Cortex AI on Blockchain Ecosystem

This article is the fourth part of a series on AI on blockchain Ecosystems. In these overviews, I will provide outlines of why we need it, how is it achieved, and what does it offer.

Article Series:

- Part 1: AI on Blockchain — What’s the catch?

- Part 2: AI Smart Contracts — The Past, Present, and Future

- Part 3: Running Artificial Intelligence on the Blockchain

- Part 4: Cortex AI on Blockchain Ecosystem

- Part 5: AI on Blockchain Use Cases

AI on Blockchain Ecosystem

As mentioned in the previous post, the current Ethereum smart contracts are more like digital contracts. However, a real smart contract should be able to accommodate AI functions to provide an extension of our human imagination and allow autonomous AI evolution. For example, a smart contract that has the ability of image recognition and natural language processing.

Cortex (CTXC) aims to provide state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence models on the blockchain to enhance the capability of smart contracts. Developers will no longer need to hard-code all the logical connectives but let the AI models do the logical reasonings. Moreover, Cortex can decentralize AI by creating an infrastructure that incentivizes AI developers to share their models with the world. Such an infrastructure will build the first AI on Blockchain Ecosystem.

Stakeholders

There are three distinct stakeholders in the Cortex Ecosystem: smart contract developer, AI developers, and miners.

Smart Contract Developers

Cortex provides cost-efficient computing resources in a transparent and secure environment for the smart contract developers to invoke well-trained AI models. Smart contract developers can use Solidity and Remix IDE to write smart contract and use instruction sets to include AI model within the contract. Smart contracts on Ethereum can even be migrated to Cortex to include AI algorithms.

AI Developers

Cortex has an incentive mechanism for collective collaboration that allows AI developers to submit and store models on the Cortex blockchain. There is a storage layer where all the models would be stored and the model would be called with a hash value. AI models developers can share their trained AI models and get paid in CTXC to create an tokenomic model and improve the ecosystem.

Miners

Miners not only validate new transactions and record them on the blockchain, but also verify the AI inferred results. Miners compete to solve a difficult mathematical problem based on a cryptographic algorithm. The solution Cortex proposed is called Jump Proof-Of-Work with Cuckoo Cycle Algorithm.

Incentive Mechanism

In contrast to the traditional blockchain, in which the reward for each packaging block is paid directly to the miners, Cortex proposed an incentive mechanism to motivate AI developers to submit richer and better models called Endorphins.

Endorphin is a measurement of the number of computing resources spent on a hardware level within a virtual machine when bringing a data model into a contract during inference.

When a transaction is invoked, Endorphins are not only allocated to miners who help package the block on the full node but also used to pay the AI model providers. A single execution of a contract will cause a fee of Endorphins Limit * max Endorphins Price. The proportion of fees charged will be determined by the market gaming price, similar to the Ethereum Gas mechanism. AI smart contracts having higher max Endorphins price have higher priority to be executed. Generally speaking, the cost of Endorphin is proportional to the size of the model. Cortex also sets an upper bound of 8GB on the parameter size of the model, corresponding to up to about 2 billion Float32 parameters.

As a result, Smart contract developers pay and sustain AI developers, while AI developers are incentivized to provide more quality AI models to smart contract developers, creating an ecosystem that leads to the evolution of better and better AI models. The Cortex blockchain can decentralize AI creating a tokenomic model that incentivizes AI developers to share their models. Good AI models will no longer be monopolized by big corporations but are distributed on the Cortex blockchain.

About Cortex

Cortex is the first ever blockchain technology that allows the execution of AI algorithms on the blockchain. Cortex provides an AI platform and stack for developers to upload their models on the blockchain that can be integrated with the smart contract. TestNet for mining and AI smart contract is out, Click here to learn more!

TestNet

| Block Explorer — Cerebro| Mining Pool | Remix Editor | Software |

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