Sahara AI is an AI public blockchain focused on "AI development" and "AI data/model assetization," allowing users to co-create infrastructure and gain real value through data annotation from day one.
Written by: Biteye
The highly anticipated AI project Sahara AI has officially launched its first phase testnet — the data service platform, selecting over 10,000 early contributors from 780,000 applicants, making the whitelist competition quite fierce. Why has Sahara AI secured a total of $43 million in funding led by Polychain, Binance Labs, and Pantera Capital? Today, let's take a look at what makes Sahara AI different.
1. What is the mission of Sahara AI?
Sahara AI is a decentralized AI blockchain platform that aims to revolutionize the development, deployment, and monetization of AI assets (including AI models, datasets, intelligent agents, etc.) through its pioneering AI asset concept and proprietary infrastructure. Whether professional developers, entrepreneurs, or ordinary AI enthusiasts, anyone can easily build or deploy personalized AI products on the Sahara AI platform and earn real rewards by contributing data, developing models, or deploying AI assets.
This unique design not only lowers the entry barrier for AI but also co-creates a more democratized and equitable AI collaborative ecosystem, allowing every participant to share in the industry's growth dividends.
In short, Sahara AI is an AI public blockchain focused on "AI development" and "AI data/model assetization," enabling users to co-create infrastructure and gain real value through data annotation from day one.
2. Why is Sahara AI important?
Traditionally, opportunities to influence AI development have been limited to developers. However, with Sahara AI, anyone can participate and directly impact the AI ecosystem, helping to build a new generation of AI that is fairer and more user-centric.
As AI technology advances, the complexity of its data requirements is also increasing. Tasks that once involved labeling objects or simple classifications have evolved into nuanced processes, such as sentiment annotation, multi-modal data alignment, and organizing domain-specific datasets. These tasks require careful consideration, expertise, and precision to ensure high-quality results. The Sahara AI data service platform aims to address these challenges by leveraging a globally diverse and decentralized labeling workforce. By contributing knowledge, users will help lay the foundation for a fairer, user-centric AI ecosystem while also being rewarded.
Developers can access trusted models and datasets through Sahara AI, annotate and optimize datasets to accelerate development speed, and ensure high-quality data input.
3. Team Members
The core team of Sahara AI consists of seasoned experts from the AI and Web3 industries, with past experiences including Stanford University, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Berkeley, AI2, Microsoft, Binance, Stability AI, Google, Protocol Labs, and Avalanche. Team members have integrated their rich cross-domain experience into the design and development of Sahara AI, laying a solid technical and strategic foundation for the platform.
The founding team includes:
Sean Ren (@xiangrenNLP): AI professor at the University of Southern California and chair of the Viterbi Center, with a strong academic background and experience in AI technology research.
Tyler Zhou (@tz_sahara): Former investment director at Binance Labs, with deep understanding and insights into blockchain ecosystems and Web3 investments.
4. Partners
Sahara AI has not only received support from institutional investors but also guidance and support from leading figures in the AI industry and academia, including Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, vice chairman of Motherson Group, Rohan Taori, a scientist at Anthropic (the developer of the Claude large language model), Teknium, co-founder of Nous Research, Vipul Prakash, CEO of Together AI, and Elvis Zhang, a founding member of Midjourney.
5. Funding Situation
This year, Sahara AI secured $43 million in funding led by Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, and Polychain Capital, including corporate strategic investments from Samsung and Thailand's Kasikorn Bank.
6. How to Participate
Sahara is currently issuing Sahara Points (SP) to users as rewards for testnet tasks. The mainnet is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2025, providing ample time to accumulate points.
Step 1: Join the Waitlist
Season 1 is now live, and users who have obtained a whitelist can start tasks. Those without a whitelist can register immediately to apply for one.
https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started
Step 2: Choose Tasks
After obtaining the whitelist, enter the platform at https://app.saharalabs.ai
Select tasks that match your interests and expertise, exploring various data tasks across industries such as creator economy, gaming, science, and trade.
Step 3: Apply for Tasks
Each task listing provides a comprehensive overview, including a clear description of the work involved, the rewards offered, and the estimated difficulty level. Some tasks require participation in a brief qualification exam based on specific tasks to confirm that data providers possess the necessary expertise, ensuring that all platform contributors deliver work that meets the highest standards. Each task's exam qualification is only available once; if failed, there is no retake. This reflects the platform's high standards for data quality. It is evident that the Sahara team is genuinely focused on data quality rather than chasing trends or flooding the platform with ineffective data. Currently, over 35 tech innovation companies and research institutions are using Sahara AI, including Microsoft, Amazon, MIT, Motherson Group, and Snapchat.
Step 4: Contribute Knowledge
Label, annotate, or review data. Users' contributions will directly enhance the quality and reliability of datasets, helping to build smarter AI systems. For example, while working on the Defi Influencers task, I filled in the Twitter handles, recommendations, and representative tweets of influencers I considered excellent. If the influencers I recommend are the same as others, I will share the rewards with them. The platform incentivizes users to provide unique data in this way.
Step 5: Earn Sahara Points and Achievements
Each completed task earns Sahara Points, and high-quality contributions can earn additional rewards. Points and achievements will be automatically calculated using the platform's advanced quality assurance mechanism.
Strategy:
Provide accurate, high-quality answers in tasks to earn base + reward points. Compete for a spot in the top 1,000 on the leaderboard by earning as many XP as possible, as these users will receive special benefits. Repeated low-quality participants will gradually be banned from participation to prevent affecting the contributions of other high-quality users. The minimum accuracy threshold for submitting tasks is 15%. If 4 out of the last 10 tasks are banned from submission, the user will be suspended for 7 days. If suspended 3 times within 3 months, the system will permanently ban the user from submitting tasks.
Consecutive sign-ins for 31 days will earn an NFT to record contributions after the end of Season 1.
6. Summary
The value of AI data annotation lies in providing precise training data, which is key to enhancing the accuracy and performance of artificial intelligence models. Accurate labeling helps models better understand and process information, leading to superior performance in real-world applications. This is at the core of Sahara AI. The project team states that as Sahara AI continues to optimize, more products for public participation will be launched in the future.
As can be seen, this is a community-friendly AI project with real value that is worth paying attention to.
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。
