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Akashathon: Open Source AI with Akash Network
Recorded: Oct. 29, 2024 Duration: 0:44:39Space Recording
Full Transcription
Yes, I can, GM.
All right. Awesome.
We'll get things started.
I know not too many people are fond of Twitter's default holding music.
So I'll spare everyone the pain, but what's up, everyone?
I'm actually a big fan of the holding music.
It really puts me in a very calm state.
I know on an endless loop sometimes I can, it'll drive me wild, but it's a, it works.
Yep.
All right, cool.
All right, cool.
So welcome everyone.
My name is Annalisa.
I am with Biddlebox and I will dish it off to Jonas for his intro and then we'll dish it off to Adam next.
Yes.
Yes.
Hi, everyone.
Nice to see you all here.
I'm Jonas.
I'm part of the Biddlebox growth team and I'm here to hopefully make sure that the event is as successful as possible.
Awesome.
Hey, everybody.
My name is Adam Wozni.
I head up community for the Akash Network and yeah, I'm excited about this hackathon.
This is the third one we're doing and I'm really excited to see what folks contribute.
Absolutely.
So for those of you that are tuning in right now and also listeners of the future being that this is recorded,
we are kicking off Akashathon 3, which is starting on Monday, November the 4th.
Signups are open now.
I will get that up on the Jumbotron ASAP as a matter of fact, but signups are open right now.
There are $45,000 in AKT in the prize pool, but that's $45,000 USD worth of AKT and submissions
will be open, like I said, November the 4th, running through December the 1st.
But we've got quite a few questions lined up and for those of you listening, if you do have
questions about the hackathon as we go along, feel free to drop them in the chat and then
there will be a time for us to address those.
But we'd love to hear from you, Adam.
Tell us a little bit more about this hackathon and why open source AI for this round?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to be working with Biddlebox folks, been chatting with you guys for a while.
And yeah, this is the third Akashathon that we've done.
I think we've done, we did one last year and this is the second one this year.
So we're hoping to do a few more going into 2025 as well.
But end of the year, wanted to get one more out the door.
I'm really excited about this one.
But for folks that aren't familiar with the Akash network, Akash is a permissionless,
open source, decentralized cloud computing platform.
Kind of at a high level, it's really a marketplace for cloud computing power.
So, you know, rather than relying on a few big cloud providers, Akash can really let anyone
with spare computing resources rent out that spare capacity to users who need to compute.
You know, as to, you know, why that or why this approach is kind of important.
Well, you know, traditional cloud providers can be, you know, limiting.
Your data might be locked in.
The cost can be high.
And if there's an outage, it can disrupt your, you know, your whole AI system.
But with Akash, you know, it's open marketplace, it really gives, you know, folks flexibility,
lower costs, and resilience.
You can choose the right hardware and infrastructure for your specific needs and your AI needs,
which is kind of what we're talking about here with the hackathon.
But really, ultimately, Akash is helping make, you know, advanced AI more accessible by providing,
you know, more flexible or cost-effective kind of resilient cloud infrastructure.
So I'm really excited for folks that are part of the Biddlebox community to get involved
in AI with this hackathon.
Yeah, absolutely.
And thank you.
Thank you for covering that, too.
And so I have a couple questions there.
I know you did mention that you guys had a couple hackathons.
Well, this is now Akashathon 3.
Could you tell me a little bit more about, like, the last hackathon and what types of, like,
projects or use cases you saw based off the tracks there?
And then we can get into how that's going to be different for this go-around.
Yeah, for sure.
So, yeah, the first couple of hackathons that we did, we really, the very first one we did
was, I would say, fairly experimental.
We weren't really sure, you know, what folks would be interested in building.
This was before GPUs were even readily available on the network for running kind of AI-related
projects.
So we really didn't know what people would be interested in building.
So we kind of just made it broad.
It was like, hey, build something cool in AI or build something cool in the Akash network.
And that was pretty good.
But there's definitely things that could have been improved upon.
So we took a lot of those key learnings from that first Akashathon and put it into the next
Akashathon, which was focused on AI.
It was basically, we kept it actually pretty simple.
There was really three tracks.
One was build something cool using GPUs on the Akash network.
Could be anything.
The second part was create like a fiat on-rep.
A lot of people that are part of the Akash network give us feedback.
