Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author: Wenser (@wenser2010)
The AI sector has become an indispensable part of the crypto industry.
As news of OpenAI seeking tens of billions of dollars in financing and OpenAI's former co-founder SSI raising $1 billion came out one after another, NEAR, a blockchain network closely related to the AI sector, also saw the emergence of a star player in the AI track of the NEAR ecosystem - Ringfence and its generative AI creation platform Escher.
As one of the projects that emerged from the NEAR Horizon AI incubation program, Ringfence officially welcomed Near Protocol co-founder Illia as a project consultant after the number of users who applied for free Escher accounts exceeded 60,000.
Backed by the NEAR ecosystem, Escher is expected to occupy its own place in the next "AIxCrypto track". It is worth noting that Ringfence has previously emphasized that "all accounts registered on the Escher platform are eligible for the first airdrop", and the release of Escher may usher in a new round of interactive craze.
Odaily Planet Daily will briefly introduce Ringfence and its generative AI creation platform Escher in this article.
Enter Ringfence: The AI Data Monetization Protocol
Previously, Ringfence officials have made a detailed introduction to the project itself, through which we can get a glimpse of this "AI data monetization protocol."
Ringfence Vision: Building a bridge between "data" and "assets"
Specifically, the Ringfence project believes that in the AI era, data, as one of the most valuable assets in the digital age, will become even more important. Every click, every screen scroll, and every post of a user will generate corresponding data (each person can produce up to 16 TB of data per day); as fuel for training AI models, various types of data power all outputs such as recommendation algorithms and generative AI outputs. In other words, without data, the development of AI models and tools will stagnate.
Ringfence serves to maximize the value of user data.
The project is rooted in the AI-rich NEAR Protocol, which helps users collect, preserve, and unlock the true value of their data - by providing users and projects with the tools to protect and profit from the data generated every day, fairly rewarding data providers, and helping AI models fine-tune and train. As an infrastructure protocol, Ringfence enables users to take back control of their data, gain corresponding management rights, and enter the AI network supported by user data to seek fair returns.
The Ringfence team is committed to building user-owned AI, that is, AI with user sovereignty and privacy at its core, and all of this starts with user-owned data and user-owned assets. What Ringfence wants to do is to build a bridge between "user data" and "user assets."
Subsequently, the project introduction was also forwarded and supported by the official NEAR Protocol, which bluntly stated: "Create value for data, the oil of the digital age. Find out what @RingfenceAI, an artificial intelligence project built on NEAR, is doing." It clearly supports what Ringfence is doing.
NEAR Protocol’s public support: Lianchuang also serves as project consultant
It is worth mentioning that NEAR’s official support is not only reflected in the “waving the flag and shouting” in external publicity and promotion, but also in the “personal involvement” of the co-founders.
As the co-founder of NEAR, Illia Polosukhin has deep expertise in blockchain and artificial intelligence. He has previously co-authored a groundbreaking academic paper in the field of AI, "Attention is All You Need." He also attended the NVIDIA Artificial Intelligence Conference and had in-depth exchanges with NVIDIA founder Huang Renxun at the conference.
NEAR Protocol has also attracted much attention due to its "AI orthodoxy", and NEAR tokens are also regarded as one of the "AI concept coins". The price once skyrocketed due to the high attention of the market. In addition, according to the information mentioned above, Ringfence has reached a cooperation with NEAR.AI in terms of user control of data and AI using user data, and is committed to promoting the further development of AI data monetization.
Ringfence operating model: Let rNFT become the communication medium for creators
When answering the question "How to maximize the value of data for creators and apply it to the field of AI", Ringfence gave the answer: Ringfence NFT (rNFT for short).
As mentioned in the official white paper, "rNFT is the world's first standard for a new type of asset - complex digital assets (CDA). These assets are composed of multiple component NFTs (cNFTs), which together form a complete and licensable physical asset." At the same time, a single rNFT is similar to a folder or collection tag, while cNFT can be sold to individuals, fans, and companies as an asset package. Through the combination of rNFT and cNFT, the traceability, verification, and executable protocol of the creator's intellectual property works can be realized.
On this basis, the Ringfence platform also has a built-in AI model. Creators can train the platform's AI by licensing works in exchange for Ringfence's rewards to creators and ensuring the integrity and transparency of the works and asset metadata.
Escher is the comprehensive platform that hosts the Ringfence creator ecosystem.
Escher: Ringfence's latest "generative AI creation platform"
If Ringfence is an underlying infrastructure protocol, then Escher is Ringfence’s “masterpiece” – a new generative AI creation platform. The problem Escher is trying to solve lies at the intersection of “creator economy” and “artificial intelligence field”.
