Vana partners with the largest AI Hackathon in the APAC to date.
From June 7-9, 2024, the Build Club Build Together Hackathon brought together over 400 participants across nine locations, creating more than 80 innovative AI projects. This event centred on impactful AI solutions and saw Vana partner with the hackers to offer a decentralised perspective on their projects.
Our COO, Art Abal, workshopped ideas with participants during the challenge and was invited to sit on the judging panel for the hack.
Across the weekend, hackers were excited by the concept of on-chain datasets, which could significantly lower the costs and barriers to obtaining user data for their projects. Vana’s proposition of accessing high-quality datasets directly from users and forming data/AI collectives resonated strongly.
The popularity of human-centric AI projects further underscored the need for real user data. Hackers regularly noted the limitations of prompting for creating humanlike connections with AI. The prospects of fine-tuning models with user-sourced data offered the possibility of breaking these constraints.
Hackers were also interested in exploring how tokenizing the entire machine-learning pipeline could unlock new business models and better technology. This model, encompassing data contribution, labelling, machine learning development, and deployment, assigns token incentives to all participants involved in the AI creation process. Hackers were excited about the prospects of collective ownership and decentralisation as a viable alternative to both the dominance of large tech firms and the limitations of open-source tools.
During his address to the hackers, Art Abal said,
“The excitement we witnessed around collective ownership and tokenized AI pipelines is encouraging. It's clear that the community is ready for a shift towards more decentralized and user-centric AI solutions. Our goal at Vana is to provide the infrastructure and incentives to support this transition.”
The positive response to these contributions was exciting in the lead-up to the launch of the Satori Testnet and Vana Mainnet.
Vana's active participation in the Build Club Build Together Hackathon was a testament to our unwavering commitment to advancing AI and blockchain integration. We are dedicated to being thought leaders in fostering innovation and supporting the next generation of AI developers.
Stay tuned for more updates on our involvement in future events and the continued progress of Vana Mainnet!