Hey, we would love to, you know, run, you know, workloads on Akash, but we aren't familiar
with crypto.
So, you know, reaching kind of Web2 folks.
So people built some kind of open source AI or not AI, open source fiat on-reps onto
Akash.
And I think that was really useful because now we're to the point where credit card payments
are going to be available on Akash.
There's some really cool things that are going to really open up the floodgates for people
outside of just Web3 to get involved in crypto without even knowing it, which is pretty
cool.
And I forget what the third or fourth track was for that second hackathon.
I think it was really just kind of like documentation or kind of like educational resources for
folks that want to like get involved in the network.
But for this one, it's very, you know, specific and I won't get into the exactly what the tracks
are.
We'll save that for the end.
We want to keep people around.
But yeah, this one's very much focused on AI and specifically open source AI, which we'll
cover here probably in a little bit.
Yeah, that is amazing.
I know I'm trying to save some ammo for us to do our challenge sneak peek.
But then maybe I'm going to skip to this.
Like for right now, for those who are completely new to Akash, are there any like specific like
resources or documentation that they can check out now?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Honestly, the best place to start off your Akash journey is just head over to the website.
I mean, that's kind of your kickoff to everything Akash related.
You know, it's got links to our docs page.
It's got links to our community activities, links to our blogs, links to upcoming events.
We've been a lot of events around the world over the past few months.
It's links to, you know, what Akash is, gives you links to understand what's going on with
the token and what the purpose of the AKT token is, shows a lot of different projects
that are built on top of Akash or using Akash technology, like an ecosystems page.
There's a lot of different, that's your best place to start is head there.
It'll give you a bunch of information from there.
I think your journey would probably lead you to either, you know, maybe attending an event
in person or heading online to like our Discord, Telegram, or even just following us on Twitter.
Twitter's a great place.
Zach, who heads up marketing at Akash, he does a great job in kind of updating the community
on like, here's some cool things that are coming down the pike.
Here's some things you can get involved in.
Just giving you kind of like high level updates on what's going on within the network.
But then once you really want to start getting a little more granular, I would say, you know,
heading over, at least if you're technical, because I think most people on Akash are technical.
There are non-technical folks, but generally speaking, the technical developers probably want
to like dive in, heading over to our Discord.
That's where a lot of the technical kind of conversations are taking place from what people
are building to just getting general support.
So those are kind of the places at a high level I would suggest going to kind of like digging in a
little bit deeper into the network.
Yeah, I know.
I put it up on the Jumbotron here, and I'm checking out the website.
And I did see, yeah, there are quite a few projects that are deployed on the Akash ecosystem.
And I just wanted to know, just like from your personal opinion, are there any really like
super dope projects that you want to highlight or like some very interesting use cases for Akash
that you've seen lately?
Um, I, so being that I'm the head of community, um, I'm sure you get different answers from folks
at Akash, uh, on what those cool projects are.
Um, like I'm sure, uh, our CEO, Greg would say like Venice AI, um, Brev, which was a card by NVIDIA,
Prime Intellect.
Those are some big, big names that are kind of built in using Akash technology.
But for me as a community guy, I'm pretty stoked on Akash chat, the Akash chat API.
Those were developed entirely by community members.
Um, and being that Akash is, you know, open source, it's nice to have those kind of, um,
options where anyone can kind of contribute to the network.
Um, so those are the ones I'm just going to call out because, you know, anything community
driven, community built, I'm, I'm very bullish on.
Yeah, right, right on and agreed.
Uh, so I know like, like speaking of community driven, I mean, I, I would love that, uh, y'all
are doing this hackathon for a, for a third go around and, um, you know, and also broadening
it out to, uh, the middle box community.
Uh, cause I do see some of our builders in the audience, super talented folks, so excited
to see what, what you guys build.
Um, but in terms of like, you know, outside of hackathons, uh, does Akash do any like grant
programs or, or how do you guys support builders like after the hackathon is, is over?
Yeah, for sure.
Um, so right now there are no like grant programs.
We've done those things in the past and I know it's something that we've always talked
about internally, but running a grant program, it's time intensive.
Um, and sometimes it's hard to kind of track and support individuals, but I would say at
this stage, I think the community is at a really good point to maybe relaunch a grants
program.
