The spread of mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) tools over the past few years has touched the crypto and blockchain industry to explore decentralized alternatives to Big Tech products.

The synergy between AI and Blockchain is built to tackle the risk of centralized ownership and access to data that drives AI. The theory tells that decentralization can reduce against the entire AI economy driven by the data owned by a few techMehemoths such as Alphabet (Goog), Amazon (Amzn), Microsoft (MSFT), Alibaba (9988) and Tencent (0700).

It is still unclear whether this will prove to be a significant problem at all, much less, whether the blockchain industry will be able to solve it. What is clear, however, is that crypto venture capitalists (VCs) are willing to spend millions of dollars figuring it out. Decentralized AI has so far attracted $ 917 million in VC and private Equity Money, according to Startup Deal Platform Tracxn.

The question still is whether the trend of investing in blockchain-based AI is still built on hype or has now exceeded to be the right deal.

Blockchain Investment Company Theta Capital described AI X Crypto as “the inevitable backbone of AI” in a recent “satellite view” report exploring insights and prospects from the sector’s prominent investors.

AI agents

“No trend stands out more than the intersection of AI and Crypto,” the report said using the examples of AI agents acting on blockchains and even launching tokens.

This seems to be a more sophisticated form of speculation for Degens, but Theta claims it is a route to tackle some of AI’s problems that only crypto can solve.

“Crypto drawing books enable the participation of autonomous agents in the financial markets,” according to the report. “Decentralized token network is the bootstrapping delivery page of key -ai -I -infrastructure for calculation, data and energy.”

The report’s conclusion is far from being hype and speculation; Ai x Crypto is “the new meta.” Meta is an abbreviation for “Metagame,” an expression borrowed from games that refers to the dominant way of playing in terms of characters, strategies or movements based on the competitive landscape.

Decentralized ai

Alex Pack, CEO of Blockchain Venture Capital Firm Hack VC, described Web3 AI as “the biggest source of alpha in investment today,” in the “satellite view” report.

Hack VC has dedicated 41% of its latest fund to Web3 AI, according to the report, where it sees the main challenge as building a decentralized alternative to the AI ​​economy.

“AIS rapid development creates massive efficiency, but also increases centralization,” Pack said.

“The intersection of crypto and AI is by far the largest investment option in space and offers an open, decentralized alternative.”

One of Hack VC’s most prominent portfolio companies is grass that encourages users to participate in AI networks by offering their unused internet bandwidth in return for tokens.

This is designed as an alternative to large companies installing software code in apps to scrape their user’s data.

“Users inadvertently donate their bandwidth without compensation,” said grass founder Andrej Radonjic in Theta’s report.

“Grass gives an alternative [by] forms a massive opt-in, peer-to-peer network that is capable of producing high-quality data in the scale of Google and Microsoft. “

The dreaded AI “Taking over”

Decentralized AI shows risks to investors, Theta admits. It can lead to the spread of all the least desirable facets of the Internet, as it already exists: putrid online discourse, spam -e emails or Vapid social media content in the form of blogs, videos or memes. In the crypto world, an example of this may be the creation of the meme -tokens. The dubious endorsements, the wash shop and the pump and the dumps can all be handled by AI engines even more efficiently than humans.

Some VCs see blockchain as the basis for mitigation. Olaf Carlson-Wee, CEO and founder of Polychain, provided the examples of evidence of human mechanisms to verify that users are human and inscrimizing spam through micropayments or spam.

“If sending an E email costs $ 0.01, it would ruin the spam’s economy while he remains affordable to average users,” he said in the report.

With Blockchain that may provide some of these protective measures, Carlson-Wee AI believes will support digital and financial systems as they could surpass people in markets. This reality, he claims, would gladly be accepted as opposed to feared as a kind of gloomy dystopia.

“Over time, AI systems will develop into long-term capital allocers and predict trends and opportunities years into the future, [which] Humans will leave their means because of the superior ability to make data-driven decisions, “Carlson-Wee said.

“The AI ​​takeover will not be a war we lose – it will be a proposal we agree on,” he concluded.