In-Depth Analysis of AI Layer 1 Projects: Technological Innovations and Development Trends of Five Representative Platforms

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, traditional blockchain architectures have struggled to meet the high-performance computing and complex data processing demands of AI applications. This has driven the rise of Layer 1 blockchain platforms specifically optimized for AI, which exhibit diverse characteristics in terms of technical architecture, application scenarios, and business models. This article provides an in-depth analysis of five leading AI Layer 1 projects: Bittensor, Vana, Kite AI, Nillion, and Sahara.

Bittensor: Decentralized AI Network Infrastructure

Bittensor, as an early explorer in the blockchain AI field, is committed to building an open decentralized AI collaboration network. Its goal is to break down the centralized barriers in traditional AI development, allowing more participants to contribute and benefit together.

Bittensor's technical architecture adopts a dual-layer structural design:

• Root Network (Mainnet): Responsible for the coordination, verification, and issuance management of TAO tokens for the entire system, it is the hub of resource allocation for the entire network.
• Subnet Ecosystem: Each subnet functions like an independent AI laboratory, developing specialized solutions for specific AI application scenarios and proving its value in market competition.

This design allows Bittensor to balance the overall stability of the network with the expertise of various fields, providing a flexible infrastructure for the development of decentralized AI.

Ecological Development Progress

• The number of subnets has expanded from the initial 32 to over 64, covering various AI application scenarios such as text generation, trading signals, and data annotation.
• The number of active users has reached 140,000, doubling compared to the previous year.
• The total valuation of the subnet market exceeds 100 million USD, with a daily trading volume maintained at around 45 million USD.
• Institutional participation has significantly increased, with well-known funds incorporating TAO into their decentralized AI fund, adjusting its weight to 29.55%.

The recent dTAO (Dynamic TAO) system upgrade completed by Bittensor is an important innovation in its economic model. The core of this upgrade lies in optimizing the distribution mechanism of the TAO token, shifting from a resource allocation method that relies on the subjective judgment of validators to a more market-oriented distribution mechanism, allowing resources to flow more accurately to those truly competitive subnetworks.

The most active subnets at the moment include:

• Subnet 4 Targon: Focused on text generation AI inference services, characterized by fast response speed and low cost.
• Subnet 64 Chutes: Provides API interfaces for various LLMs, allowing developers to build and deploy AI applications on the Bittensor network.
• Subnet 8 PTN: Focused on the financial sector, incentivizing miners to generate accurate trading signals through a reward mechanism, covering various financial markets including foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies.
• Subnet 52 Dojo: Perform data annotation and encourage users to earn tokens through data annotation.

Vana: Data Sovereignty and Value Reconstruction platform

The Vana project focuses on addressing a core issue in today's digital economy: the ownership of personal data and the distribution of its value. The innovation of Vana lies in establishing an ecosystem where users truly own and control their data, while also being able to derive economic benefits from it.

As an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain network, Vana's technical architecture includes five core components:

1. Data Liquidity Layer: Achieve incentive, aggregation, and verification of data assets through the Data Liquidity Pool (DLP).
2. Data Portability Layer: Ensure that user data can be easily transferred between different applications and AI models.
3. General Connection Group: Track the real-time data flow within the entire ecosystem to form a data ecosystem map.
4. Non-custodial data storage: Users' original data will not be on-chain, but will be stored at a location chosen by the user.
5. Application Ecosystem: Developers can utilize the data accumulated by DLP to build various innovative applications.

Latest developments

• In February 2025, YZi Labs announced a strategic investment in Vana.
• In terms of ecological construction, Vana has built data projects covering multiple fields, including Finquarium, GPT Data DAO, Reddit Data DAO, Volara, and Flirtual.
• Recently, Vana organized a hackathon during Eth Denver, offering a high prize pool to incentivize developers to build DataDAOs and AI applications based on Vana data.

