@SaharaLabsAI should be one of the few projects in the past two years that we wanted to invest in but didn’t.

The reason we wanted to invest in the first half of last year was simple - after discussing various data labeling projects for 23-24 years, we ultimately didn’t proceed because they were mostly “Label to Earn” series similar to Gamefi, which are difficult to cold start. In contrast, Sahara's data labeling is one of the few projects that had real clients and real income in Web2, and the clients are big names like Microsoft and Amazon.

However, at the beginning of 25, I was a bit worried about Sahara because the importance of traditional labor-intensive data labeling has decreased, especially after the release of DeepSeek R1, which changed the way data labeling works.

Firstly, many new generation large models use RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), which requires “small but high-quality data” instead of “massive labeling.” In other words, you need a few experts in a field to help AI grow, rather than a large group of ordinary people helping AI recognize data.

Secondly, models like Deepseek R1 that rely purely on RL (Pure Reinforcement Learning) don’t even require “small but high-quality data.” They only need an initial corpus dataset, and the subsequent evolution and tuning are entirely based on self-play or synthetic data driven by a reward function.

So at the beginning of the year, I paid attention to Sahara's developments again and was pleased to find that they didn’t limit themselves to just the data labeling track; instead, they have expanded into several business lines around the core of data.

Sahara Data: Decentralized Data Marketplace

Sahara Knowledge Agent: Personalized AI Agent

Sahara AI Marketplace: AI Asset Trading Platform

Sahara Blockchain: AI Public Chain Layer 1

This makes much more sense in terms of narrative and business model, incorporating both Web2 and Web3. Creating their own chain aligns well with @thecryptoskanda's logic of splitting tracks, and currently, the “pure AI Layer1” segment in the crypto space is somewhat empty or lacks a leading player -

Near? - This cannot be considered a pure AI Layer1.

Vana? - This is Layer1 but more like a pure data chain.

Bittensor? - This can be considered, but Bittensor resembles BTC's POW, which can be regarded as the “POW AI Layer1” leader.

SaharaAI - is hopeful to occupy the leading position in the “POS AI Layer1” segment.

So this time, in the @buidlpad ICO, those with conditions can choose to participate, although it’s not cheap, but the potential leader in the AI Layer1 major segment should not be valued only at this level in the long term.