Written by: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
The tumultuous yet magnificent year of 2024 for cryptocurrencies is about to end, and 2025 is already beckoning us. Many crypto institutions, including Coinbase, a16z, VanEck, and Messari, are betting that AI will become one of the 'main themes' of the coming year.
Aside from AI Agents and AI Meme coins that led market trends in the second half of the year, a series of high-quality AI projects have gradually attracted significant market attention. Among them, Sahara AI, which previously raised a total of $43 million and recently launched the first phase of its testnet, has become a market focus. According to the latest official news, the 2024-2025 roadmap was released today, with the mainnet set to launch in Q3 2025.
Odaily Planet Daily will provide a systematic introduction to this project in this article, helping readers understand this star project positioned as a 'decentralized AI blockchain platform' dedicated to building AI Chain.
Introduction to the Sahara Project: $43 Million in Financing, Star Team + Renowned Capital
According to previous introductions, Sahara AI is a decentralized artificial intelligence network that allows everyone to leverage their knowledge capital to uncover monetization and automation opportunities through artificial intelligence. The initially launched core products include Sahara Knowledge Agent (KA) and Sahara Data.
In August this year, Sahara AI announced the completion of a new round of financing led by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital, with participation from Samsung, Matrix Partners, Thailand's Kasikorn Bank, DAO 5, Alumni Ventures, Geekcartel, Nomad Capital, Mirana Ventures, among others. The new funds will be used to further expand the global team, enhance the performance of its AI blockchain, and accelerate the development of its developer ecosystem. This round of financing for Sahara AI raised approximately $43 million. At that time, due to the early stage of the project, we briefly introduced its potential interaction methods in an article about 'Hands-on Interaction with Binance Labs’ five major projects in August.'
The Team Behind Sahara: Top Talent from the Crypto and AI Sectors
According to the official website, the team behind Sahara AI includes Sean Ren (@xiangrenNLP), an AI professor at the University of Southern California and chair of the Viterbi Center (previously worked at AI 2, Snapchat, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Tyler Zhou (@tz_sahara), former investment director of Binance Labs, and several key members with prestigious backgrounds responsible for product, operations, ecosystem construction, and community work.
Sahara AI Team List
After the financing was completed in August, Binance co-founder He Yi directly expressed her expectations and optimism for Sahara's subsequent development, stating: 'Looking forward to Sahara AI as a pioneer in building a decentralized AI blockchain platform, reshaping the future of AI to be more transparent, secure, and accessible to everyone.'
It is worth mentioning that Sahara AI held an AMA with technical personnel from Anthropic, the company behind Claude, on the 20th of this month, discussing some topics related to the outlook for AI development in 2025. The content was more technical discussion + industry research, with relatively less emphasis on crypto, highlighting a marketing approach that is somewhat different from other DeAI projects, giving the impression that 'we are seriously working on AI + Blockchain, not just telling stories.' Previously, the project also announced that it had achieved SOC 2 compliance certification (both SOC 2 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 2), emphasizing the importance of enhancing the security, usability, and confidentiality of AI development.
Sahara AI's Recent AMA
Entering Sahara AI: Building a Human-AI Collaborative Network
Based on the information from the Sahara AI official white paper and documents, the main focus of the project is on the following aspects—
Self-positioning: A decentralized blockchain platform oriented towards an open, fair, and collaborative AI economy;
Core Concept: 'Artificial Intelligence Assets,' referring to ownership and management protocols of private AI resources (such as personal data and proprietary models);
Target Audience: AI developers, data providers, and other stakeholders, including end-users and business users, as well as AI asset traders;
Service Content: From data collection and labeling to model training and services, AI agent creation and deployment, multi-agent communication, AI asset trading, and AI resource crowdsourcing.
Sahara On-chain User Life Journey
At this stage, Sahara AI's main focus is on the 'three elements of AI (computing power, algorithms, data)'—specifically, 'data.' This involves collecting, refining, and labeling datasets to complete the foundational tasks of enhancing AI model performance. Subsequently, through the continuous improvement and development of developer tools and the data service platform, Sahara AI will launch AI assets and an AI market, facilitating a closed-loop AI economy for developers, users, and enterprises.
Project Progress: The first phase of the testnet has been launched, and the mainnet will go live in Q3 2025.
On December 19, Sahara AI officially announced the launch of the first phase of its testnet, selecting 10,000 participants from nearly 800,000 applicants. The primary tasks include participating in the construction of the data service platform through check-ins and data labeling. The official statement indicates that this move aims to encourage user participation in knowledge contribution and early reward acquisition.
This afternoon, Sahara AI officially published the 2024-2025 project roadmap, with key information including:
Q4 2024: The first phase of the testnet has launched through the data service platform and is currently online; the second phase will begin in Q1 2025.
Q1 2025: Launch the AI market, introduce limited access to developer tools, and expand the data service platform.
Q2 2025: Launch Sahara Studio, a comprehensive tool for simplifying AI development, including model training toolkits, model deployment toolkits, and model orchestration toolkits.
Q3 2025: The mainnet of Sahara Chain will go live, providing the on-chain infrastructure needed to support large-scale decentralized AI.
Sahara AI Latest Roadmap
Regarding the specific product roadmap of Sahara AI, the official website also has detailed planning explanations, see the image below:
Sahara Product Planning Diagram
According to its official website, the Sahara AI ecosystem currently includes 200,000 AI trainers, over 35 enterprise clients, and over 3 million data labels.
Current Data on the Official Website
Latest Interactive Tutorial: Testnet Interaction + Application for Testnet Phase Two
Currently, early participants selected for the first phase of the Sahara AI testnet can interact in the following ways to earn corresponding point rewards:
Log in to http://app.saharalabs.ai to create a personal profile;
Log in to https://faucet.saharaa.info to receive SAH test tokens;
Complete various tasks on the data service dashboard to earn corresponding Sahara Points (SP) or experience points (EXP).
For more detailed information, please refer to the task requirements stabilization: https://docs.saharalabs.ai/data-services-page.
It is worth mentioning that due to the quality emphasis on data labeling, if users provide random answers leading to repeated task failures, they may face restrictions on answering or even disqualification from the testnet. Attention is required.
Data Service Page Display
Additionally, here is the application URL for the second phase of the testnet Waitlist: https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started.
Summary: Can Sahara AI build an 'AI Oasis' in the Sahara Desert?
Lastly, Sahara AI has repeatedly mentioned its commitment to building an AI Chain centered around the 'AI economy.' In a time when countless crypto projects view AI as a meme label, this undoubtedly reflects a spirit of courage and exploration. Whether they can create an 'AI Oasis' for AI users and developers on the currently barren crypto soil remains to be seen, perhaps Sahara AI will provide its answer in the future.