Igniting the Decentralized AI Revolution on the Blockchain With Ritual

1/ In this session from REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2024, Niraj Pant (@niraj), Co-founder of Ritual @ritualnet, discussed igniting the decentralized AI revolution on the blockchain with moderator Augie Ilag (@AugieIlag), Partner & Head of Asia at CMT Digital @CMT_Digital.

2/ Pant shared his background in cryptography and his experience as an early employee at Polychain, where he focused on finding technological advancements in cryptography and distributed systems to turn into commercializable businesses and protocols.

3/ Pant identified the opportunity to bring self-sovereign AI to the world by combining the advancements in AI with the properties of crypto, such as self-sovereignty of data, identity, and money.

4/ Ritual aims to make it easy for smart contract developers to integrate AI models into their products, solving the challenges of using off-chain APIs and providing native payment in ETH, privacy, transparency, and integrity.

5/ Pant highlighted potential use cases for AI in crypto, including interacting with blockchains using natural language, generating NFTs, autonomously updating and improving DeFi, and customizing gaming experiences based on user preferences.

6/ Ritual's approach to the centralization vs. decentralization trade-off involves two phases: Infernet, an open-source oracle system for integrating AI into EVM-based blockchains, and Ritual Chain, an execution settlement system for tightly coupling AI semantics in smart contracts.

7/ Pant emphasized the potential of Ritual Chain to supercharge AI applications by enabling governance, interaction between AI applications, and an AI-focused layer for various types and sizes of AI applications.

8/ When discussing the balance between adaptability and control in AI-blockchain integration, Pant highlighted the potential of AI agents to automate tasks and enhance user capabilities, while acknowledging the need for research to ensure creativity without egregious capital risks.

9/ Pant provided an example of how AI can improve DeFi governance by autonomously adjusting parameters like collateral factors based on market conditions, protecting both users and protocols from unnecessary risk.

10/ Ritual supports various proof systems, including ZKML, optimistic proofs, and trusted execution environments, allowing developers to choose the level of verifiability based on their specific use case requirements.

11/ Pant announced that Ritual's devnet, Ritual Chain (phase two), will be shipping in the summer, enabling developers to build AI-enabled smart contracts with significant promise and opportunity for new companies and protocols.

12/ With a team from venture capital backgrounds, Ritual is excited to help shepherd new protocols in the AI-crypto space and work closely with teams building on top of their platform.