OpenLedger and UC Berkeley Give Students Direct Ownership in Building Decentralized AI

Decentralized AI blockchain OpenLedger has joined hands with Blockchain at Berkeley in the research and development of community-owned, transparent AI models.

Blockchain at Berkeley is a student-led organization from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. It collaborates with OpenLedger on “a direct counter to the closed systems dominating today’s AI landscape,” said the press release shared with Cryptonews.

The goal is to create an onchain foundation for transparent and specialized intelligence. At the same time, students building the AI models will have direct ownership over them and the related data. This approach, the teams claim, transforms the students’ and researchers’ role from passive observers to “active architects.”

That said, students and researchers will work to build and train domain-specific AI models on OpenLedger’s decentralized infrastructure. Furthermore, they will contribute verifiable, permissioned datasets, and experiment with innovative attribution frameworks, says the announcement.

Moreover, to encourage all this, OpenLedger will offer grants for “standout model development and valuable data contributions.” The participating individuals will also be earning onchain rewards for their contributions.

Meanwhile, the models they build will have immediate utility across industries, OpenLedger claims. “From decentralized finance and predictive healthcare to autonomous governance and smart cities, the collaboration focuses on high-impact sectors where accuracy, transparency, and public accountability aren’t optional, they’re mission-critical,” it says.

Turning Decentralized AI Contributors Into Stakeholders

OpenLedger says it aims to engage top universities in the decentralized AI space. Currently, the concerns are increasing over AI monopolies, while the regulators are focused on model transparency, OpenLedger says.

Therefore, the collaboration with Berkley forms a basis for “open, ethical, and academically driven AI development” and “frameworks where every contribution is traceable, every model is explainable, and ownership flows back to the creators.”

According to Ram, Core Contributor at OpenLedger, the partners are “rewriting the AI playbook.” They’re turning contributors into stakeholders. “Every model is accountable to the community that powers it,” Ram says.

Meanwhile, in mid-May, the team announced the launch of the OpenLedger Foundation. Its goal, it says, is to “oversee and ensure that the contributors, the people who are powering every AI model, are fairly recognized and rewarded for their efforts.” OpenLedger Foundation has seen over 1.1 million users already active on the testnet.

Earlier this month, the Foundation announced it would deploy $5 million in grants. This fund will support open-source developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs building AI apps in a decentralized way. The apps will “span everything from voice agents and autonomous video editors to vertical-specific language models and intelligent copilots,” it stated.

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