Earlier on September 28, Cortex successfully launched its fully-functional Mining TestNet - "Bernard" and a beta version of the Cortex AI Smart Contract TestNet - "Dolores". Bernard and Dolores TestNet are the first to enable AI inference on the blockchain to showcase to the world.
Cortex is the first blockchain project that allows the execution of AI algorithms on the blockchain, providing an AI platform for developers to upload their models on the blockchain that can be integrated with the smart contract.
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The AI smart contract is the much needed mind-blowing feature missing in all popular blockchains today. Moreover, AI models will be democratized and users will gain control of their own data and get incentives to compete with big corporations."
posted Cortex
Mining TestNet:
Cortex block explorer - "Cerebro" helps users explore individual blocks and transactions, transaction histories, and address balances on the Cortex blockchain. The significant feature is that it allows users to add, explore, and invoke AI models via smart contracts to infer data, depending on the application. To use and interact with the Cerebro browser, you need to have Cortex wallet installed.
Source: Cortex
The company has deployed 10 full nodes distributing in 6 countries for its TestNet, to generate AI smart contract logs and inference results.
To let developers learn and interact with the TestNet Cortex team has also published a detailed testNet setup and
walkthroughs on features of its TestNet.
"Cuckoo Cycle" Consensus:
The Cortex has implemented Cuckoo Cycle algorithm which is based on Proof of Work for network consensus and allows commodity hardware to mine. The team wanted to have one-machine-one-vote to allow more people to participate equally in the consensus.
AI Smart Contract:
AI smart contract can be written with Solidity, which is the programming language of Ethereum. Cortex’s CVM is backward-compatible with EVM but adds infer instructions. one can also use Remix to write AI smart contract. Developers can also upload their own AI models for inclusion on-chain.
Synapse:
Cortex’s Synapse Technology is a deterministic inference engine which gives the same result as an AI model in heterogenetic computing environments. "Synapse utilizes both quantizations of AI models and deterministic GPU acceleration to make AI DApps available."
Cat/Dog classifier AI model:
According to Cortex, its Cat/Dog classifier AI model has obtained a promising result with quantization and compression. The original size of the VGG16 model is 528MB. The team implemented transfer learning to the original model and accomplish an integer model of 129MB. Further optimization and compression reduce it to 14.7MB.
"As the first infrastructural blockchain to support on-chain AI, we aim to build an open source developer community to facilitate the future development of AI and blockchain technology."