Um, nothing in the, on the timeline for that, but, um, that's something that's not really
happening right now.
However, in terms of kind of ongoing support, we do have a number of things.
And again, I'll put on my community hat because that's what I think about nine times out
of 10 with Akash.
Period.
Um, we have, uh, we have a, a few community programs that I think could be really helpful
for folks.
Um, so one is, uh, once you, you know, you're a part of the community, you discord, I mentioned
is kind of our hub of community activity, support engagement.
Um, we have a team of community members that actually are available, you know, 24 seven, um,
cause they're in different parts of the world responding to kind of technical questions.
So, you know, before we launched this kind of community program, it would take, um,
sometimes, you know, 24 hours or so to get kind of technical questions responded to.
And that's, you know, if you're a developer, you're like, well, what's the point of even
being here if I can't get my questions answered.
And now we're to the point where, you know, within a matter of, you know, minutes or hours
at max, you'll get a technical question responded to by, uh, a developer who's actually done
these things before on our discord.
Um, in addition to that, we have launched a new program that's helping projects, um,
onboard onto Akash.
Uh, so a lot of times, uh, people will come up to us in events and say, Hey, you know,
we really like what Akash is doing.
We want to get involved.
We just don't know where to start.
And traditionally we'd say, okay, go head over to our discord.
There'll be somebody there to answer your questions, but some, some projects need a
little more handholding.
So we do have kind of a newer kind of team that's helping people onboard onto the, uh,
Akash network.
Um, not just like one question, one answer, and then you're kind of gone, but actually
working with them, helping them get onboarded onto Akash, which I think is pretty useful.
Um, and then, yeah, beyond that, uh, if people want to get more involved in Akash, whether
you're building a project or you're just kind of like really eager to help grow the network
because it is open source, anyone can contribute.
You can go into what we have, uh, what's called special interest groups or working groups.
These are monthly calls on all aspects of the network.
They're open to the community.
Anyone can join.
And it's an opportunity for anyone that's involved in Akash to share things they're working
on, ask for support, get feedback on projects, um, and even potentially get, um, resources
from the network, um, from our community pool, which is, that's a whole other subject that
we can talk about another time, but that's basically where you can get, can, you can get
support for projects that you're building on top of Akash that are beneficial to the ecosystem
through like governance proposals.
Um, so yeah, there's a lot of different ways that, that people can kind of get support or
get involved in the network.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
And, um, also that's, I will take a side while, uh, y'all might not have a grant program set
There is, uh, currently, let me just shamelessly show that, uh, get coin grants is running a
hackathon alumni round.
And, um, I believe they will continue to run that round.
So, uh, look out for that.
There's one running right now, so you can submit your hackathon project to continue to receive
funding.
And, um, and I believe they will be running that back also.
So there's opportunity there, but I do absolutely love, like, uh, just from my conversations with
you that, uh, Akash seems to be extremely like community focused and like a lot of your
contributors, uh, you know, are community members or, or I guess like, yeah, it sounds
like your support team and, and, uh, everyone else.
Those are members of the community.
Uh, I mean, uh, this, let me try and frame this question, uh, properly, but, uh, where
like, how did, how did you like, uh, build this like very active community of contributors?
Like did, were these folks, um, did they work on projects with Akash?
Were they, uh, did they, did they come from hackathons?
Um, yeah, I mean, it's really, um, I'm sure it's like a lot of different organizations that
have like similar kind of community programs.
Um, it comes from all over.
It comes from people that we meet at in-person events.
It comes from people who attend, you know, Twitter spaces like this.
It comes from people who, you know, sign up to our newsletter or just randomly find us
on like telegram or on discord or, you know, word of mouth.
So a lot of different kinds of ways people find us.
Um, when I joined, you know, Akash, uh, well, yeah, I'd say when I joined kind of Akash about
almost four years ago, which is kind of wild now, especially in crypto time.
Right.
Um, there was a lot of, it's like a million dog years.
Um, but, uh, but there was, there, there were a lot of different folks that were contributing
and, you know, useful and interesting ways to the network from, you know, maybe hosting
events in their local region to contributing code to, um, writing technical content, or just
even responding to community questions on telegram or on discord.
But there wasn't really a kind of a framework for supporting those efforts.
Um, and there wasn't a way for those individuals with like, like-minded interests to connect
with one another.
