Original | Odaily
Author | Wenser
The turbulent yet grand 2024 of the cryptocurrency is about to end, and 2025 is already waving to us. Many crypto institutions, including Coinbase, a16z, VanEck, and Messari, are betting that AI will be one of the "main themes" next year.
Apart from the AI Agent and AI Meme coins that have led the market in the second half of the year, a series of high-quality AI track projects have also gradually attracted high attention in the market. Among them, Sahara AI, which previously raised a total of $43 million and recently launched the first phase of its testnet, has become the market focus recently. According to the latest official news, the 2024-2025 roadmap was released today, and the mainnet will be launched in Q3 2025.
Odaily will introduce this project, which is positioned as a "decentralized AI blockchain platform" and aims to build an AI Chain, to help readers understand this star project.
Sahara Project Introduction: $43 Million Raised, Star Team + Well-known Capital
According to previous introductions, Sahara AI is a decentralized artificial intelligence network that allows everyone to utilize their knowledge capital to discover monetization and automation opportunities through artificial intelligence. The initial products launched include Sahara Knowledge Agent (KA) and Sahara Data.
In August, Sahara AI announced the completion of a new round of financing, led by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital, with participation from Samsung, Lingfeng Capital, Siam Commercial Bank, dao 5, Alumni Ventures, Geekcartel, Nomad Capital, and Mirana Ventures. The new funds will be used to further expand the global team, improve the performance of its AI blockchain, and accelerate the development of its developer ecosystem. This round was Sahara AI's Series A financing, with a total of about $43 million raised.
Sahara's Team: Top Talent from the Crypto and AI Circles
According to the official website, the Sahara AI team includes Sean Ren, an AI professor at the University of Southern California and chairman of the Viterbi Center (previously worked at Ai 2, Snapchat, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), former Binance Labs investment director Tyler Zhou (@tz_sahara), and several other key members with backgrounds from top universities responsible for product, operations, ecosystem building, and community work.
Sahara AI Team List
After the financing was completed in August, Binance co-founder He Yi directly expressed his expectations and optimism for Sahara's future development, saying, "I look forward to Sahara AI, as a pioneer, building a decentralized AI blockchain platform and reshaping the future of AI, making it more transparent, secure, and accessible to all."
It is worth mentioning that Sahara AI held an AMA with technical personnel from Anthropic, the company behind Claude, on the 20th of this month, discussing topics related to the outlook for AI development in 2025. The content was more focused on technical discussions and industry research, with relatively less emphasis on Crypto, which also highlights a different marketing approach compared to other DeAI projects, giving the impression that "we are seriously doing AI+Blockchain, not just telling stories." Previously, the project had also officially announced that it had achieved SOC 2 (SOC 2 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 certification) compliance, emphasizing the importance of enhancing the security, availability, and confidentiality of AI development.
Sahara AI's Recent AMA
Exploring Sahara AI: Building a Human-AI Collaboration Network
Based on the information from Sahara AI's whitepaper and official documents, the project's main focus is on the following aspects:
Self-positioning: A decentralized blockchain platform for an open, fair, and collaborative AI economy;
Core Concept: "AI Assets," which are ownership and management protocols for private AI resources (such as personal data and proprietary models);
Target Groups: AI developers, data providers, and other stakeholders, including end-users and B2B users, as well as AI asset traders;
Service Content: From data collection and labeling to model training and service, AI agent creation and deployment, multi-agent communication, AI asset trading, and AI resource crowdsourcing.
Sahara's On-chain User Life Cycle
At the current stage, Sahara AI's main focus is on the "data" aspect of the "AI three elements (computing power, algorithms, and data)," i.e., completing the basic task of enhancing AI model performance by collecting, refining, and labeling datasets. In the future, through the continuous improvement and development of developer tools and data service platforms, Sahara AI will launch AI assets and AI markets to help developers, users, and enterprises form a "closed loop of the AI economy."
Project Progress: Testnet Phase 1 Launched, Mainnet to Launch in Q3 2025
On December 19, Sahara AI officially announced that the first phase of the testnet has been launched, with 10,000 participants selected from nearly 800,000 applicants. The main tasks involve participating in the data service platform construction through sign-ins and data labeling. The official explained that this is for user participation in knowledge contribution and early reward acquisition.
This afternoon, Sahara AI officially published the 2024-2025 project roadmap, which includes the following key information:
Q4 2024: Launch the first phase of the testnet through the data service platform, which is currently online; the second phase will begin in Q1 2025.
Q1 2025: Launch the AI market, introduce limited access to developer tools, and expand the data service platform.
Q2 2025: Launch Sahara Studio, a comprehensive tool for simplifying AI development, including model training, deployment, and orchestration toolkits.
Q3 2025: Sahara Chain mainnet launch, providing the on-chain infrastructure needed to support large-scale decentralized AI.
Sahara AI's Latest Roadmap
Regarding Sahara AI's specific product roadmap, its website also has detailed plans, as shown in the image below:
Sahara Product Roadmap
According to the official website, Sahara AI's ecosystem currently includes 200,000 AI trainers, more than 35 enterprise clients, and over 3 million data annotations.
Current Data on the Official Website
Latest Interaction Guide: Testnet Interaction + Testnet Phase 2 Application
Currently, the early participants selected for Sahara AI's testnet Phase 1 can interact in the following ways to earn corresponding points as rewards:
Log in to http://app.saharalabs.ai and create a personal profile;
Log in to https: //faucet.saharaa.info to claim SAH test tokens;
Complete various tasks on the data service dashboard to earn corresponding Sahara points (SP) or experience points (EXP).
For more detailed information, please check the task requirements at https://docs.saharalabs.ai/data-services-page.
It is worth noting that due to the emphasis on the quality of the data labeling involved, if users answer randomly and cause the task to fail multiple times, they may be restricted from answering or even have their testnet qualification cancelled, so please pay attention.
Data service page display
The application link for the second phase of the testnet Waitlist is: https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started.
Summary: Can Sahara AI build an "AI Oasis" on the Sahara Desert?
Finally, Sahara AI has repeatedly mentioned its commitment to building an AI Chain centered on the "AI economy". In the current context where countless crypto projects treat AI as a mere meme label, this is undoubtedly a courageous and exploratory endeavor. Whether Sahara AI can build an "AI oasis" for AI users and developers on what is now a virtual desert in the crypto landscape, perhaps the answer will come from Sahara AI's future development.
Odaily will continue to follow the further development of Sahara AI and provide in-depth introductions to its ecosystem at appropriate times, so that readers can have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of its value.
