Crypto Society AMA recap with Nimble — 10th March 2024.
NIMBLE = The Composable AI Protocol / Decentralized AI Protocol Structure
Nimble is building the first-ever decentralized AI framework, pioneering solution in the decentralized AI and data management space.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Welcome @burbabull, it’s our pleasure to have you with us today. I would like to welcome you here on behalf of our entire community.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Thanks for having me 🙂
Bilo — Crypto Society
Pleasure is all ours ser.
Could we begin with a brief history of yourself and your team, and your role at Nimble and what you were doing before Nimble?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Sure — I myself was previously working in cybersecurity as a product manager for ~8 yrs. (PANW, few IoT security companies) in the Bay Area. The rest of the team is also based in the Bay. They worked in Apple, Uber, Google, etc.
The rest of the team are engineers — they’ve worked on some pretty cool AI products. Fraud detection at Robinhood, advertising at Facebook, search at Apple.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Wow. That’s quite the experience you’ve built up as a team.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We’ve been working on Nimble together since late last year, but have known each other for a long time. First time coming together for the start-up hustle!
Bilo — Crypto Society
Love this!
Group of friends who were bored on a weekend and decided to start a project that gets incubated by Binance. Sounds like a causal weekend 🤣
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Missed my role — I’m the COO here now. I’m also an engineer, but I am the least technical (just a humble regular CS degree), so I do the non-tech stuff.
The CEO has been baking this idea since 2021 — he rallied the troops for this. He’s got a PhD in P2P systems and a background in AI, so he’s the right recipe for this exact thing.
Crypto is fringe, AI is fringe — I can’t imagine there’s that many people who are deep in both. It always surprises me the # of AI start-ups in crypto for this reason.
Bilo — Crypto Society
I’m sure lots and lots of planning went into this. I jest ser. But I do love that you’re all friends.
So as mentioned above, Your project has been selected by Binance labs incubation program. Congrats on this. Can you tell us about the journey and challenges faced to finally secure your place with the Binance incubation program and what they have offered to assist you with?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Thanks! Yeah, it was a process to get accepted. We applied with the standard route, though. They selected and interviewed us over a few weeks. A lot of pitching and Q/A, very similar to raising money from VCs actually.
in the program, they’re actually really supportive! They give you access to their network for mentorship and connections. Introduce you to top projects and individuals.
It is an incubator in the true sense — they just want to help us succeed basically.
I’m sure more will come up as we get into it — this was the first week.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Congrats again. This is huge. I know other projects that got selected and it propelled them in many ways.
Please tell us about Nimble, what it’s all about and provide us with the use cases and problems that it solves.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Sure — get into the meat of things 🙂
Our team have worked at these mature AI companies in the past — Apple, Facebook, Google, Uber.
Each of these companies have internal tools — machine learning platforms — that give them access to all the resources you need to create super powerful AI products.
Huge data centres — refined data sets — existing models — all in one place. They can train and combine models almost trivially. When they leave those companies, they don’t have that anymore. They become just civilians again.
In order to build the same kind of products you can build in big tech companies, you need a massive team just to get the right tools together.
This is the problem we’re hoping to solve with Nimble. Build a machine learning platform, powered by open data, open compute, open models, able to rival the platforms in big tech companies
I think this will open up really interesting innovation across AI in the same way that open sourcing the models themselves did. Break the barriers etc.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Great TLDR on what is a significantly more complex matter. This is very exciting.
As a date marketplace, how does Nimble compare to say Ocean Protocol for example
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
The use cases of AI itself could be almost anything. AI is used everywhere.
In terms of where people can participate/interact with this thing, it will eventually be across the whole stack.
Selling data, providing compute, providing models — open to anyone who wants to do it.
You can think of us more like the glue that brings together the pieces of AI, vs the originator of each of these things.
Ocean protocol could integrate with us to provide data into the system. We could connect their data with compute and models for training.
For example: if a dev wanted to train/serve a model, they could use Ocean’s data. We basically create a market for their product.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Would be nice to see a collab between you two…
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We would love that too!