So we launched this program, um, about three years ago now called the Akash Insiders.
And basically it's kind of a central, I know I always want to say this, it's a central location
and working in crypto, we're like central, this doesn't sound good, but it's harmless,
but it's really a place where, you know, individuals that have similar interests and are wanting
to kind of grow both personally or professionally within kind of what Akash is building to connect
with one another.
Um, and we launched it about, you know, three years ago.
Um, right now we have around 50 different kind of ambassadors.
We call them Akash Insiders as a part of this program.
Um, there's no requirements.
They're all volunteers.
So a lot of the things that they're contributing to, um, this is unpaid, you know, they get
rewarded from just like being a part of the community and connecting with other folks and
kind of like growing personally and professionally, but it's all volunteered, no requirements.
Um, everything is optional for them to participate in.
Um, we do have, uh, kind of subgroups, some that have been around for a while, some that
we're kind of launching that there are requirements, um, and there are kind of reward structures
for those engagements, but those are, you know, invite only, and those are optional for
people to participate in a well.
So, you know, I would say well over 50% of the insiders are all in it just because they
like to kind of connect with other individuals and kind of grow, um, inside of, you know,
what we're, we're doing at Akash.
Um, and it's taken a while to get to this point, you know, launching the program, it was kind
of trial and error, but now we're at a point where we have like a really solid foundation.
A lot of people are contributing in useful ways.
Um, and I would, I would argue we have maybe the coolest, uh, community in crypto.
Sorry, Bitabox.
No, I'm just kidding.
I will, we'll be making your community even cooler.
Yes, exactly.
But, um, that's amazing.
So I know that I do see that there's been some more folks that, uh, tuned in and we are going
to move on to, uh, talking more about the hackathon itself.
But, uh, for those of you who are listening and haven't been seeing all over Twitter, uh,
or should I say X, I, um, I'm going to call it Twitter for anyways, but, um, it's Twitter.
It's always going to be Twitter.
I don't care what anybody says.
Yes.
Uh, but Akashathon 3 is kicking off, uh, with submissions opening on November the 4th.
Uh, and that's going to consist of, um, a couple of workshops, office hours, uh, $45,000, um, in
AKT and prizes and, um, submissions close.
I believe December the 1st, I'm saying it's all jumbled, but I did want to, uh, move on
to talking about the challenges.
Um, so, uh, yeah, Adam, if you could give like, just like an overview of the different
tracks and then, uh, we can, uh, dig into each one.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so I'll kind of, I'll try to run through these pretty quick.
Um, but the four tracks are really focused on, um, adding open source, uh, like AI models
onto the network, um, and making it easy for anyone that, you know, wants to get involved
in AI to do so using Akash and using open source models that are already existing.
Um, for anyone that follows the AI industry, it's changing rapidly, um, probably from when
the tracks go live to what I'm talking about right now, there'll be new models that are
open source you can use.
So it's, it's hard to really like pin down, but there are some like popular ones that
I'll kind of, I'll mention.
Um, but the four tracks are pretty straightforward.
Um, one of the tracks is image processing and model deployment.
So this track is kind of focused on deploying existing open source AI models related to
image processing onto the Akash network.
Um, some examples of that are, you know, flux one, stable diffusion three, uh, SDXL lightning
playground 2.5.
There's a million other ones that probably I'm not aware of that you guys can probably
think about adding to the network, but really finding these open source models, putting them
on the network, um, creating a demo video, um, and, uh, making sure there's documentation
that coincide with kind of how you did this.
So that's one track.
Um, the next one is LLM.
Um, everyone knows that through, you know, uh, open AI, but, um, some examples for that
would be bloom, bird, Falcon, 180 B, um, OPT, one seven, five B.
Wow.
They sound like satellite names, but there's a lot of, uh, open source LLM models that are
currently available.
Um, so it's very, very similar to the, uh, the image processing, anything that you can
do to showcase how you did it, um, make sure there's documentation behind it, doing a demo
video, um, and, and sharing that with the community.
So it makes it easier for, you know, novices, um, to kind of get involved in AI and build
on, on Akash, um, and, and showcasing the ease of, of, of use for teams that already
exist and are a little bit more technical.
Um, the next track, second to last is audio processing and speech, speech recognition model
deployment.
