[Track Scan] As the AI+Crypto craze wanes, who is "swimming naked"?

When Nvidia's market capitalization surpasses the entire crypto market, and the narrative strength of AI is sufficient to independently support a technological revolution, the "AI+Crypto" frenzy that has lasted for half a year in the Web3 world seems to be迎来 a period of calm reflection. The market's pendulum swings from the fervent fear of missing out (FOMO) to the reality of value discovery. As the tide recedes, we can finally clearly distinguish between those who are building solid fortresses and those who are merely "swimming naked" on the beach.

The narrative ignited by AI has caused the prices of countless tokens to soar, but as the dopamine fades, a core question emerges: does the combination of AI and Crypto create a new value paradigm, or is it merely a collusion of capital and attention?

Current Situation Review: A Multidimensional Battlefield of Differentiation Between Value and Speculation

In the first half of 2025, the AI+Crypto track is undoubtedly the brightest star in the crypto market. However, as June arrives, the market performance has shown significant differentiation, presenting a dual-track pattern of "value-driven" and "speculation-driven". Value-driven projects are no longer competing on a single dimension, but have launched deep layouts across multiple levels, including infrastructure, platform ecology, and vertical applications.

1. Infrastructure layer: Decentralized computing power and data arms race

This is the most solid and easily understood value capture layer in the AI+Crypto field.

Decentralized computing network: The explosion of AI has made GPU computing power the "new oil" of the digital world.

Led by Render Network (RNDR), the project coordinates global idle GPU resources through blockchain, providing a cost-effective alternative for AI model training and rendering. The network's data continues to grow, proving the real business demand.

Competitors on the track also include HyperCycle, which is dedicated to building a Layer-0 AI computing network that supports complex AI tasks across nodes, and has launched hardware node devices such as HyperAiBox; as well as NodeGoAI (GO), which also creates a decentralized computing resource market, allowing users to rent out idle CPU/GPU resources for AI and scientific computing purposes. These projects collectively form the core applications of the decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) in the AI era.

Decentralized data and model platform: Data is the fuel for AI.

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) has been deeply involved in this field for many years. It has built a decentralized data market that allows data to be shared, traded, and used for AI training while protecting privacy.

Cortex (CTXC) has taken a more aggressive approach, aiming to allow AI models to run directly on the blockchain, thereby giving smart contracts true "intelligence". Although the widespread adoption of on-chain AI still faces challenges, this exploration provides imaginative space for the future forms of DApps.

2. Platform and Ecological Layer: From Solo Efforts to Alliance Games

As the track matures, projects begin to shift from independent development to ecological integration in order to seek greater network effects.

Artificial Super Intelligence Alliance (ASI Alliance): This is one of the most significant events in the field in 2025. Fetch.ai (FET), SingularityNET (AGIX), and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) announced the merger of their tokens to jointly build a powerful decentralized AI ecosystem.

The goal of this alliance is to integrate the strengths of three parties: Fetch.ai's Autonomous Economic Agents (AEAs) framework for building AI agents that can autonomously execute tasks; SingularityNET's AI service marketplace; and Ocean Protocol's leading data sharing infrastructure. This merger aims to accelerate the research and development of decentralized Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), directly challenging the closed AI ecosystems dominated by tech giants.

Proof of Personality and Identity Networks: As AI becomes increasingly powerful in the future, distinguishing between humans and machines becomes a fundamental issue.

Worldcoin (WLD) enters in a highly controversial yet visionary way, attempting to build a global proof of personhood network through the iris scanning device Orb. Despite ongoing scrutiny over privacy and regulation, its global user base and ecological applications continue to expand, aiming to provide the underlying identity and financial infrastructure for a future world where humans coexist with machines.

3. Application Layer: Seeking the Holy Grail in Vertical Fields

The ultimate value of AI+Crypto needs to be reflected through specific applications.

AI Empowered Finance: The decentralized AI hedge fund Numerai (NMR) is a pioneer in this field. It incentivizes global data scientists to anonymously submit predictive models for the financial markets through encryption economics, integrating them into a "meta-model" for investment. This model explores the innovative combination of AI and collective intelligence in the field of quantitative investing.

AI Empowering Vertical Industries: Innovation is Happening in Every Corner.

Quantum Blockchain (QBT) claims to utilize AI to optimize the algorithms of Bitcoin mining equipment to enhance energy efficiency. The startup Rumi Labs targets the media sector, developing on-chain interactive technology that uses AI to analyze streaming content, attempting to transform users' passive viewing behavior into an interactive and rewarding "Watch-to-Earn" new model.

Issues and Challenges: The Three Unavoidable Mountains

Beneath the splendid narrative of AI+Crypto lie three unavoidable real-world challenges that together constitute the bottleneck for the development of this track.

The dilemma of the "false proposition" of technological integration: Many projects merely perform a forced "stitching" of AI and blockchain. The real technical challenge lies in how to run complex AI models on a decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof blockchain. Currently, both the performance bottlenecks of on-chain computing and the delays and cost issues of oracles transmitting AI results remain far from being effectively resolved.

The "death spiral" of economic models (Tokenomics): The vast majority of AI projects attempt to construct an economic closed loop of "contributing resources - earning tokens - staking dividends." However, the vulnerability of this model lies in the fact that once the token price drops, the returns from contributing resources lose their appeal, leading to a decrease in supply, which further weakens the project's fundamentals and exacerbates selling pressure, forming a "death spiral."

The "Sword of Damocles" of data privacy and ownership: The lifeblood of AI is data, while one of the core spirits of Web3 is user data ownership. How can we protect user privacy and provide fair returns while utilizing user data to train models? The global regulatory scrutiny triggered by Worldcoin's iris data collection serves as the most direct warning.

Looking for the Future: Where Will Capital Turn When AI Narratives Cool Down?

When the market is getting tired of the pure AI + Crypto story, capital and smart developers have begun to set their sights on fields with more practical potential. Among them, DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) and RWA (Real World Asset Tokenization) are becoming the most notable "next value narratives."

DePIN: From the Digital World to the Physical World

The logic of DePIN is in line with projects like Render and HyperCycle, but its vision is broader. It aims to leverage token incentives to enable global users to collaboratively build and maintain an infrastructure network in the physical world, with its value rooted in the real demands of the physical world rather than purely in digital world speculation.

RWA: A bridge connecting traditional finance and the crypto world

If DePIN is the "transformation" of the physical world by Web3, then RWA is the "access" to the traditional financial world. By tokenizing real-world assets such as real estate and bonds, RWA introduces a continuous supply of high-quality assets with stable income support into the crypto market, which could become the core channel for guiding massive traditional funds into Web3.

Written at the end

The story of AI + Crypto is far from over, but it is transitioning from a frenzy stage of "everything can be AI" to a deep water zone of eliminating falsehoods and precipitating value. True innovators are overcoming technical challenges, while speculators are searching for the next opportunity.

This article only represents the author's personal views and does not reflect the position and views of this platform. This article is for information sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice to anyone.

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