The concept of decentralized AI is broken and flawed. We are still in this phase where big entities mostly control artificial intelligence infrastructures. Many emerging players are trying to resolve the issue and redistribute the power to the people. Ritual is one of them.

The Problem: AI & Crypto Are Both Stuck in Walled Gardens

AI and crypto are two of the most disruptive technologies of our time, but they’re both deeply flawed in their current state.

  1. AI is centralized and controlled by a handful of corporations. The best models—GPT-4, Claude, Gemini—are locked behind permissioned APIs and censored by the companies that own them.

  2. Developers have no guarantees around AI execution. If an AI model generates an output, how do you verify it actually ran correctly? You can’t. There’s no cryptographic proof.

  3. Compute is expensive, inaccessible, and dominated by a few players. The GPU shortage has made AI training and inference ridiculously costly. Small teams and individuals are priced out.

  4. Crypto lacks AI-native infrastructure. Smart contracts are powerful, but they’re rigid and dumb. DeFi protocols can’t react to real-world events. DAOs can’t reason over complex data. An on-chain AI layer is missing.

These problems aren’t new. They’re the same issues crypto was built to solve—and yet AI still suffers from them.

What Ritual Is Doing Different

Ritual is an open, sovereign execution layer for AI. Seamlessly integrate AI into your app or protocol on any chain, enabling you to fine-tune, monetize, and perform inference on models with cryptographic schemes. Ritual is merging the open, decentralized ethos of crypto with the computational power of AI.At its core, Ritual is an AI execution layer. It allows:


✅ Anyone to deploy and access AI models permissionlessly.
✅ AI inference to be verified cryptographically, ensuring correctness.
✅ Smart contracts to interact with AI models like an oracle.

Think of it like an AI Coprocessor for Web3. Instead of relying on centralized AI services, developers can query models trustlessly and permissionlessly, with cryptographic guarantees around execution.

How It Works

Ritual is built on a network of distributed nodes that provide compute power and host AI models. Developers can access these models through a unified API, enabling AI-powered dApps, DeFi protocols, and more.

▨ Infernet: AI for Smart Contracts

Infernet is the first phase of Ritual—an inference layer that lets smart contracts query AI models.

  1. Example: A lending protocol could call an AI model to adjust collateral ratios based on market conditions.

  2. Example: A DAO could query an AI for sentiment analysis before making treasury decisions.

Infernet makes AI as accessible to smart contracts as Chainlink made price feeds.

▨ Cryptographic Integrity for AI Execution

How do you prove an AI model ran correctly? Ritual integrates cryptographic proofs to verify that AI computations were executed as expected.This ensures:


✅ AI results can’t be tampered with.
✅ Users don’t have to trust centralized infrastructure.
✅ Models remain censorship-resistant.

▨ Open Compute Network

Instead of relying on big tech’s closed infrastructure, Ritual is building an open compute marketplace. AI developers can deploy models, and compute providers can offer GPU power permissionlessly.This helps solve:

  1. The GPU bottleneck – More decentralized compute providers = Lower AI inference cost

  2. Incentive misalignment – Model creators actually get rewarded for their contributions.

Why This Model Works

AI and crypto are on a collision course. The next generation of dApps won’t just be smart—they’ll be intelligent.

  • Smart contracts will use AI to reason over data.

  • DAOs will use AI to analyze proposals & automate treasury management.

  • DeFi will use AI to optimize risk & yield strategies dynamically.

Ritual is laying the groundwork for this AI-powered Web3 future.

Use Cases & Adoption

▨ AI-Powered Smart Contracts – Infernet enables on-chain AI oracles for lending, governance, and more.


▨ Decentralized AI APIs – Developers can build AI-powered dApps without relying on OpenAI or Google.


▨ Crypto-Native AI Agents – AI models can act autonomously on-chain, interacting with smart contracts in real time.


▨ Decentralized Compute Market – Anyone can offer GPU power and get rewarded for AI computation.

Value Accrual & Growth Model

  • More AI models on Ritual = More compute demand = Higher network value.

  • Protocol fees and staking incentives ensure long-term sustainability.

  • Developers pay for AI inference, rewarding both compute providers and model creators.