Best AI Crypto Projects: Artificial Intelligence on the Blockchain!

You’d have to be on a desert island not to have noticed how artificial intelligence (AI) has sprung into the media. After the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the public went bonkers, eager and greedy to discover how AI could help them do their daily jobs, create coding, write stories and way more. It didn’t take long for AI crypto projects to start garnering their share of the limelight as well. 

Within weeks, YouTube was bursting at the seams with YouTubers telling us how to use prompts, create art on Midjourney, create storybooks and automate our businesses.

A few months later, though obsessed with AI developments, the public started worrying about AI taking over their jobs. However, whatever concerns we have on that subject, AI is out of the box and is not going back.

Likewise, it’s not dissimilar to the first launch of the Internet and the dot com rush. After that, Bitcoin swept dramatically into the crypto market, dressed up for a memorable party and suddenly, cryptocurrencies became the focal point for the media and the public.

Moreover, in 2023, crypto and AI are merging. Wow! Now, that’s exciting. It’s hard to imagine how far it can go, but some crypto AI projects are already gathering speed and investment and changing how we do things forever.

We could have called this article the top 100 Exciting AI crypto projects, still, for now, we will look at five projects that caught our eye. We aren’t saying they are the best projects because we aim to present unbiased information so you can decide what AI crypto projects you like. However, we think you’ll enjoy this soiree into the AI crypto world and feel as excited as we do about the future of AI crypto.

To that end, let’s look at the first AI crypto project

The Graph (GRT)

What Is The Graph?

The Graph is an indexing and querying protocol ranked under the top fifty on Coin Market Cap. The Graph is for querying data that supports indexing data from networks such as IPFS, Ethereum and POA with more networks planned.

“Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, making data easily accessible.” (source: The Graph)

The Graph has a hosted service for developers to build on the platform. Already developers have deployed more than 3,000 subgraphs for DApps such as: 

• AAVE
• Aragon
• Balancer
• Decentraland
• DAOstack
• Gnosis
• Livepeer
• Loopring
• Snapshot
• Sushi – Mainnet
• SushiSwap – Ethereum
• Synthetix
• Uniswap

The Graph says that usage has averaged growth at over 50% month-on-month with billions of queries. It has a global community of over 2,000 curators and more than 200 Indexer Nodes in the Testnet. Community members helped raise funds along with many well-known VCs in the blockchain community like:

• Coinbase Ventures
• CoinFund
• DCG
• DTC
• Framework
• ParaFi Capital
• Multicoin
• Reciprocal Ventures
• SPC
• Tally Capital and others

Feel free to check out our in-depth article covering The Graph in more detail

What Makes The Graph Unique?

Indexing blockchain data is challenging. The Graph’s mission is to create reliable decentralised public infrastructure for mainstream adoption. To ensure the network’s data integrity and economic security, participants use GRT (the Graph token), which is “locked up” by delegators, curators, and indexers, providing curating and indexing services on the Graph network.

The Graph learns what and how to index Ethereum data by its subgraph descriptions (the subgraph manifest):

• Smart contracts of interest for the subgraph
• The events that are important in the contracts
• The event data, which the Graph stores in its database

Once the subgraph manifest is written, the definition is stored in IPFS using The Graph CLI. After that, it tells the indexer to index data for the specific subgraph.

“A Global GraphQL API: Subgraphs can be composed into a global graph of all the world’s public information. This data can be transformed, organised, and shared across applications for anyone to query with just a few keystrokes.” (source: The Graph)

The Graph saves the significant engineering requirements of developing and operating proprietary indexing servers by reducing the hardware resources required.

Developers can now build DApps that provide agency, reliability, interoperability, security, and governance.

Who Are the Founders of The Graph?

The initial co-founding team includes Brandon Ramirez (research lead), Yaniv Tal (project lead), and Jannis Pohlmann (tech lead).

The founders are a cohesive team that has worked together for several years, and all have strong engineering backgrounds. Ramirez and Tal worked at MuleSoft (an API developer tools company later acquired by SalesForce).