Um, a couple model examples are whisper ASR, um, wave to VEC, call the, um, Mozilla deep
speech.
That's kind of a well-known one, but there's a lot more that you're, you're free to kind
of build and, and kind of deploy onto the network.
Um, and it's very similar to the other ones, you know, documenting it, creating a demo video,
um, and making sure that anyone that wants to deploy these models for projects they're
building out, um, has an easy way to kind of do so through your kind of documentation
and demos.
And then the final one is just kind of a general AI model deployment.
Um, this really just encourages folks to, you know, deploy, you know, a variety of existing
open source, you know, AI models that don't, you know, neatly fit into, you know, the previous
categories, the well-known ones, you know, LLMs, um, image generation, um, things like that.
Um, examples could be, uh, PyTorch models, TensorFlow models, Kira's, and I'm, I'm sure there's
a lot more that, again, are, are launching all the time, um, depending on you guys, people
participating to find those, those cool ones, the trendy ones, and, uh, deploy them onto
Akash and, you know, document your efforts.
Um, in terms of requirements, I don't know if I can cover that really quickly, very high
level, but it's kind of things I mentioned, um, have to be open source because Akash is open
source, there has to be documentation.
Um, there's definitely needs to be a short demo video, you know, three to five minutes.
And of course these all have to utilize the Akash network.
Um, and that's kind of, uh, that's kind of it.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So cool to set that up.
There's four tracks, uh, with a total price full of 45,000, um, in AKT.
Um, but, um, and I think, I think you covered, you covered those all perfectly.
And we are going to be posting the full challenge details, uh, when the hackathon, um, or just
right before the, uh, submissions open.
So, um, you'll be able to go ahead and, uh, create your project.
Uh, in terms of like, uh, where, I know you mentioned the Akash discord, uh, earlier.
Um, so in terms of like where builders can find like team members, uh, would that be
also taking place in discord too?
Yes, correct.
So, um, we just, and I was trying to pull up my discord, but I don't have it open, but
I'll see if I can remember off the top of my head.
We have a, a new category that we launched a couple of days ago on discord.
It's just called the Akash on three.
Um, this is what we've done for our previous hackathons, but there's kind of a, a welcome
section, which kind of talks about the hackathon.
There's a technical support, uh, channel, um, and we have some folks monitoring that.
So if you have technical questions or you just want to like pitch your ideas, that's
a great spot to go and kind of throw out your ideas.
We do have a find a team channel.
Um, a lot of people are going on there for anyone that's familiar with discord or going
on there and they're looking for jobs.
And I'm like, no, this is for the hackathon.
Don't post your resume.
Um, but that's where you can go and say, Hey, I'm looking to join a team or, Hey, I have
an idea and I'm looking for a developer or maybe, you know, someone that want to
works with, wants to work with me.
Um, and then we have like an announcements page where it's like, Hey, you know, in a
day, the hackathon wraps up or Hey, in an hour, we have some workshops going on.
So all of those channels and that category is in the Akash discord.
And you can just go to the Akash, uh, go to Akash.network and you'll be able to find
our discord channel that way and jump in.
Oh, yep.
I just joined.
Perfect.
I'm locked in.
Cool.
Uh, that is amazing.
And, uh, I know that, um, after the hackathon kicks off, there is going to be some opportunity
for, uh, some like learning and, uh, or just like a couple of workshops and, uh, also for,
um, just, I believe I saw that there's going to be weekly office hours.
Uh, can you tell us like a little bit more about, um, like what the workshop lineup is
looking like?
Yeah, sure.
So right now the plan is, and this can add me flow.
We'll see what it looks like, but right now the plan is next week, we're going to try
to do two workshops.
Um, the first workshop will be just kind of high level, um, end to end AI model deployment
from training to production.
Uh, and that will give folks kind of a high level understanding of kind of AI on Akash.
And then the second workshop, which is, um, I'm still working on these.
I have a couple of people lined up, but we're going to lock them in.
The second workshop is going to be kind of like specialized AI kind of model deployment,
you know, tailoring solutions for LLMs, vision, or speech applications, um, on Akash network.
So this is very relevant to, you know, open source model deployment on Akash.
It'll give you kind of an understanding of once these models are deployed, you know, what you
can end up doing with them.
