Today, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published a long article titled (Promise and Risks of Crypto-AI: 2026 Edition) on his personal blog. This article is not only a significant update to his 2024 article of the same name but is also interpreted by the market as a 'declaration of war' against the current monopoly of AI giants in Silicon Valley.
As a result, the AI sector experienced a full-blown rally today after half a year of sideways movement. Among them, Bittensor (TAO) saw its daily increase approach 25%, followed closely by Akash Network (AKT) and Render (RNDR). Funds are voting with their feet, betting that 'decentralized reasoning' will be the next trillion-dollar sector following 'computational mining.'
1. Vitalik's new conclusion: From 'computing power confrontation' to 'inference defense'
In an old article from 2024, Vitalik divided the combination of Crypto + AI into four quadrants (AI as participants, interfaces, rules, and objectives). In today's update, he focused on a core crisis: the black box risk of centralized inference.
Vitalik pointed out that as the dominance of closed-source models like GPT and Claude increases, humanity faces an unprecedented threat—we cannot verify whether the answers given by AI have been tampered with or implanted with backdoors.
He wrote in the article:
'If we cannot mathematically verify the reasoning process of AI, we are essentially praying blindly to the 'digital god'. Decentralized Inference is no longer an option; it is the last line of defense against AI becoming a tool of tyranny.'
He specifically mentioned the combination of two technical paths:
1. Crypto-Economic Incentives: Rewarding nodes that provide honest, high-quality inference results with tokens.
2. Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (zkML) and Optimistic Verification: Ensuring the immutability of the reasoning process.
This theory directly ignited the market's enthusiasm for bullish projects in the 'verification layer' and 'computing power layer'.
2. Bittensor (TAO): The best practitioner of Vitalik's vision
After Vitalik's article was published, TAO was the asset that reacted most vigorously. The reason is simple: Bittensor is currently the only network that can run a 'decentralized incentive mechanism' in a production environment.
1. 'Subnet' means 'verification field'
The 'incentivizing honest inference' mentioned by Vitalik is the essence of Bittensor's core mechanism, Yuma Consensus. In Bittensor's architecture, different subnets focus on different AI tasks (such as text generation, image recognition, and bio-computing).
Miners provide model outputs (inference results).
Validators are responsible for evaluating the quality of results and distributing TAO rewards.
2. The antidote to 'monopoly of large models'
The market generally believes that Vitalik's article implies that we need a 'free market for models'. Bittensor allows any developer to upload fine-tuned open-source models (like Llama 4 or DeepSeek V4) and earn direct economic returns based on their performance. This mechanism breaks the monopoly of giants like OpenAI on the distribution of top models, aligning with Vitalik's advocacy for a 'diversified AI ecosystem'.
3. Akash Network (AKT): The 'shovel seller' of decentralized inference
If TAO is the brain of the software layer, then Akash is the skeleton of the hardware layer. Vitalik subtly criticized AWS and Google Cloud for blocking GPU resources, which directly benefits the Akash Network.
1. Price advantage equals justice
With the 'DeepSeek impact' in 2025, the AI industry shifted from frenzied pre-training to large-scale inference applications. Inference is sensitive to delay and has extremely high costs.
Akash can provide inference computing power at a price 60%-80% lower than centralized cloud vendors by aggregating idle high-performance GPUs globally (like H100s, A100s).
2. The explosion of AkashML
Akash's AkashML, launched at the end of last year, makes deploying open-source large models as simple as using an API. The 'anti-censorship infrastructure' emphasized by Vitalik is currently Akash's biggest selling point—no centralized entity can press a button to shut down your AI service.
4. Market Outlook: A Paradigm Shift from 'Training' to 'Inference'
Today's market is not just a celebrity endorsement; it signifies a profound logical transformation in the AI Crypto track:
2023-2024 (Phase 1.0): Speculation on 'Training'. Whoever has more GPUs can rise (like the early RNDR).
2025-2026 (Phase 2.0): Speculation on 'inference and verification'. Whoever can run models cheaper and ensure models do not lie will be the new king.
Vitalik's article essentially points out the direction for 'defensive acceleration (d/acc)' in Crypto AI. In the short term, TAO, AKT, RNDR, and NEAR (sovereign data narrative) will continue to enjoy valuation premiums. However, investors should also be cautious, as the current maturity of zkML technology is still low, and the real 'verifiable inference' on a large scale will take time.
As Vitalik said: 'Cryptocurrency is the only tool that can counter the centralized force of AI.' Today's surge may just be the first shot in this 'human digital sovereignty defense war'.
