In-depth Analysis of Layer 1 Blockchain Platforms in the AI Field

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, traditional Blockchain architecture can no longer meet the needs of AI applications for high-performance computing and complex data processing. This has prompted the rise of Layer 1 Blockchain platforms optimized specifically for AI, which exhibit diverse characteristics in terms of technical architecture, application scenarios, and business models.

This article will delve into the five leading AI Layer 1 projects: Bittensor, Vana, Kite AI, Nillion, and Sahara.

Bittensor: Decentralized AI Network Infrastructure

Bittensor is an early explorer in the blockchain AI field, dedicated to building an open decentralized artificial intelligence collaboration network. Its goal is to break down the centralized barriers in traditional AI research and development, allowing more participants to contribute and benefit together.

Unlike traditional centralized AI systems, Bittensor has created an open peer-to-peer ecosystem where participants can receive corresponding rewards based on their contributions to the network.

Bittensor's technical architecture adopts a dual-layer structure design:

• Root Network (Mainnet): Responsible for the coordination, verification, and issuance management of TAO tokens for the entire system, it serves as the hub for resource allocation across the whole network.
• Subnet Ecosystem: Each subnet functions like an independent AI laboratory, developing specialized solutions for specific AI application scenarios and proving its value in market competition.

This design allows Bittensor to simultaneously consider the overall stability of the network and the expertise of various fields, providing a flexible infrastructure for the development of decentralized AI.

Ecological Development Progress

• The number of subnets has expanded from the initial 32 to over 64, covering various AI application scenarios such as text generation, trading signals, and data labeling.
• The number of active users has reached 140,000, doubling compared to the previous year.
• The total valuation of the subnet market exceeds 100 million dollars, with a daily trading volume maintained at around 45 million dollars.
• Institutional participation has significantly increased, with well-known funds incorporating TAO into their decentralized AI fund, adjusting its weight to 29.55%.

These data indicate that Bittensor is gaining recognition from an increasing number of market participants, and its ecosystem is entering a positive development track.

The recent dTAO (dynamic TAO) system upgrade completed by Bittensor is an important innovation in its economic model. The core of this upgrade lies in optimizing the distribution mechanism of the token TAO, shifting from a resource allocation method that relies on the subjective judgment of validators to a more market-oriented allocation mechanism, allowing resources to flow more accurately to those truly competitive subnetworks.

The original economic model of Bittensor has exposed several key issues during its actual operation:

1. The evaluation mechanism lacks objectivity: As the number of subnets increases, it becomes difficult for validators to comprehensively and objectively assess the actual value of each subnet, leading to a gradual decline in allocation efficiency.

2. Imbalance of Power Structure: Many validators are also subnet operators, and this overlap of roles can easily lead to conflicts of interest. Validators may favor the subnet they are involved in, and there may even be cases of private trading.

3. Participation Barriers: Ordinary TAO holders find it difficult to directly influence the network's resource allocation decisions, with power overly concentrated in the hands of a few validators.

To address these issues, the dTAO upgrade introduced a dynamic resource allocation system based on market mechanisms.

This system transforms each subnet into an independent economic unit, driven by the actual needs of users to allocate resources. Its core innovation is the subnet token (Alpha token) mechanism:

• Operating principle: Users can obtain Alpha tokens issued by various subnetworks by staking TAO, which represent the user's support for specific subnetworks.
• Resource Allocation Logic: The market price of Alpha tokens serves as a signal for measuring subnet demand intensity. Initially, the price of alpha tokens is the same, with only 1 TAO and 1 alpha token in each pool. As the liquidity of the two tokens in the subnet increases, the price of alpha tokens will also change accordingly. The emission of TAO is proportionally allocated based on the subnet token prices among all tokens. Subnets with higher prices will receive more TAO allocation, thereby achieving automatic optimization of resource allocation.

This mechanism significantly enhances the efficiency and fairness of resource allocation, stabilizing the value of the TAO token and providing more opportunities for ordinary users to participate in network governance.

The currently most active subnets include:

• Subnet 4 Targon: An AI inference service focused on text generation, characterized by fast response times and low costs.
• Subnet 64 Chutes: Provides API interfaces for various LLMs, allowing developers to build and deploy AI applications on the Bittensor network.
• Subnet No. 8 PTN: Focused on the financial sector, incentivizing miners to generate accurate trading signals through a reward mechanism, covering various financial markets such as foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies.
• Subnet 52 Dojo: Perform data annotation, encouraging users to earn tokens through data annotation.

Vana: Data Sovereignty and Value Reconstruction Platform

The Vana project focuses on addressing a core issue in today's digital economy: the ownership of personal data and value distribution. In the current internet ecosystem, users' data is largely monopolized and controlled by large tech companies, while the users who actually create this data rarely benefit from it. Vana's innovation lies in establishing an ecosystem where users truly own and control their own data, while also being able to derive economic returns from it.