So, um, those are the two workshops we have scheduled right now, trying to schedule a couple
more, but that's kind of the ones that I think we're going to have locked in soon.
And then we're planning on doing a minimum right now of two office hours throughout the
duration of the hackathon.
And those will be 30 minute calls, um, with a technical expert to kind of answer any and
all questions in a kind of a live stream format, um, or regarding your projects that you're,
you're working on or the models you're looking to deploy.
Um, so if you have technical questions about how to access certain things or where to go
for information, um, the folks on that call will be able to kind of help support you and
answer any questions that you might have about your projects that you're building.
Yeah, right on.
And, uh, I know that you mentioned, um, I'm going to switch gears here, but, uh, outside
of the hackathon, like another way for folks to get involved with, uh, like the Akash community
or that this is like, has also been a great funnel is, uh, in-person events.
Um, do you guys have any like in-person meetups or anything going on?
I know we've got DevCon coming up.
Yes.
Um, so we're going to have a very tiny presence at DevCon this year.
Um, I don't know if for anyone that's been following Akash, Akash has been attending just
almost every single event this entire year, especially over the past few months.
So we're kind of slowing down a bit on events.
So we're going to have a very tiny presence at DevCon, but for anyone that is going to
DevCon, we do have a channel, um, inside of the discord where you can see, uh, anyone
that's going to these events, you can kind of say, Hey, I'm going to be here.
Anybody want to meet up just kind of a place for folks that are part of the community to
kind of maybe connect in person, um, at DevCon.
But then we're also going to be at a very well-established, um, event called NeurIPS.
It's kind of an interesting name, but it's, uh, NeurIPS is like a, uh, neural information
processing kind of, uh, conference, very focused on AI this year.
It's been around forever, but, um, we're going to have a very large presence at this
event.
Um, there's a lot of big names that'll be there.
So that we do have a channel, um, inside of our discord for anyone that is going to be
thinking about attending NeurIPS, um, we're going to have a hacker house.
There's a bunch of stuff that we're doing for NeurIPS.
So much bigger presence than we have at DevCon.
But, um, if you're attending either of those events, you can head over to the discord and
kind of share that you'll be there and we'll try to maybe meet up with you and give you
updates on where the team will be throughout both of those events.
Um, and I think those are the last two events of this year and then it's just kind of
planning for next year.
Okay, cool.
So definitely that what I gather from that is like absolutely join.
the discord I'm in here.
It looks popping and, uh, that's like the best way to, oh, I've, I've actually never
heard of NeurIPS.
Yeah.
It's, it's very much focused on like cryptography, AI, neural processing systems, which is like,
like galaxy brain stuff.
Um, but it looks like I've never attended, but, uh, I've, I've, I've first I heard about
it was when I don't remember it popped up a few months ago on my radar.
I was like, wow, this looks pretty cool.
But yeah, check out the, uh, you can check out the website.
It's just NeurIPS, N-E-U-R-I-P-S dot CC.
And you can kind of get more information on that conference, but, um, yeah, should be a
really cool one.
I'm excited to hear how that one goes.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Okay, great.
So, um, let me go back to my questions, make sure I covered everything, but, um, for those
who might've just tuned in, uh, four tracks, uh, I've just broke these down, but, uh, it
will be image processing, LLM, audio, and general AI.
Uh, I know you gave like other examples, like that are currently existing, but, uh, is there
anything that you personally, uh, like would like to see built or, or think would be cool
to see coming out of this hackathon?
Um, honestly, at the end of the day, for me, I think the Akash network is, is because
it's open source.
It's really built in a way that we want to make it easier for people that want to contribute
to the network to make it easier for other people to build on the network.
That's what makes open source so powerful.
It's, you know, the ability of anyone for anyone to contribute.
Um, so for me, it's, you know, I would like to see a lot of these models deployed onto
Akash that we can showcase.
And then once these models deployed, see what applications are built out of that.
Um, and being that it's all built in like a decentralized manner, I think is important,
especially, you know, I don't know if anybody watched Eric Voorhees'
talk at EC or ETH Denver this year, where he was like, let me paint a dystopian picture
for you.
And he was talking about like how a small group of, uh, elite, you know, aristocrats
at like, uh, a large tech company are the only ones that have rights over like all of this
AI data that's kind of coming and going.
