A Quick Look at Emerging Crypto x AI Crossover Verticals and 17 Projects

"When a great innovation appears, it will almost certainly take the form of confusion, incompleteness, and perplexity. To the discoverer, it will only be half understood; to others, it will be a mystery. Any conjecture that does not seem wild enough at first sight is hopeless." - Freeman Dyson

This article explores the potential convergence of crypto and AI and lists 17 Crypto x AI projects that may be of interest and worth adding to your watch list.

Emerging Crypto x AI Verticals

(1) From centralized cloud providers to DePIN

(2) Support for transparency, user management and data ownership

(3) Alignment incentives and AI monetization

(4) On-chain AI/ML (ZKML & opML)

(5) Authentication and privacy

 This is not an exhaustive list, but rather a selection of projects that I believe are worth monitoring. There are many exciting developments in this field, and undoubtedly, I have overlooked some excellent teams.

1. Render Network

The first project on the list is Render Network, which is a pioneering decentralized GPU platform. In summary, the project aims to fully utilize decentralized GPUs to support 3D content creation and AI projects. Focus on 3D content creation and AI.

2. Akash

Akash is a decentralized computer marketplace that launched in Sep 2020 as the Cosmos application chain. Initially focused on CPUs, it has recently transitioned to GPU computing to capitalize on the paradigm shift in computing infrastructure brought about by the AI boom.

3. Ora

ORA is a protocol that enables verifiable prophecy machines to incorporate AI and complex computation into the blockchain. Their solution, opp/ai, combines the best of zkML and opML, representing a significant advancement in both approaches.

4. net

This is an interesting DePIN project built on Solana that provides access to a distributed GPU cloud cluster at a lower cost than comparable centralized services.

5. Bittensor

Bittensor is an open-source, decentralised project that aims to create a neural network protocol on the blockchain. This protocol enables the creation of AI dApps and facilitates the exchange of value between AI models in a peer-to-peer manner.

6. Glass

Grass is the infrastructure that supports AI models. By installing the Grass Web extension, the application automatically sells your unused Internet resources to AI companies. These companies use your resources to crawl the Internet and train their models.  

7. Gensyn

This is a trustless protocol for deep learning computation at Layer 1. It rewards supply-side participants for committing computation time to the network and performing ML tasks.

8. Allora

Allora is a decentralised AI network that improves itself. It allows applications to use smarter and safer AI through a network of self-improving machine learning models. Allora combines peer prediction crowdsourcing mechanisms, federated learning, and zkML to unlock a new application design space at the intersection of cryptocurrencies and AI.

9. Botto

Botto is a completely autonomous artist with a closed-loop process, and its output is not altered by humans. The only human input is to vote on the Botto output to guide the artist on what to do next.

10. Parallel (Colony)

A never-ending game powered by AI, where all simulated items are interconnected. You will be paired with a Parallel avatar, and together, you will share resources to navigate the ever-expanding Parallel world driven by PRIME.

11. Aethir

Aethir presents a novel cloud computing infrastructure approach that prioritises the ownership, allocation, and utilisation of enterprise-grade GPUs.

12. Morpheus

Morpheus is creating the first fully decentralised peer-to-peer network of personal intelligences, enabling AI for everyone.

13. Autonolas

Autonolas is an open marketplace for creating and using decentralized AI intelligences. Additionally, it provides developers with tools to build off-chain-hosted AI intelligences that can be integrated into multiple blockchains.

14. MyShell  

MyShell is a decentralised and comprehensive platform for discovering, creating, and pledging AI-native applications.

15. OriginTrail

OriginTrail integrates blockchain and AI to create a Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) that guarantees data integrity and provenance while improving AI capabilities through access to a network of verified information.

16. Ritual

Ritual is an AI execution layer that is open and sovereign. It enables developers to integrate AI into any on-chain application or protocol seamlessly. This integration allows them to fine-tune, monetize, and perform reasoning on models using cryptographic schemes.

17. Nillion

Nillion enables the secure and confidential training and reasoning of AI models, forming the foundation for personalised and secure AI.