∞∞Market Opportunity

The AI market is experiencing explosive growth, according to the latest data insights from Statista, the AI market surpassed $184 billion in 2024, marking a remarkable increase from previous years. Projections indicate that this growth trajectory will continue, with the market expected to exceed $826 billion by 2030.

Source: Statista

In 2024, AI milestones have significantly underscored the growing global interest and importance of artificial intelligence. One of the most notable achievements is Nvidia surpassing Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization exceeding $3.34 trillion.

Apple is also deeply invested in AI, enhancing user experiences with AI-driven features like improved Siri and advanced image processing in Photos. Microsoft remains a key player, integrating AI into Azure and Office for advanced functionality. Google has made significant strides with its Gemini AI models, embedding them across various products, and generative AI models like GPT-4 and DALL-E 2 continue to push the boundaries of content creation.

Public blockchains are poised to play a crucial role in the technological revolution. Their transparency, immutability, and clear ownership properties create an ideal foundation for developing and deploying AI applications. These features are essential for building trust and accountability in AI systems, which often face scepticism regarding data handling and decision making.

We believe the convergence of AI and blockchain represents a significant market opportunity. In our research, we’ve explored several emerging Web3 companies in this category, which you can find here.

Source: UETH Blog

In today’s article, we delve into Netmind, a Web3 company focused on developing advanced AI solutions on a decentralised computing platform designed to accelerate global AI innovation.

NetMind collaborates with leading research institutions around the world, including Tsinghua University, Rice University, and the University of Cambridge. These collaborations focus on crucial areas such as graph neural networks, neural architecture search, and natural language processing, which are driving the future of AI technology. As stated by its founder in a recent interview, NetMind is dedicated to developing true AGI and has sponsored over 30 universities worldwide, providing resources and researchers for General AI research.

Their innovative work earned them a finalist position in the UK Business Tech Awards 2023, highlighting their advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Recently, NetMind updated its tokenomics to better align with market dynamics, optimise resource allocation, and incentivize contributions to the platform. This new structure aims to provide more robust incentives for holding and participating in the NetMind ecosystem, making it a more attractive investment opportunity. We will discuss these tokenomics updates in more detail later in the article.

Overview of NetMind’s Offerings

Source: NetMind

NetMind Power

NetMind Power, the main product from Netmind, is a decentralised computing platform developed by NetMind.AI. It makes high-performance computing widely accessible by using the untapped power of idle GPUs from individuals around the world, including gamers and crypto miners impacted by the shift from PoW to PoS. This clever use of resources enables NetMind Power to offer a cost-effective and efficient way to train, fine-tune, and run AI models, making advanced computing accessible to more people.

We’ll explore the key features and structure of NetMind Power. We aim to keep the explanation straightforward and clear for everyone. For those who want to dive deeper, we will provide links for more detailed information.

1. The Volunteer Computing Network

NetMind Power is based on Volunteer Computing, a system where GPU owners can share their unused resources with the NetMind Power network and earn rewards in return. This worldwide network delivers crucial computing power for the platform’s Training and Inference platforms, ensuring that machine learning tasks are sent to the best available nodes for optimal performance.

1. Training and Inference Platforms

The Training Platform is an essential part of NetMind Power’s decentralised system, designed to leverage idle GPUs worldwide for training AI models efficiently and affordably. It operates on a decentralised basis, utilising multiple GPUs to lower costs and decrease dependency on central systems. It also employs robust encryption and secure computing practices, with options like differential privacy to further protect user data.

The Inference Platform from NetMind Power enables easy deployment and operation of AI models via APIs, optimising integration and cost-efficiency. It automatically scales according to workload demands, efficiently managing resources through distributed computing. Key security measures, including encryption and secure multi-party computation, protect data and model integrity, ensuring a secure, streamlined environment for AI applications in a decentralised setup.

1. Netmind Chain

NetMind Chain supports the decentralised operations of the NetMind Power network on advanced Ethereum 2.0 technology with a Proof of Authority (POA) consensus. This setup decentralises tasks and transactions, with training conducted locally on user machines.