Bilo — Crypto Society
Let’s get technical 🤖. Could you elaborate on Nimble’s overlay network architecture? How does it facilitate seamless interaction & data sovereignty/privacy between data contributors, AI models, and DApps?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
I am not one of the core engineers, but I will do my best to answer these regardless
The protocol creates three separate markets, one for each of the “building blocks”. Anyone can interact with each of these to either buy or sell.
We refer to all of the providers as miners. Data miners, model miners, compute miners, etc. The results are consolidated in domain-specific auctions, and aggregated into a single API.
This is the long-term vision. When we launch mainnet this month, we’ll support just the compute auction. Others will be built out soon.
The privacy question is an important one. For miners to perform training, they need to actually hold the dataset and the model. We expect to avoid privacy issues by converting the data into embeddings (vectors) for training, vs sending raw data.
I worked in healthcare cybersecurity for a long time. We deployed sensors in hospitals that mirrored traffic from medical devices. We were able to get around PHI concerns with similar techniques.
data vs metadata.
Bilo — Crypto Society
You are a humble person. Pretending this was not your realm of questions.
You also have a talent to TLDR things. Great explanation. Thanks
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Thanks ❤️
Bilo — Crypto Society
Given the time constraints, if I give you the option to talk about, proof of gradient, Versus scalability, which one would you choose? :D
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Probably scalability — the consensus topic is better handled by the engineers.
Bilo — Crypto Society
In what ways does Nimble address scalability when it comes to handling large-scale AI models and data sets on a decentralized platform?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
I can keep going as long as you guys want btw — it is Sunday, no plans 🙂
The scalability topic is super important. You need to scale both in terms of model size, but also the number of models you can support.
There are literally thousands of models that we’ll need to support if we achieve actual market penetration. If you’ve worked in B2B companies, you know AI is EVERYWHERE these days.
For large scale models (billions of parameters), we use two techniques — model and data parallelism. This lets us split up the data and the models across a big set of devices for training. So you don’t need a farm of H100 GPUs to do training well. This is our “consumer hardware” selling point.
Training isn’t really time-sensitive (more cost-sensitive), so the scale works really well here.
For the # of models we can support, we don’t really have any limits. We can horizontally scale without issue (no fixed # of subnets or fixed # of miners per subnet, etc)
Bilo — Crypto Society
Just curious. How much computing power is needed.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Haha yeah — the engineers wanted me to use the term “infinite horizontal scalability”, but everything has limits somewhere along the line…
How much computing power is needed for which part?
Bilo — Crypto Society
All the models you run
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We haven’t actually launched yet, so not a lot as of right now 😄
Bilo — Crypto Society
What role do AI agents play within the Nimble ecosystem, and how are they incentivized to participate?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We’ll be adding support for dynamic model selection shortly after launch — basically matchmaking between compute and models.
At launch, the models supported will be just a few — BERT models, in case you are curious.
We haven’t played in the agents story just yet, but in theory you could use Nimble to deploy or train the model behind your AI agent.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Awesome thanks — will look forward to the evolution.
What measures are in place to prevent data monopolies and ensure a fair distribution of computational resources?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
I shy away from the “novel” applications of AI for now, because AI is already used in so many real-world practical applications all around us.
We don’t need to speculate about new stuff when we can improve so many things that are already out there.
yeah this is an interesting topic in web3 generally. The goal of Nimble is to be fully permissionless across the stack.
Miners/nodes/validators will earn a reputation score over time for fulfilling requests. So if those “good” participants happen to get very large over time, but are doing a very good job, the network will actually perform very well, even if they are large.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Really like the concept of reputation score.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
some datasets will become REALLY popular though. Grass.io, for example, is scraping data for LLMs. That will be a major use case in the coming years.
There are also super niche datasets that will have huge value (threat intelligence data, healthcare data, manufacturing data)
We need both the big and the small players
Bilo — Crypto Society
This is one of my favourite questions.
How does Nimble handle interoperability with other blockchain networks and protocols? Are there plans for cross-chain compatibility?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Haha of course.
We’re a standalone L1 chain, based on cosmos. For now, we’re being selective about which chains to interact with by deploying contracts ourselves. Sei being the first, but others are coming.
Long-term, we want every chain to be able to use Nimble for model training/inferencing. Beyond chains, we’d really like ANY company to be able to use Nimble to back their AI projects.
