AI is one of the most disruptive technologies of this century, with the potential to radically transform the world as we know it. But with great power comes great responsibility, and the rapid growth of AI technology is also raising many concerns, notably around the centralisation of power and resources, the embedded biases within various models, the proliferation of deep fakes, and issues around data privacy.
Fortunately, the inherent properties of blockchain and crypto technologies offer potential solutions to some of these issues. As such, there is a case to be made that the successful design and scaling of the right crypto and AI synergies could represent a trillion-dollar market opportunity.
As always, big market opportunities attract significant pools of capital and talent, and recently, we have seen the emergence of a wave of crypto projects aiming to improve the entire AI stack. Among them, Privasea has emerged as a particularly interesting one.
Privasea is a DePIN (Decentralised Physical Infrastructure) network designed to prioritise the privacy and security of data throughout the AI data computation process. To achieve this, it uses an innovative technology called Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which enables computations to be conducted on encrypted data, producing results that are identical to computations performed on unencrypted data. This ensures that privacy of the data is preserved throughout the entire workflow, including AI model training and evaluation.
Source: Privasea
The full tech stack of privasea is composed of several components working in synergies to ensure data privacy for AI models:
Source: AI-meda Research
One of Privasea's flagship products is the ImHuman App. Released on the App Store and Google Play, this app offers a solution for secure KYC in face recognition by using FHE machine learning to protect user biometrics and combat bots and Sybil users through secure human verification. The launch of this app was highly successful, with over 250,000 proof of humanity NFTs minted on Solana in its first 15 days.
The closest comparable to the ImHuman App is Worldcoin. However, we note that the FHE properties of the ImHuman App makes it much more secure and attractive.
Source: Privasea
Privasea stands out in many ways. Here are a few points worth noting:
The Privasea team is composed of well-rounded talent with expertise in data security, blockchain, AI, and entrepreneurship. This includes five researchers and two professors from top universities.
The current CEO and Founder of the project is David Jiao , a seasoned entrepreneur with academic background in Computer Science and Telecommunications, and over 15 years of experience in software and system engineering. On the other hand, the research side is led by Ting Gao . With a PhD in Applied Mathematics, Ting is an ex-Machine Learning Engineer at Twitter and seems the right fit to be the Chief Research Officer of Privasea. Additionally, Jeffrey Duan, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, serves as the Chief Science Advisor, bringing academic rigor to the project.
On the investment side, Privasea has previously raised $10 million from a wide array of investors such as Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, or Laser Digital.
Source: Privasea
PRVA token is an ERC20 token that serves as the utility token within the Privasea AI network and aims to play a crucial role in facilitating transactions, incentivising stakeholders, and
enabling on-chain governance.
The maximum supply of PRVA tokens is set at 1 billion, and the distribution is managed to balance the needs of the ecosystem. A portion of the tokens is allocated for miners and stakers, incentivising contributors to the network, while another portion is reserved for marketing, development, and ecosystem growth.
As such, this is the intended initial distribution of PRVA:
Source: Privasea Whitepaper
On the other hand, the value for PRVA tokens is driven by the demand for the network’s services. Specifically, the token serves the following purposes:
At the current stage of this project, a strong case can be made that the best way to gain exposure to this opportunity is by becoming an early operator of Privasea combo nodes.
These nodes include a mix of Workheart nodes, which are PoW (Proof of Work) USB hardware that performs critical computations using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and serves as the backbone of Privasea's DePIN architecture, and Starfuel NFTs, which act as reward multipliers for Workheart nodes and provide access to exclusive airdrop opportunities and new partnership tokens.
While the maximum supply of Workheart nodes is set at 20,000, Privasea will only produce 5,000 combo nodes.
In total, 6.66% of the PRVA token supply will be allocated to the Workheart nodes. Those rewards are expected to be distributed within a time frame of 36 months and it is worth mentioning again that combo nodes will be earning a reward multiplier.
Further, only the 5,000 combo nodes will be eligible to an exclusive PRVA airdrop allocation accounting for 1% of the total token supply.
It is important to note that the potential return on investment for combo node operators is influenced by various factors, notably the numbers of nodes that are running and sold out. Therefore, for this study, we are using Privasea’s assumptions and expected scenarios to derive the potential rewards of these nodes.
Here are the set of assumptions we are using:
With that in mind, here is a potential return simulation over the whole period:
For better visualisation, here is a table showing the expected return on investment over the whole period:
Lastly, using the same set of assumptions, this is the expected return on investment after the first 6 months of rewards: