The Future of AI Is Decentralized. Sahara AI Is Leading the Way

At P2P.org, we champion blockchain projects driving innovation, and Sahara AI’s blend of AI and blockchain is one of the most exciting we’ve seen. By bringing transparency, ownership, and fairness to the heart of AI development, Sahara AI is laying the foundation for a decentralized AI future.

As a validator in the SIWA testnet, we’re helping build an ecosystem empowering developers, creators — and most importantly, regular users — in their transition to an AI-powered future.

In this post, we’ll explore Sahara AI’s bold vision, its product suite, technical breakthroughs, testnet progress, and what’s coming next. We also break down where P2P.org fits in and why we’re fired up to be part of it.

The Challenge: Centralized AI Roadblocks

Centralized AI systems, controlled by tech giants, limit access to data and computing resources, obscure data origins, and restrict fair rewards for contributors. Developers struggle to verify datasets, while users question AI reliability due to unclear processes. Sahara AI plans to tackle these, enabling transparent, accessible AI development for its community.

Big Bets on Decentralized AI

Sahara AI is already making serious waves. In August 2024, the company secured a massive $43 million funding round, led by heavyweights like Pantera Capital, YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), and Polychain Capital — with strategic backing from Samsung NEXT and Matrix Partners. This bold investment underscores surging confidence in Sahara AI’s decentralized AI vision. With industry veterans Sean Ren and Tyler Zhou (formerly of Binance Labs) at the helm, Sahara Labs is scaling up its global team, supercharging platform performance, and energizing its developer ecosystem. The goal? To democratize access to powerful AI tools and unlock new, secure ways for users around the world to monetize their AI assets.

Sahara AI’s Solution: A Blockchain Purpose-Built for AI

Sahara AI is building the backbone for decentralized intelligence. Leveraging the Cosmos SDK for high-speed, low-cost transactions and full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility for smart contract flexibility, the Sahara Blockchain was purpose-built with AI development in mind. It supports the full lifecycle of AI development by giving contributors and developers the infrastructure needed to register their AI assets, establish attribution, and enable transparent usage tracking across the ecosystem, no matter what chain they’re on. This creates the foundation for new models of monetization, licensing, and collaboration.

Key Technical Features

On-Chain AI Lifecycle Management: A suite of AI-native smart contracts designed to bring structure, transparency, and enforceability to every stage of AI development. These protocols enable on-chain asset ownership, provenance tracking, and monetization.
Off-Chain AI Execution Protocols: Sahara's off-chain infrastructure powers how AI agents are created, deployed, and run. They provide seamless access to models, databases, and tools, manage automatic agent execution with custom settings, and track usage for transparency and performance. Teams can collaborate on agents and models while retaining control of their assets. To ensure trust, Trusted Execution Environments generate verifiable proofs of each run, which are anchored on-chain.
Chain Agnostic Infrastructure: Whether you're just getting started or scaling a production-ready agent, you should be able to tap into Sahara’s infrastructure at any stage of the AI development lifecycle, without having to switch ecosystems or abandon your community.

How Sahara AI Products Power a Decentralized Economy

Sahara AI is building a powerful suite of products to democratize AI development, ensuring secure, transparent, and equitable access for everyone. In this publication we’ll focus on the Application Layer in particular.

Data Services Platform (DSP) turns user participation into real value. By completing tasks like data labeling, prompt creation, app screen recording, or offering expert input, users earn Sahara Points, fueling both personal rewards and ecosystem growth. Currently in Early Access (whitelisted), the Open Beta is set to launch soon after the SIWA Testnet.
AI Developer Platform (formerly AI Studio) is a full-stack environment for building, testing, and deploying AI models, agents, and pipelines. Developers can plug into a shared marketplace of assets or upload their own, configure workflows, and publish tokenized components, all while tracking performance and monetization. It’s live now on the SIWA Testnet with the first features related to AI dataset tokenization — jump in here. More features will unlock soon to deepen participation.
AI Marketplace (coming soon) will be the go-to hub for buying, selling, and licensing AI assets, including datasets, models, and agents. With flexible licensing, secure ownership, and transparent attribution via the Sahara Blockchain, it will give creators a new way to monetize, and buyers a trusted source of modular, high-quality AI components, all with transparent usage tracking.

