Pond, a crypto startup building a decentralized AI model layer, has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round led by Archetype.

Other investors include Cyber Fund, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Near Foundation and several angel investors such as Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol; Chris Yin, CEO and co-founder of Plume Network; Cynthia Wu, founding partner and COO of Matrixport; and Tesa Ho, head of market research at Flashbots, Pond said Thursday.

Pond began raising money for this round in April and closed it by July, co-founder and CEO Dylan Zhang told The Block. The round was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, Zhang said, declining to disclose the post-round valuation.

Founded in 2023, Pond initially built a user search engine powered by on-chain data, enabling users to explore blockchain connections. For example, if someone wanted to connect with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, they could enter his ENS (vitalik.eth) and view who is connected to him in their network. "We achieved this through a proprietary graph algorithm designed specifically for blockchain data, which calculates the strength of these connections," Zhang said.

Over time, Pond saw the potential of a unified graph network across all types of on-chain data — social, financial and more — and expanded its focus to build crypto-native AI models for broader applications. "In the entire industry of AI, models are the engine that generates productivity," Pond co-founder and CTO Bill Shi told The Block. "By learning from and understanding data, models extract value from data and make predictions. Consider the current AI wave: It was unlocked by models like GPT and Llama."

Pond is now creating a "complete model ecosystem," encompassing data, model computation, training and inference. Shi said that Pond not only builds its own models but also supports others in model creation and commercialization.

While web2 AI models like ChatGPT assist with tasks from text generation to recommendations, Shi said Pond's web3 AI models will power crypto-specific use cases driven by on-chain data.

"On-chain data is extremely messy and vast in quantity, making it incomprehensible to the human mind. By leveraging AI capabilities, we transform what is beyond human understanding into comprehensible information, helping users make better use of on-chain data," he said.

Currently, Pond supports applications in security, recommendations and DeFi.

In security, Pond has developed a graph-based model for predicting malicious addresses, achieving an accuracy of 0.936 and a precision of 0.935. This model will be available on Pond's platform and will be used by "an industry-leading security company," according to Shi.

In recommendations, Pond offers models that suggest NFTs to users on Zora and DeFi protocols on Gearbox.

In DeFi, Pond has developed a dynamic fee model that addresses a key issue for liquidity providers: determining optimal transaction fees, Shi said. "When an intended trade is predicted to potentially lead to losses for liquidity providers, the model increases the transaction fee to compensate for the possible loss. Conversely, when a trade is predicted to be beneficial to liquidity providers, the model can lower the transaction fee to encourage more of these trades," he explained.

Pond plans to expand its crypto-AI use cases to include DeFi risk management, insider trading detection and personalized recommendations. Currently employing 11 people, Pond is actively hiring for roles including chief operating officer, product manager and ecosystem growth manager, Zhang said.

The Funding newsletter: Stay updated on the latest crypto funding news and trends with my bimonthly newsletter, The Funding. It's free. Sign up here!

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。