The team have focused their careers on optimising the API stack and previously co-founded a developer tools startup where they built a custom framework on Datomic, an immutable database. Their vision was to use the GraphQL language to create immutable APIs and data access.

The GRT Token

GRT is an ERC-20 token, which is standard on the Ethereum blockchain. GRT has a total supply of 10,623,190,804 tokens.

• Indexers: Earn query fees and indexing rewards
• Curators: Earn a portion of their income from subgraphs query fees they signal on
• Delegators: Delegate to an indexer and receive of portion of their income generated

Active curators, delegators, and indexers can earn GRT incentives from the Graph network proportional to their GRT stake and how much work they complete. The GRT token is available to purchase and trade on KuCoin and Binance.

Fetch.AI (FET)

What is Fetch.AI?

Fetch AI is an Ethereum layer-1 network founded in 2017. It acts as an interchain gateway to the blockchain universe. The combined features of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain form a decentralised, permissionless, machine-learning network. Users can link to and access secure and private datasets and perform tasks autonomously.

Fetch.ai is an ecosystem influenced by multi-agent Systems AI, adaptable to multiple stakeholder settings. FET is the Fetch project’s native crypto token for users to pay for activities on the Fetch network.

Fetch.ai optimises transportation networks such as parking, DeFi trading services, travel, and smart energy grids. Indeed, the Fetch protocol will work for any digital system reliant on large-scale datasets.

We have a dedicated article covering the ins and outs of Fetch.AI if you want to learn more about this project.

What Makes Fetch.AI Unique?

FET holders can create and deploy digital twins on the network, and developers use FET to access machine-learning utilities to deploy collective intelligence and train autonomous digital twins.

If you’re wondering what a digital twin is, Wikipedia gives a simple explanation below:

“A digital twin is a digital representation of an intended or actual real-world physical product, system, or process (a physical twin) that serves as the effectively indistinguishable digital counterpart of it for practical purposes, such as simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance.” (source: Wikipedia)

Validation nodes are enabled by users staking FET tokens, which helps to maintain network security and reputation.

The Fetch.AI technology stack has four elements:

1. The Digital Twin Framework: This framework provides modular components that enable teams to build for digital twins to connect with, such as marketplaces, intelligence, and skills.
2. The Open Economic Framework: Enables the search and discovery functions of the digital twins.
3. The Digital Twin Metropolis: This is a collection of smart contracts that runs on a WASM (WebAssembly) virtual machine and maintains the immutable agreement records between digital twins.
4. The Fetch.ai Blockchain: Using game theory and multi-party cryptography, the blockchain provides a secure, censorship-resistant consensus that supports smart contracts and rapid chain-syncing for digital twin applications.

Who Are the Founders of Fetch.AI?

Toby Simpson (advisory board member), Thomas Hain (former COO) and Humayun Sheikh (CEO) and founder of itzME and uVue, founded Fetch.ai.

The FET Token

FET is the protocol’s utility token. Its purpose is to “find, create, deploy and train digital twins”, a crucial element of oracles and smart contracts on the Fetch.ai platform.

FET is listed in the top 125 cryptocurrencies on Coin Market Cap, with a total supply of 1,152,997,575. The FET token can be purchased on Binance, KuCoin, Coinbase and Kraken.

Resonate Social NFT Platform

Resonate Social is a blockchain-based social platform combining NFT and AI built on the Fetch.ai network with consensus-based and personalised AI curation purely for NFT trusted connections, NFT trading and social sharing.

The Resonate platform enables you to have social agency. You can personalise and train the social AI to fit with your tribe’s integrity.

You will need a Fetch browser wallet to create an account.

