Sahara is a project with great potential. Initially, they were called QuestLab, born around the end of 2022 or early 2023. As the name suggests, the project was originally focused on decentralized data labeling Quest task mechanisms and a decentralized Workflow system. Back then, the valuation was very low, the team had a concept, comparable projects (many similar companies in Web2), and a solid team (Sean is arguably one of the most academically capable and influential young professors in the Crypto startup scene). Thus, they secured funding from Polychain, Samsung, and a number of Asian Web2 VCs.

Then, in early 2024, the narrative of Crypto AI gained traction, leading to the emergence of many big players, including Sahara, Sentient, Ora, Myshell, and others, all of which were very popular at that year’s ETH Denver (Denver is basically the annual trendsetter for the VC circle). At this point, the project split into two factions: one was focused on building large models on-chain, utilizing cryptographic technology and matching AI programming primitives. The other side was about applications, doing whatever was trending in Web2 and just adding a token incentive mechanism. Sahara happened to stand in the middle; on one hand, the value of data labeling in the AI era was fully recognized, and on the other hand, Professor Sean and his team's AI capabilities were still quite strong, able to construct a system to run AI on-chain, needing to launch a chain specifically for AI use. Thus, Sahara's second round valuation soared, with institutions continuously participating, ultimately achieving a threefold oversubscription.

After that, there was the much-anticipated star endorsement and the testnet whitelist phase. There’s not much to say about this part; it was just a competition, and then we fast-forward to this public offering.

The public offering price is 600 million, and the bullish points are quite simple.

1. Binance's favored child in AI-type projects, the last deeply supported AI project by Binance, Vana, opened at 3.5 billion, and now it’s still over 700 million, so it’s definitely profitable.

2. The Crypto AI track is the last major area where VCs are pouring in money; after this, VCs won’t have the funds or similar market opportunities to support another such track. Sahara is also the first major valuation debut in this wave of Crypto AI projects in 2024; if it performs poorly, the projects behind it will likely have to shut down, so while this could incur losses, they shouldn’t be too significant.

3. The narrative of Layer1 Infra never dies in the crypto space; as long as it doesn't launch too poorly, there will definitely be people betting this could be the next Tia, and if the price is right, there will still be secondary market buyers.

There’s no need to elaborate on the fundamentals of the project; I believe in the current market environment, everyone is too busy to research what it actually does, so the most direct way to pitch it is:

A top-tier Crypto AI project comparable to Wld within the Binance ecosystem, just go for it and you’ll profit.