Bittensor：架起人工智能和加密货币的桥梁，吸引风险投资

在加密领域人工智能 (AI) 采用的新兴领域中，去中心化人工智能市场 Bittensor 已成为风险投资巨头的灯塔。 Polychain、Digital Money Group 和 dao5 已在 Bittensor 的代币 TAO 上投入了大量资金，该代币为网络提供的一系列人工智能相关服务提供了动力。值得注意的是，币安和 Crypto.com 最近上市 TAO 提高了其可访问性，并将 Bittensor 的市值推至近 37 亿美元。

Bittensor: Bridging the Nexus of AI and Crypto, Attracting Prominent Venture Capital Backing

Bittensor：架起人工智能和加密货币的桥梁，吸引了知名风险投资的支持

Amidst the transformative era of artificial intelligence (AI), investors have sought projects that deftly intertwine this dynamic sector with the burgeoning realm of cryptocurrency.

在人工智能 (AI) 的变革时代，投资者一直在寻找能够将这个充满活力的行业与新兴的加密货币领域巧妙地结合在一起的项目。

One such project, Bittensor, a decentralized AI marketplace, has catapulted to prominence, attracting notable venture capital firms. Polychain, Digital Currency Group, and dao5 have collectively acquired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TAO tokens, the fuel that powers a suite of AI-related services offered by the network, encompassing model training and data storage.

Bittensor 是一个这样的项目，它是一个去中心化的人工智能市场，已经声名鹊起，吸引了著名的风险投资公司。 Polychain、Digital Money Group 和 dao5 已共同收购了价值数亿美元的 TAO 代币，这些代币为网络提供的一系列人工智能相关服务提供动力，包括模型训练和数据存储。

Bittensor's TAO token had been previously accessible solely through mining, mid-tier exchanges, and over-the-counter markets. However, its recent listing on both Binance and Crypto.com has ushered in a significant stride for the hitherto low-profile project, whose market capitalization currently hovers near $3.7 billion.

Bittensor 的 TAO 代币此前只能通过挖矿、中间层交易所和场外市场获得。然而，它最近在 Binance 和 Crypto.com 上上市，为这个迄今为止低调的项目带来了重大进步，其市值目前徘徊在 37 亿美元附近。

In an interview with Fortune, Bittensor founder Jacob Steeves hailed the advent of centralized tools from OpenAI, Google, and Meta as a testament to the viability of his project, which he commenced in 2015. Despite facing skepticism and accusations of exploiting the AI hype, Steeves remains steadfast in his vision. "It's the most amazing feeling as a builder," Steeves said. "Frankenstein—it's alive."

在接受《财富》杂志采访时，Bittensor 创始人 Jacob Steeves 对 OpenAI、Google 和 Meta 中心化工具的出现表示欢迎，这证明了他于 2015 年启动的项目的可行性。尽管面临着利用人工智能炒作的怀疑和指责，斯蒂夫斯仍然坚定他的愿景。 “作为一名建筑商，这是最令人惊奇的感觉，”斯蒂夫斯说。 “弗兰肯斯坦——它还活着。”

Venture Capital Support

风险投资支持

Bittensor may not possess the mainstream recognition accorded to other crypto projects like Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin, which seeks to mitigate the pervasive influence of AI through a crypto-enabled, eyeball-scanning protocol for establishing human identity. Nevertheless, Bittensor has quietly amassed a cadre of investors.

Bittensor 可能不具备 Sam Altman 支持的 Worldcoin 等其他加密项目的主流认可度，该项目旨在通过支持加密的眼球扫描协议来建立人类身份，从而减轻人工智能的普遍影响。尽管如此，Bittensor 已经悄悄聚集了一批投资者。

The VC firm Polychain, co-founded by former Coinbase employee Olaf Carlson-Wee, nurtured Bittensor from its inception in 2019 and holds approximately $200 million worth of Bittensor's token. Carlson-Wee stated that Bittensor "uses an incentive system conceptually similar to Bitcoin mining, but instead of building a payment network, it builds an open-source and public artificial intelligence." He further described it as "a radical new use case for blockchains that is unprecedented."

由前 Coinbase 员工 Olaf Carlson-Wee 联合创立的风险投资公司 Polychain 从 2019 年 Bittensor 成立之初就对其进行了培育，并持有价值约 2 亿美元的 Bittensor 代币。 Carlson-Wee 表示，Bittensor“使用概念上类似于比特币挖矿的激励系统，但它不是构建支付网络，而是构建开源和公共人工智能。”他进一步将其描述为“前所未有的区块链全新用例”。

**Dao5, an investment fund established by Polychain alumnus Tekin Salimi, holds a stake of around $50 million in TAO and was an early supporter of Bittensor's ecosystem.** Digital Currency Group, the influential crypto empire founded by Barry Silbert, is another backer, holding approximately $100 million of TAO.

