It’s no secret that AI has quickly become one of the leading narratives in all of crypto, competing with the likes of RWAs, modularity, memecoins, and more. An issue some have begun to bring to light is a lack of ‘legitimate’ projects building in the space, with many far from being fully-fleshed out or perhaps redundant relative to traditional AI products that don’t involve crypto. ‘AI’ is a buzzword. Naturally, some teams will seek to gain users and funding by advertising their use of AI, even if it’s exaggerated. Some projects related directly or indirectly to AI which we have covered are Render and Bittensor. The interest in AI has even driven people to speculate on products AI-adjacent, including GPU-providing services like Render, similar to the Nvidia trade in a sense.
While there are some questions around protocols that rely on AI as their main offering, infrastructure plays may look interesting. In today’s edition we’ll be briefing you on Ritual, a sovereign blockchain built specifically to help protocols integrate AI. The chain may provide a ‘picks and shovels’ outlook, similar to appchains that focus on niches like derivatives, RWAs, etc.
Stay vigilant in the markets ⬇
Background on Ritual
Ritual aims to bring AI onchain, by enabling developers and teams to easily integrate AI models into their protocols, dApps and smart contracts. Similar to other protocols in the decentralized AI realm like Bittensor, or even Render when it comes to decentralizing GPU providers, Ritual believes centralized AI in the hands of select APIs, providers etc. is detrimental to users. This is mainly due to privacy concerns, potential censorship, and the concerns that many in the AI space have voiced as reasons to steer clear of centralized AI.
After building in ‘Stealth Mode’, the project made their intentions public in November last year, highlighting the confluence between crypto and AI, which the team aims to play a role in facilitating. A key feature that crypto brings to the table is verifiability. The team emphasizes that verifiability is crucial when models control or influence financial decisions. In scenarios like image generation for NFTs, the focus shifts from verifying the model’s process to ensuring the output meets expectations. There are a couple of popular approaches to verifiability in crypto:
Zero-knowledge proofs offer a way to verify models by packing them into circuits, suitable for smaller models but challenging for larger ones like Transformer models.
Optimistic proofs provide an alternative approach, ideal for higher throughput and larger models without circuit constraints.
Ritual is developing proof techniques that go beyond existing methods, hinting at upcoming innovations in the space. Verifiabilty is something being worked on by many of the brightest teams in crypto, and a value add that the space can bring when it comes to AI. This can perhaps most notably be seen with the simple but controversial WorldCoin, of which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a Co-founder of. WorldCoin is basically just a verification mechanism that could be used to distribute tokens in a fair way, with demand potentially increasing due to AI.
Many question the need for going onchain when it comes to AI, or any area in crypto for that matter, including DeFi, onchain gaming, NFTS, etc. Beyond Verifiability, benefits for onchain AI include governance, incentive, and composability primitives. Crypto can be used to allow decentralized decision-making on model behavior, ensuring inclusivity and fairness. Ritual aims to flip the traditional AI stack by redefining training processes and operational workflows.
On the DA side, Ritual integrates Celestia, aiming to offer more options for chains, enhancing workflows beyond traditional methods. Celestia ensures best-in-class data availability and security guarantees, offering a streamlined approach for verification across various layers.
Infernet SDK
The Infernet SDK serves as Phase One of Ritual, aiming to establish a sovereign layer for AI within a protocol. It operates on target chains like EVM chains, enabling inference requests and flexible data handling.Components include Infernet Node for off-chain operations and Infernet SDK for on-chain interactions. The Infernet Node facilitates model execution off-chain with abstracted workflows for connectivity.
Ritual is positioned as a purpose-built AI Oracle Network, serving as a foundation for scaling into the Ritual chain. Current applications include AI-generated NFT creation and AI agent app development with on-chain incentives.
It’s worth noting that the protocol raised $25M in its Series A, in a round led by Archetype with additional participation from the likes of Robot Ventures, Balaji, Keone Han of Monad, and more, before a subsequent strategic investment from Polychain Capital earlier this month. With this strong backing, Ritual aims to become the premier destination for AI protocols to deploy in crypto.
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Thanks for the breakdown