This started as our year-in-review report on Bittensor. But halfway through writing it, we realized there wasn't a single comprehensive resource that simply explains the thesis, maps the ecosystem's growth, and explains Dynamic TAO

So Seth and I set out to create it Bittensor draws much inspiration from Bitcoin's design and principles.

Bitcoin proved decentralized markets could coordinate global computing resources at massive scale.

In 2021, Bittensor launched and extended this to AI with its text-prompting network.

Everyone's bull posting about GPU compute networks on the timeline, so I want to toss in a bit of a reality check on the situation

The main question I looked at is whether these networks in their current state are supply or demand constrained.

I think it's a bit of both 🧵 On the supply side, the main challenge has been sourcing high-end GPUs like the A100s and H100s, which are best in class for ML.
The initial idea behind these networks was that entities with those GPUs could monetize them during periods of idleness.

However, I'm starting to see two issues w/ this model:
1. these GPUs are consistently in high demand, which means they are rarely idle
2. the dependence on these GPUs being available only in their idle times creates a lack of stable supply, undermining networks' ability to provide reliable services.

Just dropped the most in-depth report on DePIN with @DAnconia_Crypto covering developments in 2023 and where the space is going in 2024.
Report can be accessed for FREE on @MessariCrypto (link at end)

In 2023 there were over 650 DePINs, >$20B in market cap, and >$15M ARR Compute marketplaces dominated 2023. However, the challenge for 2024 will be storage networks finding more paying users, compute networks sourcing high quality GPUs, and retrieval networks increasing their density.

There’s a reason that Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is referred to as the holy grail of computing & black magic at the same time.

FHE enables computations on encrypted data without decryption, basically meaning sensitive data can be processed without ever being revealed. The transparency of blockchains poses challenges for enterprise adoption, as most businesses are unwilling to publicize every aspect of their operations onchain.

Using FHE to encrypt and compute on onchain data could be the solution to this.

The DePIN, or decentralized physical infra networks, narrative has been growing stronger recently.

So I wrote a 7k+ word report on everything you could possibly need to know before the next bull market. DePINs use token rewards to incentivize the crowdsourcing and building of real-world physical infra.

The "real world" part is important because it represents crypto branching out out of the digital realm and into the meatspace.

The intersection of crypto and AI is proving to be a lot more than just hype

Crypto is playing an active role addressing challenges & bottlenecks in the AI industry, serving as a:
-Hardware coordination layer for compute resources 🖥️
-Machine intelligence coordination layer 🧠 Problem 1:
Computing power has become a bottleneck in the AI industry as the computations required double every few months

The cost of training AI models has also been increasing around 3100% per year, emphasizing the need for more efficient & cost-effective training solutions

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure networks (DePIN) is a rapidly growing sector that taps into existing, real-world, non-speculative demand sources.

DePIN can be broken down into 4 categories:
- Server (Cloud) Networks
- Wireless Networks
- Sensor Networks
- Energy Networks What is DePIN?
DePIN networks use token rewards to coordinate and incentivize individuals to deploy and operate physical infrastructure and hardware networks

This allows a network to bootstrap the supply-side of to the point where end users find its services attractive to use.

Decentralized cloud storage networks eliminate the need for third-party trust, remove single points of failure, and increase data security and privacy — all while being environmentally sustainable and cost-effective.

Are these networks the future of data storage? 🧵 In a decentralized cloud storage model, data is distributed across a global P2P network of individually operated nodes, rather than on a single server located in a data center.
Data is typically split into shards, replicated, and distributed to various nodes.

Web3 infrastructure is quickly becoming one of the hottest sectors (makes sense, it's a bear market).
So how is adoption and revenue generation coming along? Q3'22 has been challenging for the Web3 infrastructure sector. Although the sector’s fully diluted market cap slightly declined by 2%, the overall revenue generated declined by a staggering 67% QoQ from $16.8 million to $5.6 million.

Advantages for @helium migrating to Solana:

1. Access to Solana's infrastructure, DeFi ecosystem & apps (includes: wallets & DEXs). This can accelerate token adoption as right now Helium's ecosystem is siloed and its hard to acquire the token

https://twitter.com/rawrmaan/status/1564718174112727040

2. Access to Solana's dev ecosystem.

Helium's blockchain is written in Erlang, which is not a commonly known language. This limits who's able to help work/build Helium.

The past few weeks in crypto showed that decentralization actually matters
Any centralized point in the tech stack can be used an attack vector.
Since most apps rely on centralized infra providers for RPC calls, the RPC layer becomes a prime avenue for limiting access to apps Centralized Infra-as-a-Service businesses (e.g., Infura and Alchemy) tend to rely on a single cloud provider. As a result, nodes have become centralized on the servers of a handful of large cloud providers.
50% of Ethereum’s hosted nodes are hosted with AWS!!!

Crypto protocols are extremely powerful at incentivizing and coordinating human activity. This makes them useful for building real-world decentralized infra and hardware networks
Lets look at some projects building in this emerging sector known as Proof of Physical Work (PoPW) Using this framework, protocols are rewarding tokens to participants for helping build and maintain large scale networks including decentralized weather station, map, 5G, car data & compute networks.

Ethereum mining, which has grown into a $19B industry, will soon disappear with ETH's Merge. This will leave miners scrambling, looking for a new home for their hardware (GPUs).
Here are some potential options miners can repurpose their GPUs towards 🧵 Mining alt PoW coins is what a majority of miners are defaulting to, but this *won't* play out well.
Total GPU-mineable coin marketcap w/o ETH is $4.1B, which is 2% of ETH's marketcap.
ETH also makes up 97% of total daily miner revenue for GPU-mineable coins.

.@THORChain is well on its way to becoming a liquidity black hole and approaching Valhalla

After the network was relaunched, its recovered to reach ATHs of $1 bn in total TVL, $500mn in its liquidity pools, and $2bn in swap volume all in the month of March. Last month, @THORChain integrated Terra onto the network. In 3 weeks the network amassed $90mn in #UST and #LUNA liquidity.
11 days into April, THORChain has already done $1bn in swapping volume, with UST being the 2nd most traded asset. UST should surpass BUSD in no time