**Dao5 是 Polychain 校友 Tekin Salimi 成立的投资基金，持有 TAO 约 5000 万美元的股份，是 Bittensor 生态系统的早期支持者。** 由 Barry Silbert 创立的颇具影响力的加密帝国 Digital Money Group 是另一个支持者，持有约 1 亿美元的 TAO。

The influx of investor support underscores the remarkable ascent of Bittensor, which was established years before the November 2022 debut of ChatGPT ignited public awareness of generative AI. Bittensor's network was launched in 2021.

投资者支持的涌入凸显了 Bittensor 的显着上升，该公司成立于 ChatGPT 2022 年 11 月首次亮相之前几年，引发了公众对生成式 AI 的认识。 Bittensor 的网络于 2021 年推出。

Interplay of Crypto and AI

加密货币与人工智能的相互作用

The intersection of crypto and AI has emerged as a focal point for speculation, with tokens like Worldcoin experiencing price fluctuations in response to news cycles surrounding AI. In late March, three of the most prominent crypto AI projects announced their plans to merge their tokens and form a collective.

加密货币和人工智能的交叉点已成为投机的焦点，像世界币这样的代币会随着人工智能的新闻周期而经历价格波动。 3 月下旬，三个最著名的加密人工智能项目宣布计划合并其代币并形成一个集体。

While some have dismissed Bittensor's TAO token as a mere "memecoin" riding the wave of AI hype, with its price surging by more than 1,000% in less than a year, Steeves told Fortune that Bittensor's track record attests to its potential as a viable competitor to OpenAI and Google, where he previously worked as an engineer. "People will come and they will go, and if they buy it because it's a memecoin, they won't be here later," he said. "That's fine, because we want people that actually know what we're doing."

虽然有些人认为 Bittensor 的 TAO 代币仅仅是乘着人工智能炒作浪潮的“memecoin”，其价格在不到一年的时间内飙升了 1,000% 以上，但 Steeves 告诉《财富》杂志，Bittensor 的业绩记录证明了其作为可行竞争对手的潜力他曾在 OpenAI 和 Google 担任工程师。 “人们会来，也会走，如果他们因为它是模因币而购买它，那么他们以后就不会再来这里了，”他说。 “那很好，因为我们希望人们真正知道我们在做什么。”

Decentralized AI

去中心化人工智能

Steeves credits the Bitcoin network as the inspiration for his vision of Bittensor in 2015. Conceived by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin leverages the novel concept of mining to record and process transactions, thereby creating an alternative to centralized payment platforms. The system relies on code and a diverse array of participants, from developers to validators, who collectively determine the direction of the protocol. "How did we create a supercomputer that is bigger than any government or corporation can create with a centralized entity," Steeves said. "The answer is Bitcoin used incentive mechanisms."

Steeves 将比特币网络视为他 2015 年 Bittensor 愿景的灵感来源。比特币由神秘的中本聪 (Satoshi Nakamoto) 构思，利用新颖的挖矿概念来记录和处理交易，从而创建集中式支付平台的替代方案。该系统依赖于代码和各种参与者（从开发人员到验证者），他们共同决定协议的方向。斯蒂夫斯说：“我们如何创建一台比任何政府或公司通过集中实体所能创建的还要大的超级计算机。” “答案是比特币使用了激励机制。”

Bittensor emerged as an attempt to repurpose the foundational principles of Bitcoin for the complex array of functions required by the burgeoning field of AI, encompassing data storage and the training of machine learning models. Numerous crypto projects "pre-mine" tokens or allocate holdings to early investors through mechanisms such as Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs). However, Steeves chose to adhere to the pure Bitcoin model, with participants earning TAO tokens solely through mining, akin to Nakamoto's original design.

Bittensor 的出现是为了将比特币的基本原理重新用于人工智能新兴领域所需的一系列复杂功能，包括数据存储和机器学习模型的训练。许多加密项目通过未来代币简单协议（SAFT）等机制“预开采”代币或将持有量分配给早期投资者。然而，Steeves 选择坚持纯比特币模式，参与者仅通过挖矿赚取 TAO 代币，类似于中本聪的原始设计。

Despite sharing Bitcoin's DNA, Bittensor's underlying system is far more intricate, offering a diverse range of functions beyond Bitcoin's simple transaction model. Miners engage in specialized competitions based on the tasks they perform, incentivized by the prospect of earning TAO. These diverse tools are distributed across 32 "subnets," or specialized networks, providing services such as data storage, access to AI-powered chatbots, scraping, and price oracles.

