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  • 🐎 Weekly Roundup: Solana Becomes The Home For Agents

🐎 Weekly Roundup: Solana Becomes The Home For Agents

DeepSeek news, Dynamic TAO and Virtuals goes crosschain

🎙️ Podcast | 📲 Follow us on X | 📨 Past Editions | 🗞️ TAO Times

Good Morning ☕️ 

A lot has happened the past week in both open-source AI and in crypto. Despite markets being red, now is a great time to be reading up about fundamentally sound projects, listening to podcasts and doing deep research to position yourself for the next leg of the market.

This Week:

  • DeepSeek’s impact on the markets

  • Bittensor’s upcoming upgrade

  • Virtuals goes cross-chain

  • Venice’s $VVV airdrop drama

  • Podcast with Crucible Labs

Now let's get into the details... 👇️

Highlights

🔥 DeepSeek R1 Nukes the Tech Sector

DeepSeek R1 continues to dominate headlines as one of the most performant open-source AI models, emerging as a real alternative to OpenAI’s O1 model. Its efficiency is a huge win for Open Source AI, but the market reaction was brutal—Nvidia ($NVDA) took a sharp hit as investors reconsidered long-term demand for expensive GPUs, dragging down the entire market.

While the model’s lower training costs make AI development more accessible, it doesn’t necessarily reduce demand for compute. Instead, as inference workloads increase, compute demand could rise even higher in the long run, further driving the importance of decentralized AI infrastructure.

🔥 Bittensor’s Dynamic TAO (dTAO) is Almost Here

Bittensor has officially dropped the revised Dynamic TAO white paper, setting the stage for the ecosystem’s most anticipated upgrade. Dynamic TAO introduces a market-based emissions system, allowing rewards to be distributed more efficiently across the network. Part of the change also introduces subnet tokens for each subnet on the network, denominated in TAO.

The rollout, scheduled for February 10th (pending a Senate vote on the 9th), is critical for TAO holders to understand how dTAO changes the game and affects their holdings. For those looking to get ahead of the game, we highly recommend reading through the revised whitepaper. Use ChatGPT to help break it down for you if needed! 

📄 Read the Dynamic TAO White Paper

🔥 Virtuals Expands to Solana

Virtuals, one of the most successful AI agent launchpads, has officially expanded to Solana, a move that signals a shift in where AI-native projects are choosing to build. The project initially launched on Base, but, despite its success, Coinbase hasn’t made any moves to list it, raising serious questions about Base’s support for its own ecosystem.

At the same time, Solana’s high-speed, low-cost infrastructure is proving to be an attractive hub for AI applications. This expansion suggests that Solana could be positioning itself as the go-to blockchain for AI agents.

🔥 Venice’s $VVV Airdrop Controversy

Venice’s $VVV token launched this week, almost immediately hitting a $2 billion market cap and delivering a massive airdrop to early adopters—including many Outpost subscribers (check here)! However, the excitement was tempered by controversy, as insider trading on Aerodrome and an immediate Coinbase listing left many questioning the fairness of the launch.

Despite this, Venice’s token has a unique utility: enabling unlimited, private inference through its API to top-tier open-source models like DeepSeek R1 and Llama 3.1.

 Congrats to everyone who secured the airdrop!

Podcasts & Streams

🎙️ Podcast of the Week: Bittensor’s 2024 Year in Review with Crucible Labs

This week’s episode dives deep into Bittensor’s evolution and what’s next in 2025 with Crucible Labs. We cover the network’s rapid scaling, the rise of AI agents in decentralized networks, and the critical dTAO upgrade launching on February 10th. The conversation also explores Bittensor’s shifting economics, subnet expansion, and predictions for how AI and crypto will converge in the coming year.

If you're a TAO holder or interested in the Bittensor ecosystem, this isn’t one to miss!

Other Great Listens:

🎙️ Play with DeepSeek on Bittensor | TAO Talk Episode 18 — This week the lads dive into Bittensor’s latest developments, and key projects like Rayon Labs' Chutes, WebGenie, and decentralized real estate valuation tool Subnet 48.

🎙️ Jeffrey Emanuel: Viral Author of The Short Case for Nvidia Stock | The Delphi Podcast —Jeff Emanuel, founder of Pastel Network, joins The Delphi Podcast to break down his viral thesis on Nvidia’s vulnerabilities, the disruptive potential of DeepSeek, and the broader impact of open-source AI on infrastructure, chip margins, and global competition.

🎙️ TAO Times Stream | DeepSeek & Bittensor — Brody dives into DeepSeek on Bittensor with Rob from Manifold, Stephen from Macrocosmos and Jon from Chutes.

Project Updates

📍Mode launched Synth subnet (#50) for decentralized AI-driven crypto price predictions. Mode Terminal has also launched in alpha and is available to anyone with 400k $MODE staked.

📍 Nous Research launched Nous Psyche, a decentralized AI infrastructure on Solana for cooperative model training and inference.

