Decentralised AI (DeAI) has warmed up and gotten serious about the race. Last year, it started sprinting behind the scenes while the rest of the industry was still arguing about guardrails.
Last year (2024) was action packed for generative AI: centralised corporations came under fire, and the world woke up to the need for safer, more equitable innovation. But it’s still storming ahead, with OpenAI closing a $30 billion funding round in March – the largest private tech deal on record.
However, a growing wave of investors are looking to the decentralised alternative as the next frontier, for their greater assurances for privacy, security and transparency.
With the summer solstice just fêted, this blog is a round-up of DeAI rapid evolution in the first half of 2025 – and what FLock.io is throwing into the hotpot.
AI agents saw a dramatic spike in Web3 ecosystem
AI agents have seen a huge surge in adoption in the Web3 ecosystem, with their on-chain activity seeing a staggering 86% increase.
What are AI agents? They are autonomous software programs that use artificial intelligence to perform tasks and achieve goals, often without direct human intervention. In Web3, they are becoming increasingly specialised.
AI Agents also became a top Web3 investment, raising $1.39B so far this year. That’s a 9.4% increase over total 2024 funding, so that’s a remarkable acceleration. As of mid-January, more than 10,000 AI agents were operating across Web3.
FLock unveiled its Web3 Agent Model in March – a specialised LLM trained on Web3 data and designed to power AI Agent projects. It was immediately snapped up by io.net, OpenGradient and Hashkey Chain, and then replaced the on-chain part of Claude on Base MCP.
Since November 2024, 17,124 agents have launched on Virtuals Protocol, with an average of more than 85 new agents added every day. Virtuals Protocol is a decentralised infrastructure protocol designed to enable AI agents to operate autonomously within blockchain networks.
DeAI has been gaining broad recognition
As AI rapidly advances, blockchains and their distributed networks are emerging in parallel to provide promising avenues to mitigate the risks of centralised AI giants holding all the cards.
With DeAI, the central authority does not control all operations but distributes computing power to many devices across a network.
DeAI could be “bigger than Bitcoin”, according to DNA Fund CEO Chris Miglino. Some of blockchain’s earliest adopters are now deeply “entrenching” themselves in decentralised AI, believing it could be the next major breakthrough.
It’s receiving attention in the mainstream press. In May, a Forbes article about DeAI spotlighted Kava (a leading decentralised blockchain), Akash Network (a decentralised compute marketplace), The Graph, and Dexe.
In February, Binance, the largest crypto exchange, released a 21-page long report on the growing intersection between blockchain and AI.
“Since Bitcoin's launch in 2008, crypto technology has been paving the way for decentralized networks that could help to democratize AI.”
“Even before the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022, various DePIN projects had already been building the necessary infrastructure required to offer these components in a decentralized manner, forming the building blocks of DeAI.”
“As the AI race amongst the global superpowers begins to accelerate beyond individual control, distributed networks may begin to attract attention as a means of consolidating resources and AI-related power in a decentralized manner.”
These reports underscore that DeAI isn’t fringe anymore, but is shaping up as a new foundation for the internet’s Web3 future.
Finally, startups are hitting big with VCs. Crypto VC giant Paradigm invested $50M in DeAI startup Nous Research’s Series A round.
The blockchains leading the way
The top blockchains that support AI dApps have been Matchain, opBNH, Nebula Skale, Internet Computer and Soneium respectively. Matchain dominates with nearly 1.9 million daily active users.
DeAI ecosystem became more connected with major partnerships
A coalition called HumanAIx was formed between OORT, Neo, Storj, Oasis, io.net, XYO, Unyt, Supermoon, and others. The goal is standardised, permissionless protocols across compute, storage, data and validation layers.
Hedera Network joined the Decentralized AI Society (DAIS), alongside NEAR and Secret Network.
DeAgentAI (an AI-agent framework) and Mango Network (a high-throughput Move‑VM L1) also joined forces.
FLock has been making moves this year
Our key milestones January-June 2025:
- Celebrated the success of our launch on Base and looked ahead to future developments.
- Within a week of launching the mainnet, FLock reached 100 Delegation Pools with 2.8 million FLOCK tokens staked. This marked a rapid doubling in delegation pools within days.
- FLock Web3 Foundation Model’s accuracy surpassed industry-leading proprietary LLMs.
- FLock replaced the on-chain part of Claude as the default on-chain model for Base MCP.
- FLock partnered with Qwen (a tier 1 open-source LLM), initiating the first deep fusion of Web2 AI and Web3 DeAI.
- FLock was selected in CB Insights’ “AI 100: 2025” as one of the world’s most promising AI infrastructure projects.
- FLock launched version 2 of AI Arena, introducing delegation pools and the new token gmFLOCK.
Closing thoughts & looking forward to H2
2023 was the explosive year of generative AI. 2024 was the year centralised AI’s flaws rose to the surface, users grew wary of opaque systems, VCs started betting big on the alternative, and DeAI expanded to 40+ projects.
In our round-up blog at the end of 2024, we said: “Now, it’s DeAI’s turn: we’re verging on its breakout year.” DeAI is no longer a sandbox but an arms race. The industry is confident the big break is coming – it’s a matter of when it will fully unlock its potential. It’s a battle plan in motion.
A big hug to the DeAI family from FLock.io!
More about FLock.io
FLock is part of the mission to dismantle the power concentration of AI held by a handful of centralised corporations, promoting more equitable, transparent and composable development.
Find out more about FLock.io by reading our docs. For future updates, follow FLock.io on Twitter.