The chain uses a staking system with Mind Nodes and Master Nodes where users can stake NMT (NetMind Token). Mind Nodes validate transactions and earn fees, while the top 21 staked nodes become Master Nodes, earning additional rewards.

NetMind Chain manages resource allocation and task scheduling through smart contracts, facilitating efficient and transparent operations. To accommodate network growth and improve user experience, NetMind Power launched on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), chosen for its lower fees and higher efficiency. This move, coupled with ongoing enhancements like an NMT-based payment system and Ethereum cross-chain capabilities, ensures scalability, interoperability, and robust security for all users.

NetMind Chat: GAIA

NetMind Chat is a sophisticated AI chatbot designed for natural interactions, ideal for customer service and engaging user experiences. It communicates responsively and intuitively.

Powered by advanced AI technology, GAIA, the core of NetMind Chat, leverages NetMind’s proprietary datasets to enhance its capabilities. As a digital companion, GAIA offers detailed responses and taps into a broad internet database to enrich conversations.

GAIA is initially trained with dialogue-specific datasets to learn conversational nuances. It then undergoes rewarded model training training with ranked responses to improve accuracy and alignment with human preferences. Finally, Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) refines its ability to engage in relevant and context-aware dialogues.

This strategic development ensures that NetMind Chat delivers not only accurate but also engaging and meaningful interactions.

NetMind Avagi

NetMind Avagi is a digital being with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that lets users customise their digital companions in appearance, knowledge, and skills. Avagi handles tasks efficiently using advanced language models and stores information that grows over time. Users can share Avagi’s features to help each other learn and develop. It can also create real-time animated conversations, making interactions lively and engaging. This platform is great for anyone looking for a personalised and interactive AI experience.

Source: NetMind

NetMind Life

NetMind Life helps people age better with personalised health and wellness plans. It begins with a detailed health assessment, followed by tailored recommendations for lifestyle changes, health tests, supplements, and therapies based on expert insights.

The service offers access to top health testing brands like 23andMe and Oura.

Here’s the process: People complete a health assessment, receive personalised recommendations, choose a membership package, and get a monthly wellness box with guidelines, supplements, and tests. They also receive regular updates and continuous support.

Source: NetMind

NetMind.AI recently announced BizBoom, an all-in-one AI marketing solution, at the London AI Summit on June 13, 2024. BizBoom leverages advanced AI to analyse customer websites, identify target audiences, and create effective marketing strategies. It generates content like copywriting, images, and videos, and allows clients to publish directly to their social media accounts using NetMind’s template library​.

Tokenomics

NetMind updated its tokenomics on April 16, 2024, significantly altering the total maximum supply of NMT and revising allocations for mining rewards, staking, team funds, ecosystem growth, and strategic investors. Initially, the tokenomics were designed for a 100-year span due to the founder’s strong belief in the project’s longevity, despite having limited experience in the Web3 space. After evolving into a Web3 company, NetMind aimed to make the tokenomics more sustainable not just for miners, but also for the community, team, and stakers.

The updated tokenomics condense the 100-year plan into a 10-year framework, ensuring that miners will continue to have tokens available through fees, payments, and community funds even after this period. Here is an overview of the updates:

Market Cap: $217.79 million (Rank #234)

Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV): $864.77 million (Rank #143)

Circulating Supply: 37.17 million (25.18% of total supply)

Total Supply: 147.57 million

Max Supply: 147.57 million

NMT is the native utility token of the NetMind Chain, with a total supply of 147,571,163 tokens. These tokens are gradually unlocked according to the following allocation plan:

• Mining Rewards: 62.5 million NMT (42.35% of total supply) for computational power providers, distributed over 10 years, with decreasing amounts every two years.
• Staking Rewards: 16.5 million NMT (11.18% of total supply) for staking and liquidity, distributed over 10 years.
• Ecosystem Growth Fund: 16.5 million NMT (11.18% of total supply) to support community growth, distributed over 10 years.
• Strategic Investors & Advisors: 7.5 million NMT (5.08% of total supply) to strengthen key partnerships.
• Team Fund: 10 million NMT (6.78% of total supply) for the NetMind technical team, distributed over 10 years.