As an EVM-compatible Layer 1 Blockchain network, Vana's technical architecture consists of five core components:

1. Data Liquidity Layer: This is the core of the Vana network, which realizes the incentive, aggregation, and verification of data assets through the Data Liquidity Pool (DLP). Each DLP is a smart contract specifically designed to aggregate specific types of data assets, such as social media data, browsing history, etc.
2. Data Portability Layer: Ensures that user data can be easily transferred between different applications and AI models, enhancing the flexibility of data usage.
3. Universal Connectome: Tracking the real-time flow of data across the entire ecosystem to form a data ecology map, ensuring transparency of the system.
4. Non-custodial data storage: A significant innovation of Vana is its unique data management approach. Users' original data is not put on the Blockchain, but rather users choose where to store it, such as on cloud servers or personal devices, ensuring users have complete control over their own data.
5. Application Ecosystem: Based on data, Vana has built an open application ecosystem where developers can utilize the data accumulated by DLP to create various innovative applications, including AI applications, while data contributors can receive dividend rewards from these applications.

This design enables Vana to create a fairer data value distribution mechanism while protecting user data privacy, providing an important data foundation for the development of decentralized AI.

Latest Development Updates

Vana's financing and cooperation expansion continues to advance:

• In February 2025, a well-known investment institution announced a strategic investment in Vana, and a notable individual joined as an advisor.
• In terms of ecological construction, Vana has built data projects covering multiple fields from social media data to financial forecasting data, including: Finquarium (financial forecasting data), GPT Data DAO (ChatGPT chat data), Reddit Data DAO (Reddit user data), Volara (Twitter data), Flirtual (dating data), etc.
• Recently, Vana organized a hackathon during a large Blockchain event, offering a high prize pool to incentivize developers to build DataDAO and AI applications based on Vana data, further expanding its ecosystem.

These developments indicate that Vana is actively building a complete ecosystem around data ownership and value realization, and its development momentum is worth paying attention to.

Kite AI: Technical Breakthrough of AI Native Blockchain

Kite AI is a native Layer 1 Blockchain project focused on the AI field, built on the Avalanche framework. It aims to address various challenges faced by traditional blockchains when handling AI assets, particularly how to achieve clear rights and incentives for AI data, models, and agent contributions. Kite AI has proposed four core technological innovations:

1. PoAI Consensus Mechanism: Proof of Attributed Intelligence is a consensus mechanism pioneered by Kite AI that accurately tracks the value contributions of data, models, and AI agents through an on-chain verifiable contribution record system. The project has designed a dynamic reward pool mechanism that distributes profits based on contribution ratios, effectively addressing issues such as "data black boxes" and "model plagiarism" in the traditional AI economy.

2. Composable AI Subnet: Kite AI adopts a modular architecture, allowing developers to build industry-specific AI collaborative ecosystems on demand. For example, in the healthcare subnet, patient data can be encrypted and selectively authorized for pharmaceutical companies to use in AI model development, with profits distributed proportionally to data subjects, model developers, and subnet maintainers, creating a win-win ecosystem for multiple parties.

3. AI Native Execution Layer: Kite AI is building an on-chain AI native execution layer specifically designed to handle AI computational tasks such as inference, embedding, and fine-tuning/training. Users can authorize smart contract wallets to execute inference calls and interact with models through this layer. This execution layer not only supports Blockchain transactions and state changes but also integrates confidential computing environments (such as Trusted Execution Environments TEE) to ensure data security and privacy protection during the computation process.

4. Decentralized Data Engine: Kite AI ensures that data creators receive fair rewards in the AI workflow. The platform includes compliant modules that meet regulations such as GDPR/CCPA, satisfying data privacy requirements worldwide and reducing compliance costs for developers.

These technological innovations enable Kite AI to create a more equitable and transparent value distribution environment for AI developers and data providers, promoting the decentralized development of AI technology.

Development Status

Kite AI launched the incentive testnet on February 6, 2025, which is the first AI native Layer 1 sovereign Blockchain testnet. The testnet performed impressively after going live:

• Less than 70 hours after the online test went live, the number of connected wallets exceeded 100,000. As of now, a total of 1.95 million wallets have joined the incentive testnet V1, with over 1 million wallets interacting with AI agents, and the total number of calls exceeding 115 million.

• The project has a strong background, created by an experienced Silicon Valley team. The co-founders have deep technical leadership experience in the field of artificial intelligence and have worked for several top technology companies. Core team members come from industry-leading companies and have academic backgrounds from top universities.

• In terms of capital support, the project