Introduction

The advent of a new financial model known as DeFi (Decentralised Finance) marked a paradigm shift that introduced permissionless, onchain financial services freely to all who had access to the internet. However, this innovation came with inherent risks. For example, a significant number of DeFi tokens lacked tangible backing, which resulted in extreme price volatility, speculative bubbles and challenges in fundamental valuations.

Cue tokenisation of real-world assets: a process within which traditional offchain assets are brought onchain, with the most prevalent example being fiat-backed stablecoins. This became a dominant trend with various asset classes following, such as commodities, real estate and other financial assets. Yet one of the most promising applications of tokenisation is now emerging in the AI sector, giving rise to AiFi (AI Finance)—a new financial framework centred around AI-focused assets and AI-driven services.

This new business model brings both tangible and intangible RWAs onchain, spanning from GPUs and data centres to APIs and cloud services.

AI-Fi taps into the vast potential of the AI economy by tokenising a diverse range of AI-related assets, creating opportunities for global markets to exchange and monetise these assets. Thanks to tokenisation, ownership and liquidity of datasets, compute power and other AI-related assets are enhanced, opening up new onchain markets in the rapidly expanding AI sector. It also serves to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and decentralised finance, allowing for unprecedented monetisation opportunities.

Tokenisation sees the perfect marriage of new and traditional assets with the blockchain, offering a myriad of potential benefits while adapting to a new emerging technology that is set to change the business landscape once more.