尽管共享比特币的 DNA，但 Bittensor 的底层系统要复杂得多，提供了超出比特币简单交易模型的多种功能。矿工们根据自己执行的任务参加专门的竞赛，并受到赚取 TAO 的激励。这些多样化的工具分布在 32 个“子网”或专用网络中，提供数据存储、访问人工智能聊天机器人、抓取和价格预言机等服务。

While the intricate nature of Bittensor's design may seem esoteric, it stems from the project's evolutionary growth and its ongoing struggle to articulate its value to the public. Nonetheless, the project has garnered a passionate community of stakeholders, including miners, validators, and projects building on the Bittensor platform. Steeves highlighted Corcel, an AI company that has developed products such as a chatbot powered by Bittensor, as an example of early real-world applications emerging from the protocol.

虽然 Bittensor 设计的复杂性可能看起来深奥，但它源于该项目的进化发展以及它不断努力向公众阐明其价值。尽管如此，该项目还是吸引了热情的利益相关者社区，包括矿工、验证者和在 Bittensor 平台上构建的项目。 Steeves 重点介绍了 Corcel，这是一家人工智能公司，该公司开发了由 Bittensor 支持的聊天机器人等产品，作为该协议出现的早期现实世界应用程序的一个例子。

Beyond the support of VC firms like Polychain, prominent companies are also bolstering Bittensor by acting as validators, influencing the development of subnets through their TAO holdings. Foundry, the DCG-owned Bitcoin mining behemoth, operates a subnet that incentivizes miners to predict the S&P 500 price index during trading hours.

除了 Polychain 等风险投资公司的支持之外，知名公司还通过充当验证者来支持 Bittensor，通过其持有的 TAO 影响子网的发展。 DCG 旗下的比特币挖矿巨头 Foundry 运营着一个子网，激励矿工在交易时间内预测标准普尔 500 价格指数。

Bittensor's Competitive Landscape

Bittensor 的竞争格局

As Bittensor continues its rapid ascent, its most significant breakthrough to date may have been its listing on Binance last week, which propelled the TAO token to large-scale trading. Steeves noted that the annualized trading volume of TAO during its debut day on Binance surpassed the GDP of Peru, where he has resided for the past four years.

随着Bittensor继续快速崛起，其迄今为止最重大的突破可能是上周在币安上市，这推动了TAO代币的大规模交易。 Steeves 指出，TAO 在币安上线首日的年化交易量超过了他过去四年居住的秘鲁的 GDP。

Steeves emphasized that Bittensor's ambitions extend far beyond the price fluctuations of its cryptocurrency. Driven by its byzantine system of subnets and associated projects, the network will constantly evolve in response to demand, as well as the interplay between miners and validators as they strive to maintain equilibrium within the incentive mechanisms.

Steeves 强调，Bittensor 的野心远远超出了其加密货币的价格波动。在其拜占庭子网系统和相关项目的驱动下，网络将根据需求以及矿工和验证者之间的相互作用不断发展，因为他们努力维持激励机制内的平衡。

"It's this constant churn—a battle between the light and the dark," Steeves told Fortune. "That's a lot of why we like Taoist symbolism."

“这是一场持续不断的搅动——一场光明与黑暗之间的战斗，”斯蒂夫斯告诉《财富》杂志。 “这就是我们喜欢道教象征主义的重要原因。”

With companies like OpenAI continuing to dominate the AI landscape, Steeves believes that Bittensor will provide a solution to what he perceives as the true existential threat posed by artificial intelligence. "The real issue is not that the AIs are going to take over the world—that's what they'd like to sell," he said. "It's not the iRobot outcome, it's the Elysium outcome, where humanity and the world is so centralized in terms of power, metastasized by artificial intelligence, that all of us are just but slaves effectively to these massive companies."

随着 OpenAI 等公司继续主导人工智能领域，Steeves 相信 Bittensor 将为他认为的人工智能带来的真正的生存威胁提供解决方案。 “真正的问题不是人工智能将接管世界——这才是他们想要出售的东西，”他说。 “这不是 iRobot 的结果，而是极乐世界的结果，人类和世界在权力方面如此集中，通过人工智能转移，我们所有人都只是这些大公司的有效奴隶。”