AI and DeSci: The Huge Infrastructure Potential Behind the Narrative of Crossing Bulls and Bears

Recently, the price of Bitcoin has surged significantly, and Meme coins are once again going crazy. However, during the sluggish period of the past six months, the market widely believes that the crypto industry lacks practical application support. Even emerging fields like Depin are still in development, and its subfields such as cloud computing are still some distance away from widespread adoption.

In the speculative frenzy of Meme coins, the DeSci concept unexpectedly draws attention. Although every new concept inevitably faces speculation in its early stages, the blockchain industry has developed for many years, and it is time to consider how to promote the actual implementation.

At the beginning of last year, the AI revolution led by ChatGPT injected new momentum into the bull market. The view that "AI represents advanced productive forces, while blockchain represents the redistribution and integration of advanced productive relationships" quickly sparked discussions. Under this trend, projects like Bittensor and fetch.ai rapidly emerged.

In September this year, with the market recovery, AI concept Meme coins surged in popularity due to $Goat. Some teams and even individuals have developed AI Agents with specific functions, cultivated communities, and issued Meme coins for profit.

The concept of DeSci originated from the last bull market, but it did not attract attention due to the long research cycle. It wasn't until November 8 when a trading platform invested in BIO Protocol that DeSci truly gained prominence. Subsequently, several well-known industry figures discussed their insights on DeSci at related events and expressed hope to see 1,000 DeSci projects next year.

In the short term, the DeSci concept Meme coins have rapidly risen, such as $uro and $rif issued by BIO, as well as $SciHub used for donating to Sci-Hub. The total market cap of related concepts has exceeded $800 million.

However, good narratives require not only short-term popularity but also long-term infrastructure construction to achieve application implementation. The core support of AI—computing power resource scheduling—is still in the development stage, and its cost and stability need to be verified by the market.

In contrast, the decentralized storage technology behind DeSci is relatively mature, with advantages in cost and security. Currently, the DeSci infrastructure is basically complete, and the key is to promote the concept of decentralized storage.

DeSci promotes global open access to research data through distributed storage technology, reducing single control, and preventing data leakage and tampering. This model makes research activities more transparent and allows researchers worldwide to share resources. DeSci also utilizes smart contracts and DAOs to enhance the transparency and efficiency of research funding, helping to raise research funds.

DeSci innovates in two ways: 1. by raising funds through tokens; 2. by moving research data storage from centralized servers to the blockchain.

DeSci essentially utilizes the speculative psychology of the crypto market to promote the monetization of research value and its practical application. Currently, the popularity of DeSci is mainly supported by the wealth effect of Meme coins, but research requires continuous and substantial funding, and faces high risks and high failure rates, which contradicts the short-term speculative nature of Meme coins.

In the short term, there may be a large number of speculators raising funds under the guise of DeSci. Therefore, DeSci will go through a phase of distinguishing the genuine from the false, gradually cultivating user awareness, and ultimately achieving the goal of monetizing scientific research results through crypto finance.

DeSci has a huge demand for data storage and on-chain proof. If a mature business model can be established, decentralized storage will become the infrastructure for DeSci, promoting the development of the related ecosystem.

Decentralized storage has gone through several development stages from Storj to Filecoin, Arweave, and the IPFS protocol. Research shows that decentralized storage is on average 78% cheaper than centralized storage, with differences reaching up to 121 times in enterprise-level data storage. Although some Web2 customers have begun adopting decentralized storage solutions, centralized storage still dominates due to its intuitive experience and mature products.

In April last year, a trading platform launched a new decentralized storage infrastructure, marking a new height in the field. This infrastructure provides decentralized storage for the entire ecosystem, enabling data creation, storage, and exchange. Through a native cross-chain bridge, users can freely transfer assets between different chains and conveniently interact with related DApps.

Compared to IPFS and Arweave, the new infrastructure has advantages in ecological integration, cross-chain support, the combination of storage and computing, and cost-effectiveness, making it more suitable for DeFi, smart contracts, and Web3 application scenarios. In the future, it can be applied in areas such as website hosting, personal cloud storage, blockchain data storage, content publishing, social media, and personal data markets.

In its ecological projects, two native infrastructures stood out in community voting, becoming important components.

One of the projects is the largest decentralized storage provider in the ecosystem, serving as both a storage provider and a validator. The project integrates the advantages of IPFS and Arweave, providing a more user-friendly experience and lower usage thresholds. Its key advantages include: dual roles of storage and validation, multi-chain support and compatibility, integration of decentralized storage and computing resources, flexible storage solutions, decentralized AI services, and DWeb hosting services.

Currently, the project has over 3 million registered users, with more than 100,000 daily active users. It ranks among the top in storage volume on IPFS and Arweave, and has received support from several well-known institutions. Recently, it has collaborated with multiple DeSci projects to promote decentralized storage of scientific literature.

Another project serves as a standard for underlying data protocols, aiming to generate verification information certification and introduce trusted private data into the Web3 ecosystem. Its features include decentralized verification services, user sovereignty and data privacy, AI training and dataset services, as well as extensive ecosystem collaboration. This project provides data validation and management capabilities for decentralized storage, enhancing platform security, transparency, and user control.

These infrastructure projects reflect the cryptocurrency industry's attempts at sustainability. If the DeSci business model is validated and gains support from mainstream exchanges, it will greatly promote the prosperity of the related ecosystem and drive the large-scale adoption of decentralized storage.

From a macro perspective, the long-term sustainable development of the crypto industry is the most critical. The recent emphasis and investment by industry leaders and mainstream platforms in DeSci demonstrate the vision of blockchain financial services serving the real market and realizing value implementation. This is not just a concept hype, but an important attempt to promote blockchain technology's contribution to society.