DeFi Summer was supposed to transform global finance forever, making it accessible to everyone. But the DeFi boom in 2020 did not result in a highway to mass adoption. Why?
Because actually using DeFi protocols was a user experience nightmare. DeFi protocols are technical and complex, and one misstep could mean losing access to–or completely destroying–a user’s funds. However, a new technology promises to bridge this gap: AI agents.
ChatGPT, You’re Our Only Hope?
A lot has changed in five years. Today, LLMs have exploded in both capability and reach, and depending on who you ask , not only will AI transform everything it touches, AGI (artificial general intelligence) could reformat entire industries altogether.
AI Agents are already being built and deployed across a range of use cases–from gaming, to content creation, to DeFi. For the uninitiated, an AI Agent is a virtual entity that can perceive and interact with other ‘things’ in its digital environment to achieve its goals. Agents can take actions across social media platforms and in theory, any other platforms with APIs.
DefAI, decentralized finance powered by AI agents, promises to simplify the user experience. By offloading the complexity of DeFi protocols to AI agents, users can easily interact with even the most technically complex protocols through a natural language chat interface.
If You Build It, They Will Come
So is the global, equitable financial utopia finally around the corner? Not quite.
Today’s cutting-edge AI agents rely heavily on LLMs powered by Big Tech’s centralized computing infrastructure, a reliance that presents a fundamental conflict for the crypto community. Centralized compute inherently lacks the censorship resistance, permissionless access, and immutability that are core tenets of DeFi. For those who have been involved in the space since DeFi Summer, compromising on these principles is simply unacceptable.
Unlocking the potential of the trillion-dollar DefAI industry and creating a truly open DeFi infrastructure for everyone is an ambitious goal. Achieving it requires a decentralized AI cloud stack that goes beyond simply wrapping existing centralized technologies like OpenAI.
The crypto and AI communities demand tools that enable agentic applications to operate autonomously with fully decentralized compute, orchestration, and execution. This is precisely what the Decentralized Cloud for AI Agents is being built to deliver.
The Decentralized AI Cloud
The decentralized AI Cloud stack consists of four interconnected layers:
The Decentralized AI Cloud
- The Application Layer. This provides user interfaces, protocols, and AI frameworks,
- The Execution Layer. This layer handles blockchain-based smart contracts and tokenomics
- The Orchestration Layer. This layer manages system efficiency through matchmaking and load balancing
- The Compute Layer. This layer supplies the foundational physical or decentralized hardware that processes and maintains the network
Decentralized compute is vital for DeFi AI agents. It ensures proximity to data sources for faster response times and minimizes latency for critical operations like liquidation systems. To truly embody the Web3 ethos, a robust and transparent security protocol is critical. This includes providing open access to GPU inventory data, ensuring complete transparency and verifiable trust.
io.net is leading the current Cambrian explosion in DefAI. Recognizing the limitations of centralized AI infra, io.net’s decentralized solution underpins projects with the core values of the crypto community:
- Peerless Performance: Battle-tested on-demand access to vast GPU resources gives builders the horsepower to build and deploy truly decentralized AI agents.
- Web3 Unlocked: Censorship resistance and permissionless access that also offers significant cost savings compared to traditional cloud providers.
io.net is helping to create a future where DefAI apps can learn, evolve, and co-create without compromising the principles of Web3. We are excited to see more and more projects partner with io.net in search of highly scalable GPU clusters that can dynamically recruit additional compute resources as demand grows.
io.net's partners include AI agent launchpads (@CreatorBid), community-led open-source frameworks (@ai16zdao), and individual AI agents (@0xzerebro) that have all prioritized decentralized compute in their stacks, and benefit from up to 90% greater cost-efficiency than they would using Big Tech compute.
DefAI is coming quick, and the demand for decentralized and transparent AI cloud infrastructure is right behind. To succeed, projects must build out fully decentralized AI cloud stacks and stay true to the ethos of blockchain.
These trustless, accessible, and equitable systems will win over the early builders and users who are bringing DefAI to life, and then, everyone else.
