Three major protocol players join forces to create decentralised AI services

Something I first talked about many years ago was the emergence, albeit very slowly and quietly, of the decentralised Artificial Intelligence (AI) trend, and now Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol—have announced their intention to merge and create the world's largest decentralized AI ecosystem. The merger, which is subject to community approval, aims to accelerate progress toward decentralized Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and further toward Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).

Just for reference, while AGI focuses on building an AI that is able to mimic human reasoning capabilities, ASI focuses on exceeding the boundaries set by AGI in all areas. So, while J.A.R.V.I.S, superhero Iron Man’s PC, may be an AGI computer, it's got nothing on Deep Thought computer powered by an ASI in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" book series.

The new entity, to be known as the Superintelligence Collective, will bring together the strengths of the three projects to create a powerful alternative to existing AI projects controlled by Big Tech. Fetch.ai, a Web 3.0 platform for the new AI economy, is building a decentralized multi-agent platform for deploying AI applications. SingularityNET has built an AI-powered blockchain-based marketplace and framework for AI services, while Ocean Protocol has focused on building a decentralized data exchange platform.

The merger is born out of a period of exponential growth for AI projects and provides an opportunity for the three leaders to create a compelling alternative to Big Tech's control over AI development, use, and monetization.

That means they would be up against the likes of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic, etc. But in general, they would offer a platform for developers willing to build AI models that compete against centralized, proprietary technologies.

The fusion of their research, brands, technologies, and products will create a foundation to build a scalable decentralized AI infrastructure that combines the different focuses of each project and accelerates investments in AGI research.

Openness and decentralization has become a key dividing topic in the philosophical debate surrounding AI. As AI becomes more sophisticated, the requirements and costs to train better models has increased. That, in turn, has underscored the appeal of distributed ecosystems for small developers and the open source community in general.

“Decentralized AI facilitates direct interactions between developers and users, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of centralized authorities. This enhances data privacy and paves the way for a more democratic and trustworthy AI ecosystem and encourages global participants to contribute,” Humayun Sheikh, Fetch.ai CEO said in a press release.

The transaction details involve the migration of tokens, with Fetch.ai’s FET leading the charge and becoming ASI. SingularityNET’s AGIX tokens and Ocean Protocol’s OCEAN tokens will then be migrated to ASI. If and when the proposal receives majority approval from each respective community, the newly created ASI token will have a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of approximately $7.5 billion as of March 26, 2024.

In detail, the idea is to merge tokens at a conversion rate of 0.433350 to 1 for SingularityNET holders, 0.433226 to 1 for Ocean Protocol, and Fetch.AI simply doing a rebranding maintaining the same token amount. $ASI should start trading at $2.82 per token - if the proposal is approved

This token merger is somewhat unusual, but not without precedent. In 2022, NuCypher and Keep Network used a similar process to merge into a brand new project called Threshold Network Token, demonstrating the potential success of such collaborations. Since the announcement of this merger, SingularityNET spiked 10%, Fetch.AI spiked 12.82%, and Ocean Protocol jumped over 23%.

The Superintelligence Collective will be led by Ben Goertzel as CEO. He’s the AI researcher who coined the term “AGI” in 2005. Goertzel will be joined by Fetch.AI’s Humayun Sheikh as the Chairman and Trent McConaghy representing Ocean Protocol. The organizations helping guide the development of the three merging networks will continue to operate as separate entities, but will collaborate closely in the shared ASI tokenomic ecosystem and the operation of the Superintelligence Collective.

The diluted capitalization could easily land the ASI token in the top 20 of the most valuable cryptocurrency projects, just below Uniswap and beating other notable projects like Litecoin, DAI, Stellar. The merger would also make Superintelligence Collective the second most valuable AI token in the crypto industry, just below NEAR Protocol which has an $8.1 billion market capitalization at the time of writing.

The leaders of the three projects have expressed their excitement about the merger, emphasizing the shared vision of creating a decentralized, democratic, and inclusive AI ecosystem. They believe that this merger will accelerate investment into AGI and pave the way for a more democratic and trustworthy AI ecosystem.