Introduction

The advent of a new financial model known as DeFi (Decentralised Finance) marked a paradigm shift, introducing permissionless, onchain financial services freely available to all who had access to the internet. However, this innovation came with inherent risks, for example, a significant amount of DeFi tokens lacked tangible backing. This 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 went on to become a dominant trend with various asset classes following after, such as commodities, real estate or other financial assets. Yet, one of the most promising applications of tokenisation is now emerging in the AI sector, giving rise to AI-Fi (AI Finance) - a new financial framework centred around AI-focused assets and AI-driven services.

This new business model brings onchain both tangible and intangible RWAs, 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 the ownership and liquidity for datasets, compute power, and other AI-related assets are enhanced, opening new onchain markets in the rapidly expanding AI sector. Moreover, it bridges the gap between artificial intelligence development 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 whilst adapting to a new emerging technology that is set to change the business landscape once more.