Announcement – The Nevermined Marketplace to monetize AI & Data is LIVE

AI Monetization

11 min read

Today we begin offering AI Developers and Data Owners the opportunity to monetize and commercialize their valuable assets, using Smart Subscriptions, a novel approach that reinvents outdated subscriptions by combining usage rules with smart contracts.

TLDR:
AI needs improved Access, Traceability and Monetization. Nevermined unlocks the true potential of your Data & AI by converting each into accessible, traceable & monetizable assets. All under YOUR control.

Tapping into 100+ years of combined experience in Data, AI and Web3, our team spent the past 12 months creating state-of-the-art technology that fills the gaps in the current Data and AI market. The issues we’re addressing:

Publicly available data for AI training is expected to run out by 2026.
Data owners are not currently being rewarded, or even acknowledged, so there’s no motivation on their side to open up their data for AI.
AI Copyright infringement is an emerging issue with massive implications for digital ownership.
The global AI market is projected to reach $1.8 Trillion by 2030 and there will be 100s of thousands of AI agents available for use under the right monetization plans.
Unique, relevant datasets that are use case specific will drive in-context and transfer learning for LLMs, thus making access to data the key differentiator for relevant answers.
AIs won’t have bank accounts, hence the ability to transact must be addressed.

Aside from Data and AI, we also have some fundamental tech issues that need to be addressed. Those in Web3 know what horrendous UX is. In particular, token-gating has limited scalability because one asset is usually coupled to one token. This requires multiple interactions to access just one asset, let alone multiple assets. In response, we created Smart Subscriptions, which allow multiple assets to be bucketed under one subscription plan that governs the access conditions of time and price for all assets held within that subscription bucket. The result: drastically simplified UX, and greater scalability of decentralized tech, especially for AI.

Now let us explain the WHY, the HOW and the WHAT in more detail.

(Or if you’re a Doer and you want to get started now, head right to the marketplace!)

1. The problems with AI

We’re all excited about what’s happening in the AI industry. But we also see dark clouds gathering on the horizon. The industry has fundamental challenges that can hinder the future development of AI.

AI lacks precision

To improve relevance, AI models will require specific and very precise datasets. That data generally sits behind a wall.

✅ With Nevermined, Data Owners can easily make their assets available so AIs can access, compute and reward for access to this walled data.

AI lacks transparency and trust

AI developers will increasingly need to deal with copyright infringement, data privacy and source referencing.

✅ Nevermined provides built-in attribution, provenance and access control.

AI lacks a vibrant and open economy

AIs need relevant Data to create valuable output. And Data needs AIs to drive their value as input. But how will these two transact?

✅ Nevermined effectively provides bank accounts for AI and data, enabling fast, simple and programmable transactions.

2. Who can use Nevermined?

Nevermined offers value for Publishers (Sellers) and Consumers (Buyers) of AI and Data assets.

Publishers (Sellers):

AI Developers can use Nevermined to tokenize the Web Service of their AI model / agent by defining access conditions, like price and period. They can make it available to app developers who want to integrate AI services into their product, but who don’t want to build an AI from scratch.

Data Owners can use Nevermined to tokenize datasets, set pricing and access control conditions, and then make it available to AI builders to train their models.

Consumers (Buyers):

AI Developers can use Nevermined to purchase access to datasets that are relevant to their model.

App developers can purchase access to a broad range of AI Services and integrate them into their product, so they don’t need to build AI services from scratch.

Researchers or data consumers who require access to specific or specialized data that is not readily accessible to the public, can purchase access to datasets to advance their research.

3. Let’s move on to the TECH

WTF are Smart Subscriptions? We’re glad you asked!

Smart Subscriptions combine access control with monetization plans that enable full track and trace functionality for Datasets and AI models / agents. They allow Publishers to fully control the duration and the price of access to their AI or Data assets.

How does it work?

Publishers can tokenize their dataset or, in AI’s case, the API endpoint and embed access conditions.
Purchasing access means the asset’s smart contract sends the buyer a non-fungible Subscription token.
Each Subscription proves ownership of a unique access token, which allows the user to send requests to the dataset or AI’s web service.

Imagine you’re a quant that wants to backtest your AI trading agent. The agent needs access to datafor the past 12 months, and that data is divided into 1 month segments. If that data is token-gated, access requires one confirmation to for each dataset. That’s a minimum of 12 confirms to gain access to one year of data. And in the event that payment is required for access, the token-gating process will require multiple confirmations for each dataset, pushing the number of interactions into the dozens. This is horrendous UX.

So, we came up with an alternative approach that we call Smart Subscriptions.

Instead of token-gating assets using a 1-to-1 approach, Smart Subscriptions enable a 1-to-many approach. With the Smart Subscription model, asset owners create a subscription within the Nevermined Marketplace that acts as a “bucket” for assets. The subscription owner sets the rules governing access, such as time period (i.e. 1 week, 1 month, 1 year), and perhaps the price for access. The subscription owner then publishes assets, like datasets and/or AI models, which are added to specific subscription buckets, with the bucket’s access rules transferring to each published asset in that bucket. For a user to gain access to the assets within a bucket, they only need to acquire the Smart Subscription holding the assets that the user wants. UX simplified!

This model drastically improves the acquisition process for multiple assets. Which is good, because AI services are almost never made up of single assets. Instead, they require a number of assets, like datasets + models that are combined into service workflows. In addition, we’ve simplified an AI agent’s means to transact, because we can use the Smart Subscription to wrap the AI’s API and then publish the subscription.

Now AI developers can monetize the agents they create, token-gating the AI’s endpoint for use by other developers or even other AI agents. In effect, Nevermined’s Smart Subscriptions give AI’s their “bank account”.