What you get with the Resonate Social platform:

• NFTs on user profiles.
• Curated newsfeed: based on the user ReSource.
• Decentralised governance mechanism: based on the Resonate token.
• Resonate token to allow voting on content, governance, exclusive access to Resonate NFTs,
• NFT holders get exclusive access to content, games, and AI features.
• Resonate holders can ‘tip’ other users’ posts with crypto.
• Resonate holders can swap on Reswap with Fetch and other Blockchain tokens through the Cosmos IBC.
• Use Fetch.ai agents for various tasks on Resonate to simplify the social experience.
• Integrate cosmos IBC-based cross-blockchain defi into Resonate.

Source: Resonate

You can access the in-depth documentation to dive deeply into the Fetch.ai project.

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)

What Is Ocean Protocol?

Ocean Protocol is an AI crypto project and blockchain-based ecosystem founded in 2017. It aims to help businesses and individuals autonomously and securely unlock and monetise their data value with ERC-20 smart contracts, called datasets. Previously, these datasets would be tricky to find and mostly unavailable. However, using the Ocean Protocol, users can buy and sell datasets.

A datatoken represents each data service, which can wrap a dataset to enable third parties on the platform to access the data without having to leave the security of the publisher’s enclave. You can find out more about this project in our Ocean Protocol Analysis. 

What Makes Ocean Protocol Unique?

The Ocean Protocol gives users access to previously unavailable data. Anyone with datasets can tokenise their data and

Ocean Protocol unlocks access to data previously unavailable or tricky to access. The protocol allows anyone with datasets to tokenise their data. After that, it can be made available on the Ocean Market for others to access reliable data streams and create an income.

Businesses can use the Ocean Protocol for building and launching data markets of their own, which can be done by forking the Ocean Protocol or using Ocean Protocol React hooks.

Who Are the Founders of Ocean Protocol?

The core founding team of entrepreneurs and consultants has extensive experience with high-tech business growth and development.

• Bruce Pon is an international project manager and CEO of BigchainDB.
• Cristina Pon is the marketing director for Ocean Protocol and BigchainDB.
• Trent McConaghy is an AI expert and engineer.
• Razvan Olteanu has over twenty years of management and technical experience in senior roles.

In addition, the Ocean Protocol has an extensive team of advisors and experts in big data, blockchain, AI and business development.

OCEAN: The Utility Token

OCEAN tokens enable staking on datasets and gain community governance on data. The OCEAN-datatoken AMM pool establishes the price of datatokens, which adjusts with sales and purchases based on supply and demand.

OCEAN stakeholders become liquidity providers in the OCEAN-datatoken pool and receive a token stake pro-rata percentage of transaction fees from the pool.

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is in the top 150 cryptocurrencies on Coin Market Cap with a total supply of 1,410,000,000. The OCEAN token can be picked up on Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, and Bitfinex.

Artificial Liquid Intelligence (ALI)

What is the AI Protocol?

The AI Protocol is a platform that enables the creation and governance of AI assets and characters and interoperability, the foundations of the future intelligent world.

“Intelligence Tokenized. The AI Protocol is the property rights backbone of the Generative AI Economy.” (source: The AI Protocol)

• Create interoperable AI dApps and assets in a secure, trustless environment.
• Tokenise and trade AI assets.

“Alethea AI is proud to introduce CharacterGPT, the world’s first Multimodal AI System that generates interactive AI Characters from a description in natural language. In short, CharacterGPT enables Text-to-Character creation.” (source: The AI Protocol)

Backers of the AI Protocol include the following: –

• Binance
• Polygon
• Alliance
• com
• Multicoin Capital
• Bitkraft
• MCC

Alethea AI is a contributor to the AI Protocol. According to Business Insider, Alethea, with its strong community interested in artificial intelligence, is a potential rival for OpenAI. Alethea produced dApps such as Character and Noah’s Ark metaverse.

What Makes Artificial Liquid Intelligence Unique?

“The AI Protocol enables decentralised ownership within the Generative AI Economy.” It enables developers and creators to leverage exciting new user acquisition models, monetisation, verification, crowdsourcing, governance, interoperability, provenance, and more.

