At this point, you have probably used an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot like ChatGPT or Microsoft's Copilot to assist you with something along the lines of planning a vacation, or generating code for a new application.
Although these mainstream chatbots can be incredibly useful, they also have drawbacks. For example, not only is the source of data used to power these chatbots concealed, but we receive no compensation for its usage.
Benefits of Decentralized Artificial Intelligence
Aside from wrestling it away from the monopoly of big tech, decentralization promises to make AI more transparent, resilient, and align the incentives of all participants.
We already have a number of big players that are working to decentralize AI in the crypto space including SingularityNET, Ocean Protocol, and Fetch.ai, each of which was powered by a unique digital token.
To foster greater collaboration, the three projects merged earlier this year into a single entity called the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI), powered by the FET token.
The Compute Resources Factor
With the aforementioned projects now in sync, we still need to address the compute aspect of the artificial intelligence stack.
Whether we are talking about decentralized or centralized artificial intelligence, a vast amount of compute is required to train its models, and that resource should be gathered in the most efficient way possible.
Thankfully, a number of DePIN projects including Render, IO.net, NOS, and Akash are already using token incentives to optimally aggregate the world's underutilized compute power.
Merging CUDOS Into ASI
Most similar to Akash, CUDOS is another decentralized compute marketplace in the Cosmos ecosystem. The project sports its own application-specific blockchain, and its CUDOS token is used to govern the project, and to pay for compute resources.
The leaders of CUDOS and ASI have apparently been in talks to combine the two projects together, because an announcement was made yesterday that two governance proposals will soon be submitted for the communities to vote on the merge.
Token Merge Controversy
The amalgamation of CUDOS into ASI would entail a token merge, in which CUDOS tokens would be burned in order to created more FET. More specifically, investors will receive 1 FET for every 119 CUDOS tokens burned.
Some CUDOS community members have spoken out in opposition to the merger, because although the dollar amount of the received FET tokens will be slightly higher than its equivalent in CUDOS, there's a substantial difference in growth potential between the projects.
CUDOS currently has a market cap hovering around 60 million dollars, whereas ASI is already valued at over 3 billion dollars.
Therefore, a thousand dollar investment in CUDOS would double if only an additional 60 million dollars of capital flowed into the project. On the other hand, $3 billion dollars of additional capital would be required to double that same thousand dollar investment in ASI.
Other members of the community acknowledge this disparity, but support the merger anyway, saying that the combined ecosystem will have broader reach and greater utility, which should lead to a higher overall valuation in the long-term.
The Vote
In the coming days, there will be governance proposals submitted to both the CUDOS and Fetch.ai blockchains regarding the merge, the details of which anyone will be able to view on mintscan.
If you hold either FET or CUDOS tokens, you have the option of directly voting on the respective proposals. However, if you prefer to delegate your vote to a validator, you can stake your tokens to the corresponding team.
By the way, you can learn more about the technical details of how voting works on Cosmos-based blockchains here. At this point, we will wait and see how the community responds to the proposed merge.
If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Until next time...
Resources
CUDOS/ASI X Space [1]
CUDOS Logo Image [2]
Voting Box Image [3]