusion
The growing convergence of AI and blockchain is giving rise to innovative crypto projects with immense potential. As this article has shown, there are several promising AI crypto projects working to democratize AI, enable new applications, and make blockchain platforms faster and more efficient.
While the technology is still emerging, it is clear that combining the strengths of AI and crypto could lead to disruptive new solutions. The projects covered in this article represent some of the most exciting developments in this space. From improving healthcare to optimizing supply chains, the possibilities are endless.
As these projects continue honing their technology and expanding their reach, the upside for their cryptocurrencies could be tremendous. Just as the value of top crypto assets has skyrocketed over the last decade, we could see similar growth trajectories for tokens associated with leading AI crypto projects.
The key will be identifying and investing early in the projects that have solid technology, growing adoption and a compelling vision for the fusion of AI and crypto. By carefully tracking developments in this nascent space, forward-thinking investors stand to reap substantial returns as adoption accelerates. The next wave of AI crypto projects promises to take the potential of blockchain technology to completely new levels.
