The Ora Protocol (formerly known as HyperOracle) is a verifiable oracle protocol that brings AI and complex computation on-chain. It was co-founded by Kartin Wong in September 2022. ^[1][2]

Overview

Ora has two main products:

• AI Oracle (OAO): Brings AI onchain.
• Initial Model Offering (IMO): Tokenizes open-source AI models.

Ora expands the capabilities of smart contracts by integrating richer data sources and computing power, enabling developers to innovate without constraints. Ora's solutions have gained trust from various entities, including Compound, Ethereum Foundation, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Uniswap. ^[3]

Ora positions itself as an oracle solution for developers, offering practical AI Oracle functionality usable on any blockchain. The on-chain AI engine supports Llama 3 (8B), Stable Diffusion and OpenLM, available for direct on-chain integration, with plans to support any ML model in the future. ORA aims for fast deployment across various networks, including any network and any Layer 2, enabling developers to create their own programmable, permissionless, and censorship-resistant AI / ZK oracles. ^[3]

Technology

ORA provides developers with a way to build end-to-end trustless and decentralized applications powered by AI.

Initial Model Offering (IMO) incentivizes long-term and sustainable open-source contribution, by tokenizing ownership of open-source AI models. It allows funding for AI development, and rewards the community and open-source contributors. Token holders receive a portion of the revenue generated by onchain usage of the model.

Onchain AI Oracle (OAO) brings verifiable AI inference onchain. It empowers decentralized applications by providing trustless and permissionless use of AI. This opens up a variety of new use-cases, that weren't possible before. Use of Onchain AI Oracle implies a fee, which is later distributed to IMO token holders.

Together IMO and OAO are pushing the boundaries of open-source development.

Initial Model Offering (IMO)

Introduced on March 1, 2024, IMO tokenizes AI models onchain. For token holders, IMO lets anyone capture the value of AI models onchain, and for AI models, IMO enables sustainable funding for open-source AI models to win over proprietary AI. ^[7][9]

IMO tokenizes the ownership of open-source AI models, sharing its profit with the token holders. ^[7][8]

"The IMO allows fundraising for the development of a specific AI model from the global market and provides incentivization for open-source contributors to collaborate on models through token-based shares of model revenue. This removes silos in fundraising for AI projects and democratizes access to revenue associated with open-source projects." - Ecosystem Growth Manager, Alec James wrote on Linkedin^[17]

IMO requires two core components: the Onchain AI Model with Verifiability, and the Revenue Sharing of Onchain Usage. ^[7][8]

Onchain AI Model

IMO needs a way to run AI models fully on-chain and verifiably. The opML and opp/ai were invented for this use case. They are the only two solutions to make any AI model on-chain. Currently, opML is at the core of Onchain AI Oracle (OAO), which is essential to bring AI models to IMO. ^[8][9]

Revenue Sharing

Holders of IMO tokens will receive the benefits of revenue streams including but not limited to:

• Revenue of model usage (Model Ownership, ERC-7641 Intrinsic RevShare Token): Each use of the AI model on-chain will incur a fee, which will be distributed to IMO tokens.

• Revenue of AI-generated content (Inference Asset, eg. ERC-7007 Zero-Knowledge AI-Generated Content Token): Each use of the AI model generates a specific output and result (e.g. Stable Diffusion for an image NFT and Sora for a video NFT), which may carry a royalty fee and a mint fee that can be distributed to IMO tokens. ^[8]

Onchain AI Oracle (OAO)

Onchain AI Oracle is ORA's verifiable and decentralized AI oracle. It provides a verifiable AI inference to smart contracts. Developers can now use OAO to enhance their dapps with the power of AI.

How it works

1. Smart contract requests ML inference
2. OAO calculates and returns the result
3. The result is verified onchain (zkML, opML, opp/ai)

Proving Frameworks

Several technologies invented and developed by ORA have emerged to facilitate the verifiable computation including AI inference on the blockchain. These innovations include Optimistic Machine Learning (opML), Keras2Circom (Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning, zkML), and Optimistic Privacy Preserving AI (opp/ai), with each representing a significant stride towards integrating verifiable proofs into the blockchain.

Team

• Kartin Wong - Co-founder & Generator ^[11]
• Alec James - Ecosystem Growth ^[12]
• Cathie So - Chief Scientist ^[13]
• Shuxiao Miao - Software Developer ^[15]
• Suning Yao - Research Engineer ^[14]
• Levi Sledd - Zero Knowledge Circuit Engineer^[16]