And, you know, that's in a closed source model.
So like having, um, the ability to kind of build these things in an open source fashion.
Um, I think the more types of models, the more AI built in a decentralized fashion, the
more built on open source is just going to make, um, make it more, uh, interesting for
people that want to deploy and build AI related projects, um, into those systems.
So like the, the goal for this is to make, you know, AI more, um, uh, I guess the, the
only word I can think of is built accessible.
That's the word I was going to say, buildable accessible is a much better word.
Um, much more buildable, uh, no, no, much more accessible for folks.
So this is really, uh, another way to call this hackathon is that Kashi-thon three accessibility
hackathon.
Yeah.
AI accessibility.
Exactly.
I know it needs to be.
And, um, that actually kind of, well, what you mentioned, uh, you said it was a East Denver
ECC talk.
I want to kind of, uh, I, I did not get to see that talk, but I'd like to dig more into
that and, and, uh, just get your opinion on, um, or if we could talk a little bit more about
that, like why it's like super crucial and very, very important to, um, decentralized like
AI development.
And, and yeah, what the, like, I guess what your feelings are with, um, towards the way
things are right now with, um, AI being, you're putting, you're putting, you're putting, you're
putting me on the spot here, man.
I, I, for folks.
As a personal individual, um, your thoughts do, are, are your own or whatever that, uh,
disclaimer is.
Yeah, no, I, I'll say like at a very high level, um, I'm sure other folks at Akash could
give you a much more eloquent demure response.
Um, but, but for me, I think it's, I keep it pretty simple.
Um, I think it's like what I said earlier, you know, traditional cloud providers can be
a bit limiting.
Um, you know, you sign up to these locked in plans where your data is locked into their
systems and it's hard to kind of pull out, um, costs can be really high because, you
know, if there's only a few players, they can charge you whatever they want to charge
you.
Um, and for smaller teams, uh, that can be, you know, detrimental to building out your
projects.
Um, on top of that, you know, if there's an outage, it's a centralized kind of authority
and you're the, it can disrupt your whole system.
So like giving folks like an open, you know, marketplace, um, will give individuals, you
know, flexibility to move their data around and, and change providers, uh, it lowers costs
because it produces competition, um, to kind of draw people into your provider rather than
the other provider.
Um, and it's resilient because you can quickly move your workloads across providers all within
the same system.
Um, it's something I don't think we talk about a lot of, but like, uh, for me, I feel like
this was a hot topic wallow is called edge compute.
And it's actually something I hope we talk about a little bit more, but, um, I just don't
think we're there quite yet, but ultimately if you're next door neighbor is where you're
getting your, um, access to, you know, chips, like specifically like AI GPU chips, um, whether
it's H100s, whatever it is, um, the, the latency between running your workloads goes down
to like next to zero because you're not traveling across wires, across vast distances.
Um, and that's something that, you know, doesn't exist outside of like the open marketplace,
like Akash, like it gives providers that have spare capacity and the opportunity to kind
of share that capacity with anyone.
So for me, it's, it's kind of those things.
Um, I think it just gives, it gives people access and, and options, um, and, you know,
generally a lower cost.
So that's kind of what, why I'm, why I joined Akash ultimately.
Um, cause you know, keeping with the crypto example, keeping on crypto, um, if it's not
built in a decentralized manner, like is what we're doing even decentralized, you know?
Right.
Um, so yeah, I think that's what makes Akash like so cool.
And that's why, you know, I jumped into the space.
Yeah.
Oh, thank you.
That, that sounds like, I feel like this, this hackathon is just like the perfect, uh,
or it's what the world needs right now, because yeah, like, like you said, AI is, is changing,
uh, rapidly.
And, um, especially with like, you know, as folks in like crypto or, or, uh, building
like, yeah, building in web three, uh, things are advancing fast in this space too.
So I'd love to see like the two like fusing together.
Um, and yeah, I think we, we do need to stick to the truth that a decentralization is, is super
important, um, in both spaces.
So yeah, no, thank you for that.
Um, awesome.
So, uh, I know more tuned in, uh, and you'll be able to, or this session is being recorded.
So you'll be able to, um, backtrack and, and check out the challenges, but, uh, just as
like, uh, another reminder, uh, again, Akashathon three, uh, theme is open source AI that is,
uh, taking place with submissions starting on November the 4th, running through December
the first, um, as Adam mentioned, um, we're working on, uh, getting some workshops to help
you get educated, uh, for the first week.