Reward Types:

• Mining Reward: Given to Volunteer Computing resource providers based on GPU type, network bandwidth, and connected machines.
• Computational Power Utilisation Fee: Paid in NMT for renting GPUs or training models, with a portion returned to contract without increasing circulating supply.
• Staking Rewards: Users can stake NMT or provide liquidity to earn rewards, with 10% going to top Master Node operators and 90% to staking participants.

Percentages in the chart are based on total supply

Percentages in the chart are based on new issuance

Source: NetMind

Source: NetMind

Team, Partnerships and Roadmap

NetMind.AI Team Overview

Inspired by DeepMind and OpenAI, Kai founded ProtagoLabs in 2016, focusing on AGI research through reading groups, seminars, and partnerships. These efforts led to NetMind Power. They drafted the white paper in 2018, established NetMind.AI in 2021, and launched it publicly in 2024.

Kai (Founder & CEO): Kai, with degrees from Tsinghua University and Georgetown, leads NetMind.AI. An experienced entrepreneur, he also founded ProtagoLabs and AGI Odyssey and has published 11 papers with 2000 citations. Kai is an active angel investor in different AI startups.

Yuan He (COO): Yuan has over 20 years of experience in IT, fintech, and real estate. He held key roles at the General Services Administration, FDA, and Defense Information Systems Agency. Yuan holds degrees in Electrical Engineering, Finance, and an MBA.

Huanzhou (CTO): Huanzhou, with a Master’s in Computer Science from George Washington University, has led teams at Coinbase and Microsoft. He’s skilled in Web3, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning.

The rest of the team includes Yu Cheng, Research Advisor, formerly with Microsoft Research and IBM’s Watson AI Lab, with over 20,000 citations. Joshua, Marketing Lead, a Northwestern grad, led global marketing for a Chinese tech unicorn. Mengni Shen, Product Lead, with a PhD from Oxford, is a strategic consultant and wellness podcast host. Hongyu Ren, Product Lead, PhD in Physics from Tsinghua, managed AI products at ByteDance and Baidu.

Partnerships

NetMind.ai leads in innovative research, partnering with top universities, co-hosting events with the AI community, and significantly contributing to global AI and NLP research. Notable papers include “A New Dataset and Method for Creativity Assessment Using the Alternate Uses Task,” presented at IC2023, and “Evaluation Metrics in the Era of GPT-4,” accepted at EMNLP 2023, one of the most prestigious NLP conferences globally. These studies focus on automating creativity ratings and evaluating generative language models, respectively.

NetMind.AI has partnered with several universities to enhance its AI and decentralised computing capabilities:

• Northwestern University: Designing modular robots with AI.
• Tsinghua University: Focus on graph neural networks for anomaly detection.
• Rice University: Using neural architecture search to make deep learning models more accessible.
• University of Cambridge: Researching creativity in texts with NLP.
• Huazhong University: Working on data privacy, security, and adversarial learning.
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University: Projects in natural language processing.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison: Research in machine translation and multilingual NLP.
• Fudan University: Predicting RNA-protein interactions using NLP models.
• Ohio State University: Enhancing problem-solving capabilities of large language models.
• University of Surrey: AI for Digital Media Inclusion

Source: NetMind

Additionally, NetMind.ai has formed pioneering collaborations, such as with Haiper AI, a leader in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Haiper AI, with expertise from Google DeepMind and TikTok, excels in AI-generated videos. As part of this partnership, NetMind.ai provides essential resources like computing power and GPUs for model training. This collaboration aims to revolutionise AI creativity and support a new generation of innovators.

Roadmap

NetMind AI’s roadmap includes:

• GPU Network Expansion: Increasing available GPUs for rent in the decentralised network.
• Core Technology Enhancements: Improving asynchronous training, model encryption, and data isolation.
• Product Development: Refining NetMind Chat, NetMind Avagi, and NetMind Life.
• Partnerships and Collaborations: Partnering with leading AI and blockchain organisations.