📍Virtuals expanded to Solana while maintaining its Base presence, integrating a Meteora Pool and Strategic SOL Reserve, and running an AI hackathon & grants program. Youmio partnered with Virtuals to bring 3D AI agents to life via Unreal Engine.

📍ElizaOS (formerly ai16zdao) rebranded while maintaining the $ai16z ticker, integrated with Abstract Chain for cross-chain compatibility, and rolled out V2 updates featuring full agent autonomy, a plugin registry, and event-driven architecture. DeepSeek integration proliferated across platforms, with ElizaOS supporting it for weeks.

📍Hyperbolic partnered with Nexus to provide GPUs for Nexus's ZK computing, while its Eliza plugin enabled AI agents to autonomously leverage Hyperbolic GPUs.

📍Nillion hosted DeepSeek R1-14B privately on nilAI, using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to ensure fully private AI interactions.

📍DeepSeek ranked #3 globally on Chatbot Arena, seeing rapid adoption across platforms, including integrations into ElizaOS, MyShell, Venice AI and Akash Network.

📍Story Protocol announced Emergenceverse, an on-chain franchise by David Goyer, and partnered with Stability AI for on-chain IP management.

📍HeyAnon ($ANON) integrated Red Teams into DeFAI development, focusing on proactive security and threat defense. The project has also integrated Venice AI for private API access to leading open-source models, expanding its DeFAI capabilities.

📍Nesa introduced a fully encrypted inference API using Equivariant Encryption (EE) for zero-latency, privacy-preserving AI processing.

📍Prime Intellect released TOPLOC, a hashing scheme for verifiable inference, detecting unauthorized model modifications.

📍Privasea AI opened Testnet Part 2, enabling users to contribute computing power for AI security while earning rewards via Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)-enabled AI computations.

📍Pippin founder launched “Agent Fund”, a VC fund supporting AI agent apps, infrastructure, and tools. Led by Nakajima, Alex Reibman, and Adam Silverman, the equity-based fund remains open for rolling investments.

📍Chromia launched EVAL, an AI evaluation agent scoring other AI models on truth, accuracy, creativity, and engagement, with AIXBT scoring 80/100.

📍Drift integrated DeFi agents using Solana Agent Kit, allowing them to trade perps, borrow/lend assets, and interact with Vaults for on-chain automation.

📍0G Labs introduced ERC-7857, a new NFT token standard for AI agents, embedding privacy-preserving intelligence into on-chain AI entities.

📍OLAS launched Modius, a DeFAI agent for crypto asset rebalancing and lending strategies.

📍THINK Agents released its Agent Standard Whitepaper, establishing a framework for composable and interoperable AI agents.

📍io.net announces their roadmap for the quarter.

📍Giza surpassed 11.5K automated transactions with ARMA, its AI-powered DeFi yield optimizer for stablecoin deposits.

📍thirdweb launched Nebula for Unity, allowing game developers to integrate AI agents into in-game experiences and on-chain mechanics.

📍Nosana ($NOS) mainnet officially launched for their GPU network, with over 600 GPUs joining the network in the first two weeks.

Reading List

🔗 The DeFAI Stack: Why AI Reasoning is the Missing Link – Sam Ruskin
A deep dive into DeFAI’s three-layer architecture and how improved reasoning from DeepSeek and Venice AI could be the most significant upgrade yet—one that markets have yet to price in.

🔗 Atoma Network: Private & Verifiable AI – Teng Yan
Explores how Atoma is building a decentralized AI-first blockchain, leveraging Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and an optimized compute layer to enable verifiable and privacy-preserving AI applications.

🔗 Mapping Bittensor’s Growing Ecosystem – Sami Kassab
Breaks down how Bittensor’s Revolution upgrade evolved into a decentralized AI marketplace, why inference acceleration and emotional AI are early winners, and how Dynamic TAO will reshape emissions allocation.

🔗 We're in the 2013 Bitcoin Era for Decentralized AITerminally Onchain
A breakdown of recent breakthroughs in decentralized AI, including large-scale models trained on heterogeneous hardware across multiple continents. The post explores how projects like Nous and Prime Intellect are challenging OpenAI’s dominance, shifting AI away from reliance on big tech’s massive compute resources.

Tools

Finding alpha in the current fast-paced AI meta requires the right tools. Here are some of the platforms we're using daily:

🛠️ AI Agent Toolkit: Comprehensive directory of AI agent resources, from frameworks and launchpads to tutorials and infrastructure

🛠️ Cookie.fun: Track agent metrics, market caps, and mindshare in real-time

🛠️ Kaito.ai: Using for mindshare and smart followers tracking on X. Kaito is conducting an airdrop using “Yaps” points from activity on X, connect your X account to participate here.

🛠️ Taostats.io: New analytics dashboard for monitoring Bittensor network activity and performance

🛠️ The Veldt: An AI copilot tailored to help you find alpha in the crypto trenches. We’re a big fan of the AI feed!

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, financial, or investment advice. The content is not to be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The reader should always conduct their own due diligence and consult with professional advisors for legal and financial advice specific to their situation.