Together, these products form the foundation of Sahara AI’s Application Layer. They empower users and developers alike to contribute, innovate, and earn within a secure, equitable, and decentralized AI economy.

Siwa Testnet & P2P.org’s Validator Role

Following the success of the private testnet, which saw over 1.4 million daily active accounts and 200,000+ users on the Data Services Platform, Sahara AI has launched SIWA, its first public testnet. SIWA represents a major milestone: bringing AI ownership and provenance fully on-chain, and taking a critical step toward a fairer, decentralized AI economy.

SIWA already empowers participants to register and tokenize datasets, models, and AI assets as cryptographic proof of ownership, laying the groundwork for future licensing, attribution, and revenue sharing. This stage is extremely important for collecting feedback, refining details, and testing all aspects of the system to ensure a tamper-proof mainnet implementation.

P2P.org plays a key role as a validator on the SIWA testnet, helping to secure the network and maintain its integrity. Validators like P2P.org ensure that transactions are processed accurately, that asset provenance remains tamper-proof, and that the system performs reliably at scale. Community participation is equally essential, as it helps surface potential issues and ensure robust performance. These early efforts are vital to shaping a secure and decentralized foundation for the Sahara AI Blockchain on the mainnet.

What’s Next: The Road to Mainnet

SIWA Phase 1 is just the beginning. While it introduces foundational dataset registration and ownership, Sahara AI’s full protocol rollout will unlock deeper capabilities across licensing, monetization, and open-source development — paving the way for a fully decentralized AI stack.

Phase 2 – On-Chain Licensing, Revenue Distribution & Royalty Vaults

Phase 2 will bring licensing and revenue sharing on-chain, allowing developers to set custom licensing terms and automatically receive payments when their assets are used. With royalty vaults, asset owners and investors will claim proportional revenue based on usage, turning attribution into sustainable economic participation for all contributors.

Phase 3 – Permissionless Testnet with Open-Source Protocols

This phase will fully decentralize the core infrastructure, eliminating reliance on a centralized multisig and enabling global, permissionless interaction with Sahara Protocols. An open-source ecosystem will allow developers to extend and integrate these protocols freely.

Phase 4 – Pipeline Registration, Provenance Tracking & Proof-of-Contribution

The final phase before mainnet will tokenize AI pipelines, providing on-chain registration and attribution for every workflow element. Contributors will earn tokens reflecting their relative value across datasets, models, and prompts, with automated revenue-sharing that recognizes and rewards every part of the AI value chain.

Why Sahara AI Stands Out

In a world where AI is growing at breakneck speed, Sahara AI stands out by putting real ownership and transparency at the center of development. While others focus only on technology, Sahara AI ensures data contributors and developers are recognized, compensated, and empowered within a truly decentralized ecosystem.

Its fast-paced progress, backed by a well-funded team, and the support of leading industry players and AI investors, demonstrates a commitment to solving real challenges like data verification and equitable access. Beyond technical innovation, Sahara AI cultivates a vibrant community that actively shapes and refines its protocols.

The momentum is building. Developers, businesses, and creators are already tapping into Sahara’s tools to power new AI applications, unlock revenue streams, and build a more inclusive future for machine intelligence. With trusted validators like P2P.org securing the network, Sahara AI isn’t just a blockchain or a platform — it’s a movement redefining how AI is built, owned, and shared in the Web3 era.

Join the Sahara AI Ecosystem

The Sahara AI ecosystem is live and evolving, offering opportunities for developers, data contributors, and creators to help shape the future of AI.

Join the conversation and stay updated through Sahara AI’s blog, Discord, and X channels. You can also join the SIWA public testnet to register your datasets, test how staking works, and contribute to building a decentralized and equitable AI economy.