Crypto + AI Inference: Three Projects, Three Distinct Business Logics

Written by: David Christopher, Bankless

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

The inference market has become one of the clearest directions for the integration of cryptocurrency and AI, as project teams leverage on-chain markets to significantly reduce the barriers and costs of invoking AI models.

The core model of these markets is mostly about discount reselling of API invocation quotas and idle inference computing power, with some projects also building networks that allow demand-side users to connect directly with independent computing service providers.

In this emerging sector, there are three representative markets: Orbio deployed on the Robinhood Chain, and Surplus Intelligence and Antseed deployed on Base. Although all three can provide low-cost inference services, there are significant differences in service positioning, target users, and token economic design. Below we compare these three projects side by side.

Orbio

The core service target of the inference market created by Orbio is AI agents. The project initially started as a token that distributed OpenRouter quotas to holders, but has now evolved into a complete protocol: supporting hundreds of AI model calls, many of which are offered at significant discounts; it also features a Launchpad where developers can deploy agents and issue tokens paired with ORBIO for trading.

To adapt to the usage needs of agents, Orbio has integrated privacy computing capabilities provided by Phala and NEAR AI. Recently, it also reached a partnership with Mosh to integrate Mosh's tool ecosystem, helping new agent tokens establish a more sustainable token growth mechanism.

These capabilities combined allow agents born on Orbio to possess greater autonomy: invoking inference computing power, managing funds, and even autonomously completing more on-chain actions.

The core of this model is the CREDIT certificate, where one CREDIT in the Orbio gateway represents a value of $1 in inference quota. Agents can buy and destroy CREDIT with wallet funds to exchange for computing power, maintaining their continuous operation. The value of tokenizing inference quotas lies in the fact that agents can autonomously procure computing power to ensure their survival, often at a discounted price.

For example, the recent market price of CREDIT is about $0.47, so an agent spends $47 to buy 100 CREDIT, and after deducting fees, can redeem an inference quota worth $95.

The source of the discount is the transaction fees of ORBIO, which are converted into CREDIT rewards. Users who receive rewards can sell them in the secondary market. Therefore, the higher the transaction volume, the more CREDIT rewards can be distributed; while the agent tokens paired with Launchpad and ORBIO trading will also form an independent circulation loop.

The question is whether this situation can be sustained without speculative behavior. Since September, although the platform has disclosed relevant data, on-chain data shows that the vast majority of issued CREDIT quotas have yet to be used.

Surplus Intelligence

Among the three, Surplus Intelligence has the most straightforward model, essentially being an AI computing power aggregation market. The project is built on the Base chain, where service providers can list interfaces for models like OpenAI, Anthropic, Venice, and OpenRouter, setting their own prices, with market competition continuously driving down invocation costs.

Upon receiving inference requests, the platform allocates them to the corresponding service providers according to routing rules. Buyers can pay with credit cards or USDC, and agents can also connect for invocation. This simple and direct model makes it the platform with the highest public usage among the three projects. Surplus has disclosed that the platform has processed a large number of inference requests, with many invocation costs even below 1 cent.

In addition to low prices, Surplus is also adding new features to enhance competitiveness, recently launching a key de-sensitization feature. Once activated, the system automatically replaces sensitive information such as API keys and private keys with placeholders before forwarding prompts to model service providers. Service providers can only see the placeholders, and after returning results, the platform restores the real information. This feature is very friendly to agents that need to handle keys, although the platform itself will still read the original prompts.

Despite high usage, the connection between Surplus's products and tokens is the weakest. The SURPLUS token cannot be used to pay for inference fees, does not participate in computing power routing, and there is no public mechanism to distribute market revenue to token holders. This situation may change in the future, as the team is promoting a plan to adjust token governance rights, but currently, nothing has been implemented. This means that although this market is operational and its activity continues to rise, the growth in usage cannot currently be directly translated into token value.

Antseed

Orbio focuses on the agent scenario, Surplus emphasizes low-price competition, while Antseed has taken a different route, claiming to be the "BitTorrent of AI inference."

It does not forward requests through a centralized gateway but builds an open computing power discovery network, integrating various AI models, where service providers can independently list their computing power. Buyers can independently search for available service providers, connect routing APIs, and freely choose computing power providers.

The advantage of this model is flexibility. The network is open to all service providers, and the supply of computing power is very diverse: there are both affordable popular models and specialized model verification services to verify whether service providers truly offer the models they claim. Buyers can select service providers based on their own needs rather than being uniformly allocated by a centralized gateway.

The project token ANTS has not yet been publicly traded, and the token economics is designed around the credibility system of this market. Both buyers and sellers can participate in staking, and service providers can enhance their credibility by staking tokens to qualify for rewards.

Unlike Orbio, its reward funds do not come from transaction fees. Antseed relies on treasury funds to distribute rewards, and may open up other sources of income in the future, but the relevant mechanisms have not yet been implemented. Therefore, the positive correlation between the growth of inference demand and token value has not yet been validated.

Conclusion

Interestingly, the differentiation among these three projects is not just about competing on low prices: Orbio anchors the agent track, allowing agents to autonomously acquire and even self-fund computing power; Surplus focuses on extreme low prices, adding practical features like key de-sensitization; Antseed builds an open P2P computing power market, allowing users to choose service providers as needed.

As the projects continue to iterate, more features will be launched to attract users. Will it be a new computing power revenue model? Or will it create a complete ecosystem tailored for agent development? We shall see.