Filecoin has become the latest web3 entity to venture into the AI domain, with the Filecoin Foundation collaborating with Nuklai, an AI infrastructure platform, to develop a decentralized database aimed at supporting AI and machine learning. This initiative was publicly announced on July 8.
Nuklai’s plan involves utilizing Filecoin’s network through its Lighthouse perpetual storage service to store data. The database is designed to offer a data ontology solution, facilitating the storage of both raw data and metadata with traceable archiving. A data ontology essentially organizes and defines the interrelationships between various data concepts, providing a crucial resource for training AI models.
Nuklai conveyed that their goal is to store data in an efficient, transparent, and decentralized manner using Filecoin’s decentralized data storage network. They emphasized that this would enable broad participation, allowing everyone to contribute by sharing and contextualizing datasets, which would be accessible via their platform.
Challenge to Centralized Data Storage Giants
Through this partnership, Nuklai and Filecoin aim to disrupt the current hegemony of centralized entities in the data storage sector. Presently, most data is stored by centralized cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
The data uploaded to Lighthouse is standardized to enhance the efficiency of its use in training AI and machine learning models. Once defined and standardized, the data is stored using Filecoin’s data storage network and remains accessible through Nuklai at all times, with the data owner retaining ownership.
AI and Web3: A Growing Intersection
The collaboration between Nuklai and Filecoin represents a significant move within the broader trend of web3 projects entering the AI space. This follows the notable emergence of large-language models (LLMs), exemplified by the public launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Tokens associated with AI-aligned web3 projects experienced substantial growth in May, with their combined market cap reaching a local high of $39 billion on June 1, as reported by CoinGecko. However, the sector has since experienced significant volatility, with many protocols failing to deliver concrete AI products.
Following the peak, the capitalization of AI tokens has dropped by 37.5%, currently valued at $22.9 billion, after a 2.6% decline over 24 hours. Despite this, Nuklai’s NAI token has shown resilience, emerging as the best-performing asset over the past 24 hours with a 27% gain. Nonetheless, NAI has seen a dramatic fall, crashing 88.4% since reaching an all-time high on April 19, merely two days after its launch.
Market Dynamics and Performance
A report from Grayscale Research dated June 26 highlighted that AI tokens were among the strongest-performing segments of the crypto market in 2024, recording an 80% year-to-date gain at the time. The report also noted that AI tokens had the largest presence in the social media landscape.
This development signals a strategic move by Filecoin to leverage its decentralized storage capabilities in the rapidly evolving AI sector. By partnering with Nuklai, Filecoin aims to provide a robust and decentralized solution for AI data storage, challenging the existing centralized models and fostering broader participation in the AI ecosystem.