Author: Wenser, Odaily
The turbulent yet grand 2024 for the cryptocurrency industry 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" for next year.
Apart from the AI Agent and AI Meme coins that have been leading the market hype in the second half of the year, a series of high-quality projects in the AI track have also gradually attracted high attention in the market. Among them, Sahara AI, which previously raised a total of $43 million and has 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 provide a systematic introduction to this project, which is positioned as a "decentralized AI blockchain platform" and is committed to building 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 this year, 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, enhance the performance of its AI blockchain, and accelerate the development of its developer ecosystem. This round is 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), Tyler Zhou, former investment director of Binance Labs, and several other core members with backgrounds from top schools 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 her 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 to make 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 some topics related to the 2025 AI development outlook. The content was more focused on technical discussions and industry research, with relatively less emphasis on Crypto, which also highlights a different marketing approach from other DeAI projects, giving a sense of "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 in Sahara AI's official whitepaper and documents, the project's main focus is on the following aspects:
Self-positioning: A decentralized blockchain platform oriented towards 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 B-end 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)," that is, to complete 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, allowing developers, users, and enterprises to form an "AI economic closed loop."
Project Progress: The First Phase of the Testnet Has Launched, Mainnet to Go Live 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 activities such as check-in and data labeling. The official explanation is to enable user participation in knowledge contribution and early reward acquisition.
This afternoon, Sahara AI officially released the 2024-2025 project roadmap, the key information of which includes:
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 the comprehensive Sahara Studio tool, including model training, deployment, and orchestration toolkits, to simplify AI development.
Q3 2025: The Sahara Chain mainnet will be launched, providing the on-chain infrastructure necessary to support large-scale decentralized AI.
Sahara AI's Latest Roadmap
Regarding Sahara AI's specific product roadmap, its official website also has detailed plans, as shown in the image below:
Sahara Product Roadmap
According to the information on its official website, Sahara AI's ecosystem currently includes 200,000 AI trainers, more than 35 enterprise clients, and over 3 million data annotations.
Official Website Current Data
Latest Interaction Tutorial: Testnet Interaction + Testnet Phase 2 Application
Currently, the early participants selected for Sahara AI's testnet first phase can interact in the following ways to earn corresponding points:
Log in to http://app.saharalabs.ai to create a personal profile;
Log in to https://faucet.saharaa.info to receive SAH test tokens;
Complete various tasks on the data service dashboard to earn 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 mentioning that since the data labeling involves quality considerations, if users answer carelessly and fail the tasks multiple times, they may be restricted from answering or even have their testnet qualifications revoked, so they must pay attention.
Data Service Page Display
The Waitlist application link for the second phase of the testnet is: https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started.
In 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 face of countless crypto projects that view 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 project will provide its own answer in the future.
