Relying on mega-corporations like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to help you with AI tasks isn't risk-free. Among other drawbacks, these tech giants could suspend your account, censor your results, or even overcharge you.

Thanks to blockchain technology however, there are a growing number of decentralized alternatives that you can use to avoid the overhead, excessive fees, and lock-in associated with corporate GPU use.

In this article, we will cover the difference between AI training and inference, as well as DePIN project Nosana, a decentralized marketplace for GPUs that can process your AI jobs.

AI Training vs. Inference

The following is from an Oracle article that explains AI models:

Deep learning training comes first [...] As a model is trained, it gains the ability to recognize deeper levels of information from data [...] AI inference takes place after the training, when the AI model is asked to recognize these elements in new data.

Paraphrasing, an AI model must go through this "deep learning" process before it can make inferences on new data.

When you submit a question to ChatGPT, for example, their AI model makes an inference on your question, and responds to you accordingly.

Nosana

Nosana is a team of computer scientists, software engineers, and AI researchers who have been working since 2021 to launch a decentralized GPU marketplace, targeted primarily to developers.

Since the end of 2023 though, Nosana has been phasing out its original use-case of CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) in favor of AI inference.

Gamers, crypto miners, or high-end Mac users can lend their Nvidia GPUs to Nosana's network. In return, they earn NOS tokens whenever someone utilizes their GPU to complete an AI inference task.

NOS Token

NOS exists as an SPL token on the Solana blockchain. If you don't have a GPU to lend to the network, you can purchase NOS using a wallet like Phantom, on a decentralized exchange (DEX) like Raydium - after doing your due diligence, of course!

NOS has a total supply of 100,000,000 with roughly 83,000,000 in circulation, and a market cap of ~$330,000,000 as of today.

Using Nosana

You can submit an AI inference job to the Nosana network after installing their CLI (command line interface) using NPM.

npm install -g @nosana/cli

In order to submit jobs to the network, you will need a little bit of SOL and NOS in the wallet that the Nosana CLI generates for you.

The amount of NOS you will have to pay depends on which GPUs you select from the marketplace. GPUs with higher performance cost more than those with lower performance.

You can find more details on how to submit an AI inference job to Nosana here.

Staking

If you're holding NOS tokens without any plans to submit jobs, you can stake them to earn an APY. On Nosana's staking page, enter the amount of tokens to stake and an unstaking period of 14 to 365 days. The longer the unstaking period, the higher APY (interest rate) you will receive while your tokens are locked up.

Alternatives

Nosana is simply one of dozens of other projects that are using token incentives to decentralize GPU infrastructure. For example, we also have Render, AIOZ, IO.net, and Akash, among others.

Considering that the marketplace for decentralized GPU power is still so nascent, and the demand for AI is growing, I believe there is plenty of room for all of these projects to expand significantly.

Until next time...

Nosana is one Solana-based project that is focused on AI inference. It is helping developers process their AI-related tasks while avoiding the lock-up, fees, and other inefficiencies of centralized providers.

AI is only going to become more prevalent in our society as time goes on. Therefore, the crypto tokens that power these GPU networks will likely become more valuable in the future (not financial advice, of course ;)

If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.

Resources

Nosana Docs [1]
Chess Image Courtesy of Venice AI [2]
Oracle Article On AI Inference [3]
Image of GPUs [4]

How To Make AI Inference More Affordable With Nosana