Building on the right tech providers: Polygon Labs, Gnosis, Arbitrum and The Graph

Nevermined is multichain, so we’re deploying on multiple networks including Arbitrum, Polygon and Gnosis chain. There are many options out there, but we’ve done thorough research and we are extremely satisfied with our picks. We want our users to have options when it comes to speed, fees and usability.

Arbitrum

Arbitrum One is a leading Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution that provides ultra-fast, low-cost transactions. We like the fact that it is EVM-compatible and derives security from Ethereum. It’s proven to be a steady network, as it’s already home to 400+ DeFi and NFT projects. With its lightning-fast transactions and robust infrastructure, Arbitrum can help the Nevermined Marketplace unlock a new era of decentralized AI and data sharing”, said Nicholas Westlake, Partnerships Manager at Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum.

Gnosis

We resonate with Gnosis’ value proposition that AI-driven projects are a natural fit for a high scalability and security layer-1, such as Gnosis. Also, we can definitely see use cases where Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) can come in handy. For example, semi-autonomous AIs will have multiple stakeholders, likely managing funds needed for transacting. This means multisig control, so what better network and solution to partner with in this case than Gnosis Chain and Safe.

Polygon Labs

Polygon Labs isn’t just offering scalable, affordable, secure and sustainable blockchain infrastructure for Web3, but they’ve also managed to get widespread adoption with more than 260 million unique addresses. The Polygon Network has been proven to be developer-friendly as they host the biggest brands from web3 native providers like Aave, Uniswap and OpenSea as well as well-known ‘traditional’ enterprises alike. Now, you can add Nevermined, to the mix, the first data and AI marketplace on Polygon.

The Graph

Our integration with The Graph is a critical component for making data accessible. No matter how fast the above networks are, working with data requires a more lean approach. To avoid running into rate-limiting issues, the Nevermined Marketplace uses the Subgraph technique to get more flexible access to data assets. We see SubGraphs as the legs of our smart contracts, i.e. they’ll do the required running. They identify the important events of a contract and then go out into the on-chain world to index the data related to those events.

4. Assets available in the marketplace NOW

While building, we were able to attract some pioneers and get them very excited about Nevermined and use it to make their assets available in conjunction with its launch.

On the Data side, HairDAO is a Decentralized Science, or DeSci, organization redefining drug development to accelerate new treatments for hair loss. Hair loss has been deemed a cosmetic condition by governments globally, thus gutting the field of traditional scientists who work on hair loss. Instead, most of the industry’s money goes towards shilling ineffective ‘cures’ and snake oil, instead of discovering new treatments. To address this, HairDAO’s community has brought together a trove of research and commentary that can be synthesized and augmented by an LLM powered Chatbot. This trove of research has been published to the Nevermined Marketplace under a Free Subscription for all to use.

Andy Bakst, co-founder of HairDAO says,

“We have a community of the best online and traditional hair loss researchers in the world. One of our imperatives is to continue to grow the field of researchers, such as to get people off Instagram and researching hair loss instead. The Nevermined Marketplace helps us with delivering this curated information, and helps bring us closer to potential AI solutions that can assist us in our goals”.

On the AI side, Algovera is using Nevermined to make their AI assets available. Algovera is a start-up that allows teams to build their own AI assistants and agents, trained on public and private data. They have registered their apps with Nevermined, so developers can subscribe and utilize them without the need to build from scratch.

According to Richard Blythmann, the CEO of Algovera,

“Nevermined helps us to bring our AI datasets, models and apps to market via an additional channel, while freeing us from thinking about payments and royalties. Smart Subscriptions give our AI agents the ability to transact with people and other agents, which is massively powerful. Furthermore, with Nevermined’s hyperfocus on giving ownership, control and rewards to the AI creators, we see that our companies are aligned in values and vision for the future of AI.”

Bridging both data and AI is DeSciWorld, another partner from the Decentralized Science space. DeSciWorld is focused on uniting the DeSci space, in part by addressing the information asymmetry that runs rampant within the community. With so much jargon within both Web3 and Research, it’s hard to get a handle on what’s going on. DeSciWorld is the one-stop shop for users to view, engage with, and understand all that is happening in the World of Decentralised Science.

With this in-mind, DeSciWorld has been curating information from across the space to help develop an AI Chatbot that will be available to all DeSci DAOs. In addition to this, they have also worked with Nevermined and Algovera to develop a Research Publication Summarizer that will take research publications and condense them into short-form abstracts. By doing so, the AI Research Publication Summarizer can provide all the hard-hitting research available from a 10 or 20 page publication in a much shorter, 1 page format.

“When it comes to user adoption, simple is better. But DeSci isn’t simple at the moment. At DeSciWorld, we want to change that. And with the help of the Nevermined team and the Nevermined Marketplace, that’s exactly what we’re doing. On the one hand, we’re creating an AI Chatbot for the entire DeSci community that will leverage the aggregate information we’re collecting on all DeSci DAOs, and make the chatbot available, for free, to any DAO that wants to use it. On the other hand, we see massive commercial potential for a Research Publication Summarizer AI that makes publications easier to consume. And because we’re using decentralized tech, we can reward all contributions to the AI Summarizers output. This is a win-win-win for everyone involved!” – Joshua Bate, Founder of DeSciWorld.
– Joshua Bate, Founder of DeSciWorld.

As of today, these assets are available on the Nevermined marketplace.

We know this was a long read and your mind is probably blown away with the abundance of Data & AI facts & concepts, so #sorrybutnotsorry

Let us not keep you any longer from enjoying the Nevermined marketplace!

If you want to chat, our ears are always open and our Discord is always welcoming