About
What is Galadriel?
Galadriel is the first L1 for AI.
Ethereum enabled writing smart contracts to build dApps. Similarly, Galadriel enables developers to build AI apps & agents like smart contracts — decentralized and on-chain. We support a range of AI usage: from simple LLM features in existing dApps to highly capable AI agents like on-chain AI hedge funds, in-game AI NPCs and AI-generated NFTs.
Galadriel is built on a parallel-execution EVM stack which enables high throughput and low latency while providing a familiar experience to Solidity developers. It brings AI inference on-chain in a low-cost, low-latency manner through teeML (Trusted Execution Environment Machine Learning) which allows querying open and closed-source LLM models in a verifiable way.
Here’s a high-level overview of Galadriel L1 stack:
Note that all of the functionality in the stack is not live as Galadriel is in an early devnet stage.
What problem does Galadriel solve?
Today, all AI applications you use are centralized. You lack ownership and don’t have any say in their governance.
First, as a developer building AI apps, the only option is to deploy them on a centralized stack. During the last OpenAI Dev Day in 2023 November, many developers felt rug-pulled as OpenAI bundled their products into Custom GPTs and the Assistant API. Using any centralized AI provider has platform risk: the developer competes against the platform and risks getting their app shut down or taxed into oblivion. In 2015, Ethereum gave developers a way to build without this platform risk. Galadriel aims to do the same for building AI apps where developers are the masters of their destiny.
Second, while AI is becoming the biggest wealth creator throughout history, if it is owned by just a few Web2 monopolies like today, then the most likely outcome is extreme wealth disparity because of their extractive economic model. It is already happening today - OpenAI’s last valuation was $80B but all of the gains have flowed to less than a 1,000 people — the team and investors. AI should be owned by everyone, not by a few large companies.
Third, the fate of 8 billion people is in the hands of less than 100 people - the boards of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and a few other companies. Would you trust your or your family’s life in the hands of Sam Altman? This is the broken safety model we have today: these companies say we can trust them to govern superintelligence once they invent it. Meanwhile, the man that promises to bring the world safe AGI can’t even govern his own company, as shown by the board hiatus. History has repeatedly shown that security through obscurity never works. Web3 offers the most safe infrastructure the humanity has invented so far; the proof is in the pudding as Bitcoin secures $1.3T and Ethereum 478B+ dollars as of March 2024. Galadriel aims to bring large-scale deployment of AI on Web3 rails which can be governed in a transparent, democratic way.
Why a Layer 1?
Vitalik initially intended to build smart contracts on Bitcoin but this idea was rejected by the core developers. That turned out to be an exceptionally good outcome because Ethereum needed vertical integration to enable smart contracts.
We initially wanted to build Galadriel as a Layer 2 but couldn’t. We realized that the chain has to be customized and optimized across the whole stack to enable AI apps and agents on Web3 rails. For example, you couldn’t build an on-chain ChatGPT or Midjourney today, if the goal is to support 100,000 users or a 10,000 agent swarm. That’s because blockchains so far haven’t been designed to run AI applications. Purpose-built tools enable purpose-built use cases, and AI is one of them.
What is Galadriel’s mission?
Galadriel’s mission is to build safe, citizen owned AI by building ETH for AI. Our long-term vision can be unpacked as:
- Build the first L1 for AI which acts as the settlement layer for AI, driving real GDP growth.
- Provide direct ownership and democratic governance over AI.
- Become the most secure rails for AI deployment and largest applied safety network where crypto-incentives drive humanity to align AI.