The really cool thing about projects like ours is that we aren’t just a utility for on-chain applications. You can use Nimble for any model across any industry. So if PANW wanted to run their cybersecurity anomaly detection models on Nimble, they could.
The project is on-chain, but the applications can be anywhere.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
You guys are very supportive, appreciate it.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Only when we love what we see ser.
Are there governance mechanisms for protocol upgrades and changes? Any plans for community-driven initiatives?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Yeah, definitely. We’ll eventually create a DAO to control network changes and upgrades. We really need to finish the core product before doing that, though. We expect to work towards that later this year though.
we already have a proposal mechanism in GitHub actually
Bilo — Crypto Society
Do you have plans to educate on your platform? if so What steps are being taken to educate and onboard developers who want to build on the Nimble platform?
Do you have plans to educate on your platform? if so What steps are being taken to educate and onboard developers who want to build on the Nimble platform?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Yes,we definitely do but we need to do better and will be working towards more complete community control over time.
We’ll be starting up dev office hours the same week mainnet launches to help get more people mining.
For all you miners, this is where:
We’ll carry that forward as new ways to interact w/ Nimble open up in the next few months.
The whole point of this project is to get more people into the AI stack. It is super technical, but we’re always looking to keep the operations as atomic as possible to reduce the scope of knowledge needed to participate.
Bilo — Crypto Society
That’s great. Any plans perhaps down the line to educate those with little to zero knowledge on AI etc
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
To be a compute miner, you do require actually zero AI knowledge. Just provide your GPU, and we matchmake you with a model to run. You don’t need to know anything about models or AI for this
To be a data miner, you just need to deploy a device or program on your computer or network. Plug it in and connect it to the internet, basically. No AI knowledge needed there either.
To be a model miner, theoretically you can just clone a model off of Huggingface and run it on the protocol. If people use it, you can earn there as well.
From there, things get a little more complicated. But there are a lot of ways to get in without AI knowledge.
Bilo — Crypto Society
We may lose half our audience at this news as they go start their laptops and become miners. Why did you tell them ? 😟
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Haha — they actually can mine w/ their laptops! M1/m2/m3 macs can mine.
Can probably run telegram at the same time, it’s fine.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Stop that
Make it sound more complicated pls until the ama is over
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
It’s not live yet — how’s that for complicated.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Long question — What partnerships or collaborations has Nimble established to accelerate adoption and growth? Are there any strategic partnerships or collaborations in the pipeline? How does Nimble plan to expand its ecosystem & finally how can other projects or developers integrate with Nimble? Are there APIs or developer tools available?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Partnerships — we’re focusing first on chain partnerships. Sei is first — I can’t quite announce others yet, but they’re coming. We’re also in discussions with DePIN projects to provide GPUs to the network (projects like io.net/akash/etc)
We need partnerships in every domain.
- Compute partners need workloads for their GPUs, and we need GPUs.
- Data partners need a market for their data, and we obviously need training data. Ocean was a great example here. I’m also working with cybersecurity colleagues to build out sensors for infosec data. It’s super exciting to me to see non-web3 people interested in this, so I want to prove that side of the business ASAP.
- Models. Anyone currently putting their models on huggingface for free can put them on Nimble. We’re approaching AI devs for this already as well.
These are still in the pipeline and not ready to be announced, but this is my full time job right now.
The whole protocol will be accessible first via API. The docs for this are in progress and will come out at launch.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Thanks. That was a hefty question. Great answer and to the point as usual. 🫡
Bilo — Crypto Society
Could you please provide us with some challenges Nimble has faced but overcome?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We’re all in the bay area. Web3 is not very popular here. There are very few VCs, founders, or people looking to work in the space.
We had some challenges in attracting top talent for this reason.
The direction we chose with Nimble (web3, but universal applications) was the solution to that. I think this one was more salient because I myself have always wanted to see web3 cross the chasm to the mainstream, so even keeping myself engaged needed something like this.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Love hearing about the challenges and how they were overcome. Thanks for obliging
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We originally started Nimble looking at Intents, but it didn’t sit right for this reason.
Intents are just a use case of AI. We had to change our direction a lot and readjust.