Q3 2024 Highlights

NetMind Power Q3 Roadmap:

1. Inference Platform Stage III: Adding a payment API and automated model deployment.
2. No-Code Fine-Tuning Module: Allowing users to customise open-source models without coding.
3. AI Startup Programme: Providing computing power solutions and support for AI startups.
4. Website Redesign: Featuring improved structure, clearer information, and showcasing new features.

Competitors

Several crypto projects are utilising decentralised GPU resources to enhance AI and machine learning. Key players include:

Render Network operates a decentralised, peer-to-peer network that leverages idle GPUs globally for rendering tasks and AI applications. It features a marketplace where GPU resources are exchanged for RNDR Tokens, enabling scalable infrastructure solutions.

Akash Network offers a decentralised cloud computing marketplace, providing cost-effective, secure, and censorship-resistant solutions. This platform appeals to AI and machine learning developers in need of affordable and reliable cloud resources, positioning itself as a direct alternative to traditional cloud services.

IO.NET addresses the GPU resource shortage by aggregating underused GPUs from data centres and crypto miners, thus enhancing GPU availability for AI and machine learning. This strategy competes directly with NetMind’s platforms by making computing power more accessible.

Despite being a newer market entrant, NetMind.AI has gained recognition as the “2023 Best Tech Start-Up” at the UK Business Tech Awards. With a doxxed team experienced in AI and crypto and a market cap of approximately $190 million, NetMind.AI might for some present an interesting investment case given its attractive MC/FDV ratio compared to others.

According to the team, NetMind.AI’s strengths in the decentralised AI market are further bolstered by:

• Core Feature Set: Dynamic, decentralised clusters create a versatile AI ecosystem, including Model as a Service (MAAS), meeting the high demand for decentralized AI infrastructure.
• Rich AI Research: The company is deeply involved in cutting-edge AI research, collaborating with top academic institutions to maintain technological leadership.
• Diverse Products: NetMind.AI offers various products powered by NetMind Power, enhancing the functionality and value of the NMT token across their platform.

These attributes position NetMind.AI as a strong competitor in the decentralized AI ecosystem, providing flexible and secure AI solutions.

Source: NetMind

Bullish Fundamental Factors

• The experienced and well-connected leadership team enhances the project’s credibility and potential for success.
• The range of products and services provided by NetMind.AI covers multiple aspects of AI development and application, making it a versatile platform.
• NetMind.AI is one of the few AI projects that developed its technology over several years before launching, ensuring a robust foundation. Additionally, the lack of heavy venture capital involvement means there is less risk of sudden large-scale sell-offs by early investors.
• Nvidia visited their office in London, indicating industry recognition and interest from one of the leading companies in AI hardware and software. This visit can also indicate the potential for strategic partnerships or collaborations.
• An AI researcher at OpenAI publicly praised their dataset and benchmarks.
• Google Gemini used the Math Odyssey dataset from NetMind.AI, demonstrating the value and quality of their data. This usage by a prominent project like Google Gemini not only validates NetMind.AI’s contributions to the AI field but also showcases their ability to provide crucial datasets for high-profile, cutting-edge AI research and development.
• Less than $200 million market cap and $650 million FDV present a goodrisk/reward opportunity. This is particularly compelling for investors interested in the AI narrative, as the potential for significant growth remains high if the technology and market adoption continue to advance.

Bearish Fundamental Factors

• The AI industry is highly competitive, with many well-established players, which could make it challenging for NetMind.AI to gain significant market share.
• Despite its promising technology, the company’s commercial success is not guaranteed and heavily depends on market adoption and client acquisition.
• The lack of heavy venture capital involvement, while reducing sell-off risks, also means NetMind.AI may have fewer resources for rapid expansion compared to heavily funded competitors.
• Regulatory challenges in the AI space could pose risks, as evolving laws and guidelines might impact NetMind.AI’s operations and growth.
• Market volatility in the AI and tech sectors can impact NetMind.AI’s token performance, making it a potentially risky investment.
• As a relatively new player, NetMind.AI still needs to prove its long-term viability and ability to sustain growth in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

Disclaimer

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