And then there will be a couple office hour sessions, um, along with ongoing support,
uh, in the Akash Discord.
I've got that up on the Jumbotron.
So make sure you're joining the Discord because that is where you are going to, um, be able
to, uh, receive support and also, um, stay up to date on all the announcements.
But, uh, signups are open right now.
Uh, if you head over to, um, app.biddlebox.io, you'll be able to sign up for the hackathon,
uh, and you could create your project.
Again, you won't be able to select the challenges until, um, until they go live a little bit
before the hackathon begins.
But, uh, there are $45,000, uh, in AKT, uh, of prizes for this hackathon and for challenge
track.
So very, very excited to see what y'all build.
Uh, then, um, Adam, is there anything else that, uh, I didn't cover that you'd like to
mention about this hackathon or, um, um, um, no, maybe the only, only other quick thing
for anyone listening in, I mentioned kind of our community, uh, efforts for anyone interested
in kind of getting more involved in Akash, and this would be great for even leading up
to the hackathon.
We do have that community I mentioned called the Akash Insiders.
It's people from around the world that are like interested in what Akash is doing and
looking for ways to contribute through, you know, hosting events, providing online support
to individuals, building educational resources, anything that people want to do, like organically.
And beyond that, it's just a great place to kind of connect with like-minded individuals.
Um, if you go to the website, just akash.network, you'll see a community section and there, uh,
you can apply to join the Insiders program.
Um, I'm a little behind on application review.
I think there's maybe a month's worth that I need to catch up on, but we're trying to
add more folks to that community because it's been really successful seeing kind of individuals
growth and kind of joining and participating in kind of community activities.
So, um, and it's a great support resource for anyone that's actually in the hackathon as
well.
So definitely check that out.
Um, and you can always reach out to me on, on discord as well.
Just say, Hey, where's Adam?
And then someone will tag me and I can, I can chat with you more, but, um, that's kind
of, that's one quick, uh, selfless, uh, uh, promotion I would, I would call out.
Yeah.
Awesome.
And I've got that up on the Jumbotron is able to search that up really quick.
Uh, perfect.
And then, uh, Jonas, do you have any, any questions?
Uh, thank you so much for highlighting everything.
Like, uh, uh, uh, it's such a cool thing with like the intervention between like crypto
and AI and I'm super supportive of Akash just because it's like, uh, organically open
source and I'm just hoping that builders as well, like see the opportunity in building
in this ecosystem.
I think it's like an amazing opportunity to, to go deeper.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, uh, with that being said, if anyone, let me just feel through these replies.
Really quick and see if anybody has any questions, but, um, okay, cool.
It's just me and the replies, uh, for, um, but again, uh, be sure to sign up for that fund
right now.
If you're interested, join the Akash, uh, network discord, all, uh, you could find that
in the replies here and also up on the Jumbotron and, uh, submissions will be opening on November
the 4th at 12 o'clock UTC, 12 o'clock AM on the dot.
Uh, that is actually exactly five days, seven hours, 17 minutes and 35 seconds.
So make sure, um, you are signed up and you'll get automatically notified as soon as the challenges
go live.
And, um, aside from that, um, I'm very, very excited to see what everyone builds.
Really, really excited for this hackathon as well.
And, uh, and yeah, Adam, thank you for joining us.
I'll leave it to you to, uh, make some closing words.
I'll keep putting you on the spot today.
No, you're, you're good.
Thank you for, uh, thanks for all your support.
The Biddlebox team has been awesome and kind of putting it out of this hackathon.
I'm really excited to see kind of what the outcome of this, this one is.
Um, yeah, I'm just really excited to see kind of what happens.
So as, uh, Annalisa mentioned, feel free to jump into the discord.
Um, there's a bunch of people that are there, be supportive and helpful for your questions,
ideas, but, um, other than that, I'll wrap it up how I do in a lot of my calls and I'll
say, I'll see you guys in the metaverse.
That's right.
I will see, see you guys in the metal, metalverse.
Metaverse as well.
Um, all right.
Thanks everyone.
And, uh, well, good luck and we'll catch y'all soon.
Thanks y'all.
All right.
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