Bilo — Crypto Society
What are the benefits of holding Nimble?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Holding — you’ll be able to stake your tokens to validators for a return. The token itself is a utility, though. We want it to be used to pay for training/serving models and buying/selling data.
Allocations — we had a private sale in late Feb, but it closed in ~2 days after announcing it. I the timing was quite good in terms of AI interest for the sale. We don’t have any active investment rounds at the moment unfortunately.
If you want to get tokens, you will have to mine (this includes me 😄 )
Bilo — Crypto Society
When is the anticipated launch of your platform?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We’re hoping to launch this month. The team is just working on testing and documentation now, but obviously we want to get both of those things right before deploying.
Bilo — Crypto Society
Ok. We’ve come to a part of the AMA which is near and dear to my heart. My future depends on it. It’s not to be taken lightly. Are you ready?
Before we go, pls understand that I will be demoted if you don’t provide. Also, my boss has a whip. She scares me and she’s not scared to use it. Please ser. Be kind to me
Is there any exclusive breaking news about Nimble that you could share with us here today
LB — Crypto Society
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Uh oh. I’m afraid there is no alpha — this was full transparency my friend.
Bilo — Crypto Society
There is always alpha
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
I have racked my brain and I cannot think of anything haha I am sorry
Bilo — Crypto Society
I’m in trouble],
Make something up….
🤣
Bilo — Crypto Society
Do you wish to let us know anything else that was not covered in the questions above?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
if you want to mine, make sure to join our Discord — that is where we do most of our announcements .
LB — Crypto Society
Lets open the chat for questions 🙂
DJTown
With so many companies going after compute, how will there be a fair usage and cost base to allow these companies to use the resources required.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
There is A LOT of compute right now that’s sitting unused, or being used for dummy POW functions. We’re going to use it for actual work.
I think this will make us potentially one of the few real buyers of compute out there.
The buyers of compute will be tied to actual market forces (vs just token appreciation) and it will probably lead to adjustments in prices.
Pumpeye The Trader Man
Will this promote centralisation of the network? How does that affect the security and also direction of the project? I notice you mention creating a DAO but will it be weighted because of bigger entities?
Also, you said about private sales closing, will you be doing any IDOs
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
These are things we’ll have to consider carefully later in the year when we get to creating the DAO — we are basically heads down shipping core product right now.
You are right though, we’ll have to consider the centralization issue.
There is no IDO planned — we’re working on listing the token and considering a few options. Nothing is finalized yet though.
Julius
Where is a detailed staking guide? I want this Nimble tokens 😁😂
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
You can’t stake yet. Once staking is available, we’ll announce in Discord.
DJTown
With so many companies going after compute, how will there be a fair usage and cost base to allow these companies to use the resources required.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
There is A LOT of compute right now that’s sitting unused, or being used for dummy POW functions. We’re going to use it for actual work.
I think this will make us potentially one of the few real buyers of compute out there.
The buyers of compute will be tied to actual market forces (vs just token appreciation) and it will probably lead to adjustments in prices.
Miau
Do you have a partnership with AVAX?
If yes then what are your collab plans in AVAX?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We do not have a partnership with AVAX, but I interviewed Justin from AVAX about their AI strategy. Looking to develop a partnership with them — their subnet concept is very well suited to private data use cases for AI.
KAI
What advantages does nimble bring to the ai Community — both for data miners and Data “consumers”
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
We basically act as a bridge between all the Web3 infra projects and the actual end user. Right now, AI projects are SO technical. We want to hide all that and just expose a single endpoint for consuming interences or selling data.
We need to stop exposing the “guts” of the tech stack and start exposing useful abstractions.
Sheikh
What is your strongest advantage that you think will make your team leading the market?
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Our team has worked in actual AI companies that have billions of actual users.
I think the experience there shows that AI isn’t just hype, it isn’t just LLMs or Sora — you can make real money by creating useful models.
That’s why our approach is so targeted here at making an ML platform vs infra.
Anthony Isaacson — Nimble
Thanks again for having me guys! Thanks for spending your Sunday with me guys
I am legally obligated to ask that you follow us on twitter for the gains.
That is all.
Website: https://www.nimble.technology/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nimble_Network
Follow on Telegram: https://t.me/nimble_network
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