Exploring the Utility of SingularityNET’s AGI Token

Enabling the decentralized AI economy with a tailored solution.

The value and power of Artificial Intelligence is growing dramatically every year, and will soon dominate the internet —as well as the economy as a whole. However, AI tools today are fragmented by a closed development environment; most are developed by one company to perform one task, and there is no way to plug two tools together.

SingularityNET aims to become the key protocol for networking AI and machine learning tools to form a coordinated Artificial General Intelligence.

To accomplish this, the SingularityNET platform must be powered by a utility token that is tailored to enabling its core functionality. The SingularityNET token ‘AGI’ is structured to enable four key mechanisms: transactions, settlements, incentives, and governance.

You can dive deeper by reading our whitepaper. Join our Telegram channel to chat with the team and our growing community.

1. Transactions

SingularityNET is an open-source protocol and collection of smart contracts for a decentralized market of coordinated AI services. Within this framework, the benefits of AI become a global commons infrastructure for the benefit of all; anyone can access AI tech or become a stakeholder in its development. Anyone can add an AI/machine learning service to SingularityNET for use by the network, and receive network payment tokens in exchange.

Blockchain technology provides an ideal tool for managing network transactions on SingularityNET due to its transactional and bookkeeping advantages. But a blockchain-based framework needs to be designed to allow AI Agents to interact with each other and external customers.

The AGI token makes network transactions possible through:

Interoperability : The network will be able to interface with multiple blockchains and network infrastructures. The AGI token allows AI agents and customers to transact in a streamlined manner regardless of what underlying technology they use.

: The network will be able to interface with multiple blockchains and network infrastructures. The AGI token allows AI agents and customers to transact in a streamlined manner regardless of what underlying technology they use. Modularity : Flexible network capabilities make it possible to create cus- tom topologies, AI Agent collaboration arrangements, and failure recovery methods.

: Flexible network capabilities make it possible to create cus- tom topologies, AI Agent collaboration arrangements, and failure recovery methods. Scalability : SingularityNET will securely host both private and public contracts, so more scalable and resilient applications can be built on top of it with near zero transaction costs.

: SingularityNET will securely host both private and public contracts, so more scalable and resilient applications can be built on top of it with near zero transaction costs. Data Sovereignty and Privacy: User data control and sharing comes with privacy-enabled controls on top of the network, and access is validated through smart contracts and the blockchain.

High-level network architecture diagram

2. Settlements

Without the AGI token, AI agents would need access to the native tokens of other protocols in order to transact in their networks and interact with their services. This becomes onerously complex when integrating multiple goods, services, and agents.

With the AGI token, network users can transact on the market place from thousands of contracts, technologies, and protocols. All transactions occur on a single, publicly-auditable transaction ledger.

This creates a plug-and-play experience for AI developers. Buyers can easily integrate any external resource or capability, while sellers can seamlessly monetize any asset.

Examples of (offer, request) pairs that AI Agents might make, offering to pay for services other nodes provide them.

3. Incentives

The open, decentralized nature of SingularityNET gives it more potential for dynamic, effective intelligence than any more closed, monolithic system could possess, while also aligning the incentives of the network as a whole with the greater good. AGI tokens are distributed as rewards for contributing utility to the network.

For example, a core component of the SingularityNET platform is the AI Curation Market. It enables two things:

It optimizes the discovery process for finding useful AI Agents. It nudges holders to become stakers (someone who locks AGI tokens to increase an AI Agents’ rank), thereby contributing to network growth. Overtime this population will grow to overtake mere token holders, as they will see that there is AGI to be earned.

The AI curation market is essentially a discovery ranking mechanism, func- tioning as follows:

There are specific categories of AI Agents hardcoded into the early versions of SingularityNET. Token holders can stake their tokens to a specific Agent and specific query in order to increase that AI Agents’ stake-rank. Both stake-rank and reputation-rank are public and control discovery ranking. In proportion to how much that AI Agent’s services improve its reputation, stakers on that node receive AGI rewards from the curation reward pool. Insofar as that AI Agent fails to process tasks correctly or has its reputation diminished, stake is confiscated and deposited into the curation reward pool.

This design gives every AGI token holder increased earning power. To claim additional AGI, they need only curate the best AI Agents and see them adopted in the market. Then they will be rewarded with a flow of new tokens for promoting the discovery of high quality AI Agents .

As the volume of processing and clients for an AI Agent grows, staking delivers diminishing returns, with the largest rewards going to the earliest stakers. This incentivizes curators to be on the hunt for new AI Agents to stake and promote. Depending on the price of AGI, this AI curation market could create a whole cottage industry for promoting SingularityNET AI services to buyers that need them. Should that happen, the decentralized curation market can effectively replace cruder indications of reputation like external KYC validation.

4. Governance

Market transactions may occur between AI Agents in the network, or between external entities and AI Agents. In order to foster a vibrant market, SingularityNET will not charge any transaction fees. Rather, network operations will be funded democratically, via decisions of network participants to direct a fraction of newly created tokens toward entities providing and enhancing network infrastructure and associated tools.

We believe that putting the community in charge of the system will tend to make the system act for the benefit of the community.

SingularityNET is also backed by the SingularityNET Foundation, which operates on a belief that the benefits of AI should not be dominated by any small set of powerful institutions, but shared by all. A key goal of SingularityNET is to ensure the technology is benevolent according to human standards, and the network is designed to incentivize and reward beneficial players.

Next Steps

We invite you to explore Why We Are Building SingularityNET and meet the team to understand our work thus far. Dive deeper by reading our whitepaper.

We have plenty in store for you. Stay tuned.

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