Fetch.ai: The Love Child of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence
- Fetch.ai is a unique blockchain platform that uses AI on blockchain networks to bring automation to Web 3.
- Artificial intelligence and blockchain technology are combined in the project to make the existing systems more efficient and decentralized.
- FET is the native cryptocurrency token of the network that is used to access all AI tools on the platform and can also be used for trading.
Fetch.ai is a blockchain network that integrates artificial intelligence technology to build a network of automated economic agents. It allows users to build and deploy a network of decentralized smart agents, i.e., automation software, for automating Web3 systems and decentralized finance (DeFi).
What is Fetch.ai and How Does it Work?
Fetch.ai is an open-source Web3 platform that combines two of the most advanced technologies of this time- blockchain and artificial intelligence. In its bid to bring automation into the Web3 space, one of the main things it targets is DeFi via automated economic agents. It is a blockchain-based machine learning network that can perform all tasks for its users, including trading analysis, looking for the best prices on various exchanges, booking tickets online by sifting through the best prices, smart trading, deploying Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and other digital services. The concept behind the platform is to make blockchain ‘smart’ in the true sense and further its decentralization by making it free of human interference. Founded in 2017 by American software engineer Toby Simpson, Web3 developer Humayun Sheikh, and computer researcher Thomas Hain, it was launched via an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on the Binance Launchpad, a token launch platform by Binance.
It deploys digital twins for a user and every service provider entity on the web. To fetch information or carry out a transaction, the user’s digital twin will communicate with other digital twins that are created on the network every time somebody accesses the Fetch platform. The interaction happens among the digital twins, who have previously performed similar functions. It also adopts Machine Learning to learn what to do and how to do it when somebody else commands the same task.
The Architecture and Building Components
Fetch.io is developed using the Cosmos SDK but is based on the Ethereum blockchain, serving as a Layer 2 network on it. However, the platform is not limited to Ethereum; it can be used as an interchain bridge for other blockchains as well. The network uses a useful proof-of-work (UPoW) consensus protocol to secure itself. It is based on the Cosmos blockchain’s TenderMint consensus protocol, which is a combination of proof-of-stake and Byzantine Fault Tolerance. The UPoW protocol generates blocks in a similar way to a PoS protocol. However, there are special computational problems to validate the blocks that are packaged into PoW packages. The order of transactions is directional, determined by the work performed between the generation of two blocks. Verification of the winning solution will be performed by all the nodes of the network (PoS-type process). This eliminates competition and the calculations can be performed on simple computers, which makes ASICs not very profitable for mining, thereby making the process more decentralized. The smart contracts are coded in a high-performance programming language developed by Cosmos- CosmWasm.
The entire architecture of the platform is divided into three layers
- Autonomous Economic Agents (AEA)
They are smart agents that act in the network on the user’s behalf and perform operations. They are software entities able to perform actions without any external stimuli, i.e., automated, whose end goal is to generate economic value for the user.
They may represent real-world objects and entities, and digital items, assets, and organizations, which will communicate with each other to generate automated outcomes.
2. Open Economic Framework (OEF)
The framework provides for enabling an environment in the network for optimized rearrangement of nodes that guide the placement of AEAs. The agents are arranged in such a way that the agents seeking a certain value are placed next to other agents who have that value or a value similar to it. The nodes dynamically rearrange themselves according to the framework so that the agents always find an optimal environment for them to operate in.
3. Fetch Smart Ledger
It is an AI-powered blockchain ledger that logs all the transactions occurring on the network. The movements of the AEAs record transactions. This creates a high-traffic, low-value transaction environment, which creates network congestion. To efficiently handle the traffic, it combines the decentralized ledger with a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technique, making it a unique blockchain. It makes the entire platform highly scalable. It also uses sharding and other advanced hashing techniques.
FET: The Fetch Token
FET is the native cryptocurrency token that runs the platform. To access the platform’s services, the users need to buy FET and then spend the utility token on their desired service, transaction and gas fees, and other AI operational costs. It is an ERC-20 token and can also be used for staking and trading in the secondary markets. FET activates the user’s digital twin or the AEA, which is the AI tool that runs the AI and ML algorithms and operates the platform. This also ensures that there are no spam digital twins or malicious users manipulating the network. At the time of writing the article, the current price of FET is $0.218302, which is a 3.92% decrease over the past 24 hours. The current 24-hour trading volume is $30,690,396. With a circulating supply of 821,061,676 FET, its current market cap is $179,239,782.
Applicability and the Future Roadmap of the Ecosystem
Fetch.ai is poised to have a distinguished position as an innovator who makes Web3 ‘smart’ by incorporating AI and ML technology over blockchains and assisting automated operability. Besides enabling a smart digital economy, the AEAs also have wide-scale adoption and usability in various other applications of blockchain. It has a smart wallet, the Fetch wallet, which makes micro-transactions more efficient. AEAs can also automate well-defined processes such as supply chains, medical records, banking, Internet of Things (IoT), etc. They can also be used for smart trading. Other than that, there is a whole new market where AEAs can trade data among themselves to enhance their reinforcement learning model.