Who Founded Artificial Liquid Intelligence

Alethea was founded by Arif Khan in 2019

The AI protocol professes to a world-class team of engineers, developers, researchers and other talented people focusing on blockchain and artificial intelligence.

ALI: The Utility Token

ALI is the AI Protocol’s ERC-20 Utility Token. Its purpose is to incentivise, regulate and reward participants of the AI Protocol. ALI stakeholders have governance for the protocol’s decision

ALI is in the top 250 listed cryptocurrencies on Coin Market Cap and has a total supply of 10,000,000,000. The ALI token is available on Uniswap, HTX, Gate.io and Bitget.

Numerai (NMR)

What Is Numerai?

NumerAi is an Ethereum-based platform and ecosystem founded in 2015 for data scientists and developers to experiment and create machine-learning models with enhanced reliability.

“Apply machine learning to predict the stock market. Build a model using the example Python and R scripts. Everything you need to get started in one package.” (source: Numeraire)

NumerAI aims to introduce decentralisation to data sciences so developers can compete to create machine-learning prediction models.

Above all, NumerAI believes it is the first hedge fund to create a cryptocurrency that changes how traditional hedge funds work. NumerAI uses machine learning for investment strategies using predictions and data from NumerAI tournament participants.

“Start with hedge fund quality data. It is clean and regularised, designed to be usable right away. Obfuscated, so it can be given out for free.” (source: NumerAi)

We have a review on NumerAI, covering the project in more detail if you are interested.

What Makes Numeraire Unique?

Numerai and the NMR token are unique as the first cryptocurrency to be created (reportedly) and released by a hedge fund.

One of the primary benefits of the NMR token is that data scientists whose models perform well in the Numerai tournament receive token rewards. Subsequently, as more people enter and compete in the tournament, the token increases in value.

It is an innovative approach to stock trading, and Numerai is one of the few hedge funds relying on AI-generated data predictions.

Who Are the Founders of Numeraire?

Richard Craib is the CEO and founder of Numerai, who was voted Forbes 30 under 30 for his contribution to founding his first company.

NMR: The Utility Token

The NMR token is the platform’s native cryptocurrency, and NumerAI rewards participants with NMR tokens when their model performs well in competitions.

NumerAI (NMR) ranks in the top 300 on Coin Market Cap with a total supply of 11,000,000. The NMR token can be picked up on most major crypto exchanges.

There are multiple crypto AI projects coming to market. Below are a few more AI crypto projects to watch.

Other Crypto AI Projects Worth a Look

SingularityNET (AGIX):  A decentralised, inclusive, democratic, and helpful AGI (artificial general intelligence) for users to use blockchain technology to build, distribute and sell AI services.

Render Token (RNDR): Connects users requiring processing power with people with spare processors, such as node distributors with GPUs who can link to the Render Networks.

The Oasis Network (ROSE): A user-friendly, secure, and easy-to-integrate privacy layer for Web3. It adds anonymity to dApps on the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) network.

Injective (INJ): A “plug-and-play” financial system and layer-1 blockchain for DeFi apps for users to create smart contracts.

Exec RLC (RLC): An AI crypto initiative that uses secure computing and blockchain to bridge the divide between users and resource providers.

Conclusion: Top 5 AI Crypto Projects

To sum up, hundreds of Artificial intelligence projects are springing onto the market every day, with each promising to be the best. It’s a replicable reminder of when Bitcoin price first took off, and suddenly the public became interested in the “next big thing.”

Likewise, as interest in the metaverse declines, AI and machine learning seems to have centre stage. ChatGPT hit over 100 million members in its first month, an unprecedented number for any new technology. It seems public opinion is split. Some fear the idea of artificial intelligence taking their jobs, and others feel excited about the multiple opportunities that AI may provide.

In conclusion, combining AI with cryptocurrencies seems like an innovative and exciting development. Time will tell if we get bored of AI, though I suspect that’s unlikely, and we will see many more AI crypto projects appearing soon.

Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.