Sahara AI: Building Decentralized Infrastructure in the AI Field

1. Project Introduction

1. Basic Project Information

Sahara AI is a full-stack, AI-native decentralized blockchain platform. Its core vision is to build an open AI collaborative economy driven by a global community, where contributions can be accurately traced and profits can be fairly distributed.

The fundamental mission of the project is to provide transparent attribution, complete ownership control, and efficient on-chain monetization channels for AI assets (including datasets, models, and agents) through blockchain technology. Essentially, Sahara AI is committed to becoming the "Ethereum of the AI field," providing secure and trustworthy underlying infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized AI applications, ultimately returning the ownership and value of data and AI innovations to every creator and contributor.

2. Project Development History

Early 2023: The project officially launched, initially envisioned to create a dedicated "knowledge agent" for experts in various fields. The direction was then adjusted, focusing on the core element of "data" and utilizing Web3 incentive mechanisms to begin building an ecosystem composed of data contributors, model developers, node validators, application developers, and downstream users.

Mid-2023: Completed a $6 million seed round financing led by Polychain Capital.

2024: Cooperation with major companies such as Microsoft and Amazon to secure related orders.

August 2024: Official announcement of receiving $43 million in Series A funding led by Pantera, Binance Labs, and Polychain Capital.

Since early 2025: Continuing to promote the implementation of the product matrix of the platform. On June 26, 2025, the official announcement stated that its AI Agent Builder and AI Marketplace have officially entered the public testing phase.

3. Core Issues and Solutions

Sahara AI has proposed a systematic solution based on blockchain to address key pain points faced by the current centralized AI industry, such as data silos, ambiguous model ownership, high innovation costs, and unfair value distribution.

• By establishing a decentralized market, allowing anyone to register and trade AI assets on-chain, utilizing blockchain technology to ensure clear and verifiable ownership.

• Utilizing the immutability of blockchain, every contribution is recorded, providing a reliable foundation for achieving transparent and automated profit distribution.

• Provide standardized development tools (SDK/API), including a no-code AI Agent Builder, aimed at lowering the development threshold and promoting collaborative innovation globally.

4. Core Team Background

• Sean Ren (CEO): Tenured professor at the University of Southern California, MIT TR35 Innovator, leading AI collaboration projects with 35 companies including Microsoft and Amazon.

• Tyler Zhou (COO): Former Investment Director at Binance Labs, led a $43 million Series A funding round, bringing in traditional capital such as Samsung and JSV.

• Technical Team: Members come from Google Brain, Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and hold multiple patents in distributed machine learning.

2. Business Model

1. Platform architecture and core technology

Sahara AI adopts a hybrid blockchain architecture optimized for AI application scenarios, which includes the following features:

• Four-layer structure: application layer, transaction layer, data layer, and execution layer
• Hybrid mode: Key metadata is recorded on-chain, while large datasets and AI models are stored off-chain.
• Core Main Chain: Currently developing its own Layer 1 blockchain, Sahara Chain, which is EVM compatible and optimized for AI-related computations.
• Security Certification: Has passed SOC2 enterprise-level security and privacy certification

2. Product Ecosystem

Sahara AI provides a full lifecycle toolkit from data processing, model development to asset trading, mainly including:

• Data Service Platform (DSP): Crowdsourced Data Annotation Platform
• Sahara Studio: One-stop development kit
• AI Exchange: AI Asset Trading Platform
• Secure Execution Environment: An AI task execution environment that ensures the security of sensitive data.

Currently, the platform has attracted over 200,000 global AI trainers, completing more than 3 million data annotation tasks.

3. Market Entry and Growth Strategy

Sahara AI adopts a dual-track strategy to drive the cold start of its community and ecosystem:

• User Acquisition: Launch the "Knowledge Airdrop" program and testnet incentive activities.
• Brand and Market: Launched on multiple top-tier exchanges, appearing in high-exposure channels.
• Ecological Incubation: Establish specialized incubators to support AI startup projects developed based on its ecosystem.

4. $SAHARA Token Economic Model

$SAHARA is the core value medium driving the operation of the entire Sahara AI ecosystem, with a total supply cap of 10 billion tokens. The main distribution is as follows:

• Community and Ecosystem Development (64.25%)
• Core Contributors (15%)
• Early supporters (19.75%)
• Liquidity and Market Stability (1%)

The token will be listed on multiple mainstream exchanges in June 2025.

3. Project Prospects

1. Industry Analysis

Decentralized AI is one of the most promising cross-disciplinary fields today. The market demand for decentralized AI is growing, driven mainly by the awakening of data sovereignty awareness, the demand for AI transparency and fairness, and the rise of long-tail AI needs.

The global decentralized AI market is expected to grow from approximately $2.5 billion in 2024 to over $80 billion by 2030, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 60%.

2. Competitive Landscape Analysis

Sahara AI's main competitors include Bittensor (TAO), Olas (OLAS), and Ritual. They differ in technical paths and product positioning:

• Bittensor: Focused on Decentralization machine learning network
• Olas: Focus on the smart agent ecosystem
• Ritual: Focuses on data annotation and model training services
• Sahara AI: Provides a full-stack solution covering the entire process from data processing to model development and application deployment.

3. Development Planning

Short term (1-2 years):

• Optimize core technology architecture
• Promote the official launch and improvement of AI AgentBuilder and AI Marketplace.
• Improve the incentive mechanism of the SAHARA token

Medium term (3-5 years):

• Achieve breakthroughs in cross-chain technology
• Build a globally leading Decentralization AI ecosystem
• Increase market promotion efforts to enhance global visibility

Long-term (more than 5 years):

• Become a leader in the Decentralization AI field
• Explore new application scenarios and business models for the integration of AI and Decentralization.
• Promote the popularization and democratization of AI technology

4. Summary

1. Core Conclusion

• Accurate positioning, grand vision
• Full-stack solutions constitute core barriers
• The team has strong capital strength.
• The token economic model is well-designed.

2. Valuation and Investment Recommendations

$SAHARA is listed with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $6 billion, positioned at a high level in the DeAI sector. Based on a comprehensive SWOT analysis, the investment suggestion is "cautiously optimistic, buy on dips."

3. Outlook

Sahara AI has the potential to become the underlying operating system of the future decentralized intelligent economy. In the long run, its success will accelerate the popularization and democratization of AI technology, and give rise to entirely new business models and application scenarios, such as decentralized science (DeSci), fully AI-driven decentralized organizations (DAO), and personal data monetization.