Article reprinted from: Biteye
Sahara AI, a highly anticipated star project in the AI track, has officially launched the first phase of the testnet - the data service platform. More than 10,000 early contributors were selected from 780,000 applicants, and the competition for the whitelist was fierce. Why did Sahara AI receive a total of US$43 million in financing led by Polychain, Binance Labs, and Pantera Capital? Today, let's take a look at what makes Sahara AI different.
1. What is Sahara AI’s mission?
Sahara AI is a decentralized AI blockchain platform that aims to transform the development, deployment and monetization of AI assets (including AI models, data sets, intelligent agents, etc.) through the pioneering AI asset concept and proprietary infrastructure. Whether you are a professional developer, entrepreneur, or ordinary AI enthusiast, you can easily build or deploy personalized AI products based on the Sahara AI platform and obtain actual benefits by contributing data, developing models or deploying AI assets.
This unique design not only lowers the entry threshold for AI, but also builds a more democratic and fair AI collaborative ecosystem, allowing every participant to share the benefits of industry growth.
In short, Sahara AI is an AI public chain aimed at "AI development" and "AI data/model assetization". From day one, it allows users to co-create infrastructure and obtain real value through data labeling.
2. Why is Sahara AI important?
Traditionally, opportunities to influence AI development have been limited to developers. But with Sahara AI, anyone can participate and directly influence the AI ecosystem, helping to build a new generation of AI that is more fair and user-centric.
As AI technology advances, so too does the complexity of its data needs. Tasks that once involved labeling objects or simple classifications have evolved into nuanced processes such as sentiment annotation, multimodal data alignment, and curating domain-specific datasets. These tasks require thoughtfulness, expertise, and precision to ensure high-quality results. The Sahara AI Data Services platform aims to address these challenges by leveraging a diverse, decentralized network of labelers around the world. By contributing knowledge, users will help lay the foundation for a fairer, user-centric AI ecosystem while also being rewarded.
Developers can access trusted models and datasets through Sahara AI, annotate and optimize datasets to speed up development and ensure high-quality data input.
3. Team members
Sahara AI's core team is composed of senior experts from the AI and Web3 industries, with past experience including Stanford University, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, AI2, Microsoft, Binance, Stability AI, Google, Protocol Labs, and Avalanche. Team members have incorporated these rich cross-field experiences into the design and development of Sahara AI, laying a solid technical and strategic foundation for the platform.
The founding team includes:
Sean Ren (@xiangrenNLP): Professor of AI at the University of Southern California and Chairman of the Viterbi Center, with a strong academic background and experience in AI technology research.
Tyler Zhou (@tz_sahara): Former investment director of Binance Labs, with a deep understanding and insight into blockchain ecology and Web3 investment.
4. Partners
Sahara AI has received support and guidance from not only institutional investors, but also leading figures in the AI industry and academia, including Motherson Group Vice Chairman Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, Anthropic scientist Rohan Taori, the developer of the Claude large language model, Teknium, co-founder of Nous Research, and Vipul Prakash, CEO of Together AI.
Elvis Zhang, founding member of Midjourney.
5. Financing
This year, it received US$43 million in financing led by Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, and Polychain Capital, including corporate strategic investments from Samsung and Siam Commercial Bank of Thailand.
6. How to participate
Sahara currently rewards users with Sahara Points (SP) for testnet tasks. The mainnet is expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2025, so there is enough time to accumulate points.
Step 1: Join the waitlist
Season 1 is now live, and users who have been whitelisted can start the mission. Friends who are not whitelisted can register to apply for whitelist immediately.
https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started
Step 2: Select a task
After obtaining the whitelist, enter the platform https://app.saharalabs.ai
Choose tasks that match your interests and expertise, and explore a variety of data tasks across industries such as the Creator Economy, Gaming, Science, Trade, and more.
Step 3: Apply for a task
Each task listing provides a comprehensive overview, including a clear description of the work involved, the rewards offered, and the estimated difficulty level. Some tasks require a short qualification exam based on the specific task to confirm that the data provider has the corresponding expertise, thereby ensuring that all platform contributors deliver work that meets the highest standards. There is only one exam qualification for each task, and once failed, there is no retake. This reflects the platform's high standards for data quality. It can be seen that the Sahara team is actually controlling the quality of the data, rather than chasing trends and filling in invalid data. Currently, 35+ technology innovation companies and research institutions are using Sahara AI, including Microsoft, Amazon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Motherson Group and Snapchat.
Step 4: Contribute knowledge
Label, annotate or review the data. User contributions will directly improve the quality and reliability of the dataset and help build smarter AI systems. For example, when I was doing this task about Defi Influencers, I filled in the Twitter of the influencers I thought were excellent, the reasons for the recommendation, and representative tweets. If the influencers I recommended are the same as others, then I will share the reward with others. In this way, the platform incentivizes users to provide unique data.
Step 5: Earn Sahara Points and Achievements
Sahara points are awarded for each completed task, with additional rewards for high-quality contributions. Points and achievements are automatically calculated using the platform’s advanced quality assurance mechanisms.
Strategy:
Provide accurate, high-quality answers to tasks to earn Basic + Rewards points. Aim for the top 1,000 of the leaderboard by earning as much XP as possible, as these users will receive special benefits. Repeated low-quality participants will be gradually banned from participating to prevent them from affecting the contributions of other high-quality users. The minimum accuracy threshold for submitting tasks is 15%. If 4 of the last 10 tasks are banned, there will be a 7-day suspension. If there are 3 suspensions within 3 months, the system will permanently ban the user from submitting tasks.
Sign in for 31 consecutive days and you will get an NFT to record your contribution after the first season ends.
6. Summary
The value of AI data annotation lies in providing accurate training data, which is the key to improving the accuracy and performance of artificial intelligence models. Accurate annotation helps models better understand and process information, thereby performing better in practical applications. This is the core of Sahara AI. The project owner said that as Sahara AI continues to optimize, more products for public participation will be launched in the future.
As can be seen from the above, this is an AI project with practical value and community-friendly, worthy of attention.
