Bittensor (TAO): The decentralized marketplace of intelligence
Bittensor transforms AI into a tradable economic good: models compete, specialize, and are rewarded based on their utility measured by the network. It is, to date, the standard ‘pure AI’ on-chain.
Its advantages: a clear internal economy (rewards, penalties, specialization by subnets) and an already established brand.
Its blind spot: the governance and economic security of the subnets, still in iteration.
For a long-term investor, TAO remains the default bandwidth of the ‘AI marketplace’ narrative.
Akash Network (AKT): The permissionless cloud for AI
Akash provides a decentralized cloud infrastructure where computing providers monetize their resources permissionlessly, often at costs lower than hyperscalers.
AI is an obvious demand driver (inference, fine-tuning, mid-cap model training), and AKT plays the ‘AWS in an open market’ card.
Its robustness comes from a simple business model (supply vs demand for computing), a clear roadmap, and a known security framework (Cosmos stack, repeated audits).
Risk: frontal competition from traditional clouds that lower their prices or launch pseudo-open ‘submarkets’.
$AKT