Kite AI: Technical Breakthrough of AI-Native Public Chain

Kite AI is a native Layer 1 blockchain project focused on the AI field, built on the Avalanche framework. It aims to address various challenges faced by traditional blockchains when dealing with AI assets, especially how to achieve clear rights and incentives for AI data, models, and agent contributions.

Kite AI has proposed four core technological innovations:

1. PoAI consensus mechanism: A verifiable on-chain contribution record system that accurately tracks the value contributions of data, models, and AI agents.
2. Composable AI subnet: Supports developers to build industry-specific AI collaborative ecosystems as needed.
3. AI-native execution layer: Dedicated to handling AI computation tasks such as inference, embedding, and fine-tuning/training.
4. Decentralized Data Engine: Ensures that data creators receive fair rewards in the AI workflow.

Development Status

Kite AI launched the incentive testnet on February 6, 2025, which is the first AI-native Layer 1 sovereign blockchain testnet. The testnet performed impressively after going live:

• Less than 70 hours after the online testing, the number of connected wallets has exceeded 100,000. As of now, a total of 1.95 million wallets have joined the incentive test network V1, of which more than 1 million wallets have interacted with AI agents, with a total of over 115 million calls.
• The project has a strong background, built by an experienced Silicon Valley team.
• In terms of capital support, the project has received investments from multiple top institutions and has established technical cooperation relationships with several well-known projects.
• As a selection committee member of Avalanche in the InfraBUILDL(AI) program, Kite AI plays an active role in promoting the development of the Avalanche artificial intelligence ecosystem.

Nillion: Frontier Exploration of Privacy Computing

Nillion is redefining the way sensitive data is processed through its unique "blind computation" technology. Nillion is a decentralized public network based on an innovative cryptographic primitive called Nil Message Compute (NMC), which allows network nodes to operate in a non-traditional blockchain manner.

The core advantage of Nillion lies in its "blind computation" capability, and its technical architecture integrates various cutting-edge privacy protection technologies:

• Multi-Party Computation (MPC)
• Fully Homomorphic Encryption ( FHE )
• Zero-Knowledge Proof ( ZKP )
• Nada language

The network architecture of Nillion consists of three main layers: the processing layer, the coordination layer, and the connection layer.

Latest Development Progress

• The Nillion mainnet is scheduled to launch in March 2025.
• In terms of financing, Nillion completed a $25 million funding round led by Hack VC on October 30, 2024.
• In terms of ecological expansion, Nillion has established integration relationships with several mainstream public chains.
• In the AI ecosystem, Nillion has established collaborations with multiple AI-related projects.

Sahara AI: A platform for building a new economy of AI assets

The core concept of Sahara AI is to build a "Human-AI Collaboration Network" that allows ordinary users, developers, and enterprises to participate in the creation, deployment, and monetization of AI assets. The project has successfully raised a total of $43 million in funding.

The platform's technical architecture consists of three key components:

1. Sahara Blockchain
2. AI Infrastructure
3. Sahara AI Marketplace

Latest Development Progress

The Sahara AI project is currently in a rapid development stage, and its testnet has already gone through several important phases:

• In December 2024, the Beta version of the first phase data service platform test net will be launched.
• In February 2025, the second phase of the testnet will be launched.
• The public testnet named "SIWA" will be launched on March 10, 2025.

Sahara AI has announced its roadmap for 2024-2025, which includes several key milestones. On March 1, 2025, Sahara AI will launch an incubator program aimed at identifying and supporting the most promising AI x Web3 innovation projects globally.

Summary

AI Layer 1 is currently in a critical stage of rapid evolution. This emerging track is reconstructing the underlying architecture of AI technology through decentralized infrastructure. From data sovereignty to computing resource allocation, from model training to application deployment, these platforms are breaking through the limitations of traditional centralized AI systems, building a more open, transparent, and efficient technological ecosystem. In the future, this track will continue to drive technological innovation and advance the development of artificial intelligence towards a more decentralized and collaborative direction.