Escher platform interface
Question 1: Tracing the origin of intellectual property works
In response to the current problems of rampant piracy of original works by creators, the Escher platform can achieve work traceability through "content verification". As a result, any type of content uploaded by users to the platform, whether AI-generated or original, will be screened according to existing copyrights, trademarks and intellectual property rights around the world to verify whether there is infringement, allowing users to view the source, history and metadata details of assets on the platform, thereby achieving the goal of digital traceability.
Question 2: Distribution of intellectual property works
Based on the traceability, all verified digital assets on the Escher platform contain corresponding metadata (digital information about the asset, its origin and creator) and other identifiers, which can be permanently recorded by means of blockchain. The historical records of digital assets are thus highly transparent. At the same time, this also means that the corresponding derivatives of AI-generated works can also be traced back to the original assets, and the distribution path of intellectual property works is further clarified.
It is worth mentioning that the technical settings of rNFT and cNFT on the Escher platform also provide sufficient support for solving this problem.
rNFT Examples
Question 3: Monetization of Intellectual Property Works
For the revenue return issue that many creators are concerned about, the Escher platform also provides different solutions:
First, as a data asset, building an AI neural network with 100% authorized data requires a lot of data, and rNFTs on the Ringfence protocol and data provided by Ringfence partners are the best choice. rNFT enables the platform to track dataset contributions and pay those who provide data and content to train Ringfence AI.
Second, as an intellectual property asset, rNFTs contain all the IP associated with a portfolio and include a contract that facilitates licensing. This means that all cNFTs will have their IP attributed to the rNFT to which they are assigned. When an rNFT is purchased or licensed, all associated IP is granted to the purchaser. Creators can also use rNFTs for branding and other commercial purposes. For example, a food photographer can use an rNFT containing his portfolio and license it to food and beverage companies for commercial use and advertising.
Finally, monetization returns also include subsequent secondary trading of rNFTs on the Ringfence marketplace, which will allow creators to generate monthly recurring revenue that can be transferred when sold.
What is particularly important is that for creators, the scope of intellectual property works is relatively broad. Music, movies, NFT digital art works, social content, media content, etc. can all become components of rNFT.
Adjustable content distribution channels
Technical standards help creators develop their economy: efficient use of ERC 6551 + ERC 721
In terms of specific technical implementation, rNFT adopts ERC 6551. With the help of the concept of token-bound accounts (TBA), NFT is transformed from a static collectible to a dynamic, fully functional smart contract account, thereby meeting the growing market demand for more interactive and functional digital ownership.
cNFT uses ERC 721 to achieve enhanced uniqueness, ownership history and asset integrity, ensure the secure management of digital assets, and thereby enhance the interoperability of this intellectual property collection in the entire Ethereum ecosystem, enabling seamless interaction with markets, wallets and dApps. In addition, cNFT also supports the addition of metadata, providing detailed asset descriptions and maintaining the depth of information for each component - this is essential for tracing the provenance of the work.
Introducing partners to jointly build a digital content monetization ecosystem for creators
In addition, what Escher does is not limited to itself, but also constantly enriches its own cooperation ecology. In August, the highly scalable decentralized AI (deAI) infrastructure stack Autonomys officially announced a partnership with Ringfence and Escher. In the future, it will further explore the integration between Ringfence's data source and content verification solutions and Autonomys' distributed storage network (DSN) and data availability (DA) layers, providing dynamic digital asset management tools for creators using the Autonomys Network, promoting copyright compliance and ownership verification, and realizing content monetization with the help of rNFT. As the underlying infrastructure protocol and digital asset platform, the prospect of subsequent cooperation between Ringfence and Escher is worth looking forward to.
Conclusion: Simplify the circulation process of digital assets and empower AI model training data
In summary, as AI is increasingly penetrating into all aspects of social life, Ringfence and Escher have provided a new answer to AI model training, digital asset circulation, and creator economic development: through the nested combination of rNFT and cNFT, content monetization can be highly developed in content verification, digital asset traceability, executable user agreements, and artificial intelligence and neural network training.
In the future, based on the AI development boom in the NEAR ecosystem, Ringfence and Escher are expected to become leaders in the ecosystem, and promote the diversified application and comprehensive development of AI models and digital assets on the basis of creating greater asset monetization value for creators.
Being able to both protect intellectual property and promote the distribution of intellectual property works, Ringfence and Escher will become "new stars in the generative AI creation track."
Reference articles:
《rNFTs: The Foundation of Complex Digital Assets》
