The Web3 + AI Daily #41
New dAI-powered financial instruments, alongside a new dAI network coming to life.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly-joined subscribers!
This is The Web3 + AI Daily, your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI)! Today, we’re talking OceanPal Inc. eyeing 10% of NEAR Protocol‘s token supply, a staked Bittensor ETP coming to SIX Swiss Exchange, and Telegram’s Pavel Durov launching a dAI network on TON.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
OceanPal Raises $120M to Build $NEAR Treasury, Power dAI
The Nasdaq-listed shipping company OceanPal Inc. is launching a new subsidiary called SovereignAI with the aim of commercializing the NEAR Protocol token $NEAR and developing AI infrastructure.
SovereignAI was formed to implement a NEAR digital asset treasury (DAT) strategy which will fund the development of confidential AI infrastructure powered by NEAR.
SVRN is backed by a $120M private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal. The subsidiary will build confidential AI cloud services on the NEAR Protocol blockchain and aims ultimately to acquire up to 10% of NEAR’s total token supply.
“We believe NEAR presents the greatest asymmetric upside across mature projects in the digital asset market, which we aim to capture and offer to our shareholders,” OceanPal’s Co-CEO, Sal Ternullo, said.
NEAR Protocol‘s Cameron Dennis provided more context about the deal:
“I’m excited for the first NEAR Protocol publicly traded vehicle that accumulates $NEAR to finance GPUs that power NEAR AI Cloud. Profits from AI inference and training is then used burn $NEAR, creating a positive flywheel for the ecosystem”.
The move indicates OceanPal’s strategy “goes beyond treasury management to actively build privacy-preserving AI at scale.”
DDA, Safello to Launch $TAO-Based ETP
The investment appetite for decentralized AI network Bittensor does not stop growing. Deutsche Digital Assets (DDA) together with Safello plan to launch an exchange-traded product (ETP) on the SIX Swiss Exchange that gives investors regulated access to the crypto token $TAO, native Bittensor / Opentensor Foundation.
The ETP is called the Safello Bittensor Staked TAO ETP (ticker “STAO”) and will be physically backed by $TAO tokens held in cold storage. Returns to investors include both $TAO price movements and staking rewards, which are automatically reinvested. The listing is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks.
The move reflects growing interest in bridging decentralized AI projects and investment products.
Telegram’s Durov Launches dAI Network on TON
Telegram Messenger founder Pavel Durov announced Cocoon (Confidential Compute Open Network), a decentralized AI‑inference network built on TON Foundation. The network allows developers to pay for AI compute with the $TON token, while GPU owners contribute their hardware and earn $TON in return.
A key feature is privacy: Cocoon is designed so that AI tasks and data are processed in a decentralized, confidential manner, limiting the role of centralized providers and enhancing user control over data. The initiative is positioned as part of a broader push for digital freedom and data sovereignty, with Durov emphasizing that centralization threatens those goals.
Telegram itself is set to be the first large‑scale customer of Cocoon, leveraging its large user base to bootstrap usage and infrastructure.
Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations
elizaOS and EigenCloud Make AI Agents Verifiable
We’ve been yapping a lot about agent-to-agent payments this past week, but agents’ ability to exchange value autonomously is just one step towards achieving a true machine economy. Another rather important one is establishing trust in agents’ actions, and EigenCloud offers a solution.
The case study below showcases how Eliza Labs, a leading open-source AI agent framework (17k+ GitHub stars, 50k+ agents), integrated with EigenCloud to prove its AI agents executed the correct code and model weights.
Traditional cloud environments offer scalability but no cryptographic verification, creating a critical trust gap for agents managing real assets or executing trades. EigenCloud, leveraging EigenAI (for deterministic, verifiable LLM inference) and EigenCompute (for trusted, cryptographically provable execution), ensures agents run unmodified code, produce genuine outputs, and can be audited cryptographically.
As a result, Eliza’s agents transformed from “trust-based” to cryptographically provable systems, bridging AI autonomy with on-chain accountability and establishing a blueprint for any developer building AI agents that manage capital or make consequential decisions.
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