Bitcoin is trading sideways and altcoins are basically out of business. Will we rely on AI computing power for mining next?

Preface

In today's technology world, the most imaginative fields besides encryption are AI. AI and encryption are now like two young dragons and a young phoenix. If you can do well in either of them, you can reach the pinnacle of life.

Of course, there are also people who can do well in both industries, such as Sam Altman, who we mentioned earlier, has penetrated the AI ​​industry through ChatGPT under OpenAI, and also issued a virtual currency WLD, which is now the top token in the crypto track. Now it is far behind Lafite.

1. What is the AI+Depin track?

Are there any good projects like Sam Altman that have two tracks under their feet? Actually, there are, and it seems that the logic is smoother than Altman's. That is to use the Web3 method to build AI infrastructure. Since the popularity of large models, the demand for AI infrastructure is actually very strong. AI infrastructure requires strong computing power support. McKinsey has calculated that as early as January 2023, OpenAI has consumed the equivalent of 175,000 Danish households' annual electricity consumption in just one month. Compared with Bitcoin mining, the power consumption of this AI infrastructure is huge. In addition to power consumption, the computing power chip GPU is also very expensive. H100 and A100 are hundreds of thousands or millions of RMB. These are toys for enterprise-level players, and various centralized computing power rooms are being built. With such a high threshold, if we encounter our Web3, then retail investors must be able to invest! Bring down the threshold of AI technical facilities for me! The computing power of AI must be a decentralized computing power base, and the data storage of AI must be my decentralized storage! The bandwidth used by AI must be my distributed bandwidth.

As a result, many AI+Depin projects have emerged this year.

We are very familiar with this AI. In English, it stands for Artificial Intelligent, which is translated into Chinese as artificial intelligence.

Depin in English stands for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, which means distributed physical infrastructure in Chinese. If this narrative is realized, the computers, mobile phones and other devices around you can all become part of the distributed physical infrastructure and become working dogs to help you make money.

Because of the strong demand for AI, many Depin projects this year are serving AI.

The core elements of DePIN include three points:

• Decentralized : First of all, it is decentralized, which is the biggest difference from traditional cloud vendors. In the past, a lot of AI computing power and storage resources were provided by cloud computing services of large companies such as Amazon/Microsoft. Our encryption revolution is mainly to revolutionize these large companies. The most ideal result is of course to unite the devices of ordinary people like us and realize that a single spark can start a prairie fire. But the final situation may be like Bitcoin mining, where AI computing power and storage requirements are released in an open and unified way, and anyone with computing power and storage resources can access it.

• Physical infrastructure : These services cannot be provided by manpower or air, but require hardware of different types and sizes, such as various IoT, 5G information towers, various servers, or mobile phones.

• Token economy : a network that uses economic incentives to encourage the community to contribute and build together.

  
  

If the above three points are achieved, then it is a Depin project. In fact, the Bitcoin mining we are familiar with is the most successful Depin.

Look at it: the computing power is decentralized, there is also physical infrastructure such as mining machines, and Bitcoin is used as a token economic incentive.

2. Is this concept reliable?

Some viewers may ask whether the current demand for computing power for AI computing also requires professional equipment, and whether ordinary people’s civilian equipment, such as mobile phones and computers, cannot be used?

The computing power requirements of other AI can generally be divided into three categories:

One is for training large models , which has the highest requirements and is provided by NVIDIA, which has very high performance.

The second type is to run the model results after the large model is trained and deployed, combined with user questions for interaction, commonly known as inference . The computing power required is not as high as that for training. Now NVIDIA, Huawei and 2-3 domestic startups can provide it.

The third type is small vertical models deployed on the edge side . To run the results, the required computing power level is even lower, about tens of TB are enough.

The first one requires investment in professional equipment. Even if the depin project is successful, it will most likely be the same as the current Bitcoin mines, which require high investment and have nothing to do with ordinary people.

As for the second/third types of needs, the equipment available to ordinary people can still help a little.

3. Inventory of AI+Depin Top Projects

Having said so much, I believe everyone has a certain understanding of the demand for AI and Depin. So let’s take a look at what are the popular AI+Depin projects in this round of the industry?

• IO.NET

The first thing to introduce is io.net

io.net is a decentralized AI computing platform based on Solana developed by IO Research. In March this year, it announced that it had completed a US$30 million Series A financing round led by Hack VC, with a valuation of US$1 billion!

In terms of valuation, it is currently the highest among the projects we introduced today.

So what exactly does Io.Net do?

According to io.net's documentation, io.net can aggregate underutilized GPUs in independent data centers, cryptocurrency miners, and other hardware networks such as Filecoin and Render.

So who will use this computing power?

io.net's current target users are AI startups and developers, because these users are relatively poor and cannot afford the high cost of renting GPU/CPU computing power; and generally these companies will not compete in the large model training track, and the equipment requirements are not that high. Most of them only need to perform inference or edge vertical model calculations.

So who will provide this computing power? Gamers and crypto GPU miners.

Gamers have high-end hardware and fast internet connections but typically only own a single GPU card, while crypto GPU miners have massive GPU resources but may face limitations on internet connection speeds and storage space.

Therefore, if you want to participate in providing computing power for io.net, you still have to consider the performance of your device. If it is not good enough, you should not participate.

Doesn't it seem like io.net makes sense? There must be some reason why they are valued so high, right? (There are a lot of melons recently)

• Aethir

Another heavyweight player is Aethir, which completed its Pre-A round of financing in mid-2023, with a total fundraising amount of more than US$9 million and a valuation of US$150 million. This round of financing was led by well-known Sanctor Capital and Hashkey.

This project is a cloud computing platform that promises customers to completely change the current technology landscape by achieving scalability and inclusive changes in the sharing, ownership and use of GPUs. Targeting fields such as artificial intelligence, cloud gaming and machine learning, Aethir allows companies and individuals to put idle GPUs into a shared network, which not only optimizes resource utilization overall, but also provides access to top computing power for a wide range of user groups. What does it mean? It means that he purchases GPU resources from users, and then sells the integrated computing power to major game companies. Why? Because the core of the CPU is the ability to process graphics. Now high-end games require real-time rendering, and there is still a great demand for GPU computing power. According to public reports, Aethir has signed a contract with the world's largest game studio, with a player base of 150 million. Although it has not been revealed which studio this is, the only one that has reached this scale is probably Riot, which launched "League of Legends", right?

In addition, there is an official cooperation with WellLink, which is the largest cloud gaming company with more than 64 million monthly active users.

The upstream buyers have signed the contract very well, but how is the downstream suppliers doing?

We have seen official information that by March this year, more than 40,000 devices have been connected to the network. It seems that the project team is still working hard.

What is more worth mentioning is that on March 20 this year, Aethir launched the public sale of "Check Node" and sold 100 million US dollars in one day. It is said that small GPU mining machines will be sold soon, and the operation is becoming more and more like the rhythm of Bitcoin mining machines.

But can Aerthir find so many users to participate in the network co-construction? This is still unknown, but from the perspective of potential energy, it is still coming in strong. You can guess in the comment area, which one will be listed on Binance first, Aethir or io.net?

• Grass

We mentioned before that whether it is io.net or aethir, the demand on the supply side is mainly computing power.

If some viewers say, I don’t have computing power, but my network is good, can I just provide the network for mining?

Yes, there is, and that is the project grass that we are going to introduce now.

Grass is Wynd Network's flagship product, which allows users to monetize their Internet connections by selling unused network resources.

Officially, Grass currently allows users to provide unused Internet bandwidth through a web browser extension to earn points, which will be "retroactively converted into network ownership" when the product's beta phase ends.

To put it in plain words, you can mine by going online or using your mobile phone.

This project completed a seed round of financing of US$3.5 million at the end of 2024. Although the amount of financing was not high, the leading investment institution was the well-known Polychain. As we mentioned before, most of the infrastructure projects listed on Binance are invested by Polychain.

Grass also had a pre-seed round in July last year, led by No Limit Holdings, which can be said to be an invisible giant in the crypto industry. Its founder is Gin Chao, the top three person in Binance and the founder of Binance Labs, who was also on our Pretty Talk a few days ago. Its portfolio has a very high chance of being listed on Binance. The Stroom we introduced before is also an invested company of this organization. A few days ago, Morgan's COO Jeremy Huff switched to the crypto industry and joined No Limit Holdings.

So it can be said that Grass was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

• EMC

If our viewers still ask, io.net and aethir both require professional equipment, and grass mainly relies on Internet mining, then I live in the mountains, the Internet is not that good, and I only have an ordinary laptop at hand, can I mine?

Of course I can.

There is also a highly technical project called EMC, which stands for EdgeMatrix Computing. From the name, you can tell that the target users are the third type of computing needs we mentioned earlier: small vertical models deployed on the edge side, which require lower computing power, about tens of TB, to run results.

This project was incubated by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab and HashKey Capital and has completed two rounds of financing, with an estimated financing scale of around 10 million US dollars. The token EMC has been listed on exchanges such as Matcha/Gate, and its current market value is around 1 billion US dollars.

The EMC protocol is an edge computing protocol based on blockchain and peer-to-peer networks that can integrate computing power and applications from different sources, enabling them to exchange and collaborate on a unified platform.

Individuals or professional developers can run EMC nodes, using personal computers or large GPU clusters like miners to provide AI services and receive rewards.

In other words, you can take your ordinary laptop and go to a place like Starbucks where electricity is not charged, and then the laptop can be connected to the EMC network to mine and make money. Doesn’t it make you feel that life has hope?

4. AI and encryption, let’s work together for warmth!

The AI ​​and encryption industries are still in the investment stage. To put it bluntly, they are very promising in the long run, but it is still difficult to say about the short-term landing scenarios and monetization.

But maybe AI and encryption, a pair of crouching dragon and phoenix, can really be combined through depin.

I hope that one day your mobile phones and computers can support all of you viewers through your own efforts, so that it will not be in vain that you spend more time looking at your mobile phones and computers than looking at your partners.