KuCoin AMA With KIP Protocol (KIP) — Revolutionizing Web3 with Decentralized Knowledge Assets for AI

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: December 09, 2024, 02:00 PM - 03:14 PM (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session featuring Julian Peh, the Co-founder and CEO of KIP Protocol, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Official Website: https://www.kip.pro/
Whitepaper: https://kipprotocol.gitbook.io/wp 

Follow KIP Protocol on X, Telegram and Discord
 

Q: What inspired the creation of KIP Protocol, and how do you see it shaping the future of AI and blockchain?

Julian: Certainly, first, a quick background on us: The team behind KIP started in AI in 2019. Our background was from this og AI company called Eigenform. This company was founded by my current co-founder in KIP, Dr Jennifer Dodgson, a well known researcher in AI (her personal AI research substack is followed by Marc Andreesen).

I was an early significant investor and director in Eigenform. At that time we were doing AI consulting services. We specialised in helping big organisations (universities, govt bodies, NGOs, research institutes) deploy AI internally to use to crunch internal data. Over the years we grew the company to make our own scalable AI deployment frameworks and pipelines.

In late 2022, Animoca approached us to help them deploy AI internally to use on their mountain of portfolio company data. We built it and they became our clients. We then had an idea to make a Web3 Project Analysis AI Dapp. A truly decentralised AI app specialising in Web3 projects essentially. So we pivoted from building the dApp, to building the tools to help AI dApp builders. These set of tools and infrastructure is the KIP Protocol. We won the 2023 Chainlink Hackathon with essentially our V1 of KIP Protocol. At the same time, AI monopolies were starting to form,  stealing every bit of data they can get their hands on. The KIP Protocol is the missing weapon to empower everyone to have their fair share of the economic benefits of the AI powered future.

KIP was created to counter AI monopolies by decentralizing value creation and ownership. It enables developers to monetize and securely own AI assets in Web3.

 

Q: We understand KIP has gained enough credibility to engage with nations about their national AI frameworks. Can you share more about these conversations and what they mean for KIP's future?

Julian: Our credibility actually stems from 2019 because we have already been serving government bodies and many prominent universities from then, as there were very very few AI services companies back in those days. But obviously over the years, our tech has gotten much more robust and powerful, and so has our knowledge and connections strengthened.

We talk to governments now primarily about 2 things:

1. How AI affects the job landscape of the future

2. Why AI sovereignty is needed for nations

Jobs are foremost on every government’s mind. AI affects jobs, it will destroy some and create others. KIP’s deep experience in serving universities have given us a unique perspective and toolset to help mould education policy to ensure countries start training people in the jobs of the future, and de-emphasising those of the past.

The second part is on AI sovereignty. This is needed because AI is NEVER neutral. Every model has biases and prejudices inherent in the country of origin of the AI model. If you use AI to get answers, you get answers affected by those biases. AI thus acts as a source of truth, and all governments are worried that the very concept of "truth" is not neutral, or worse biased towards an alien influence.

So we talk to governments to offer them a neutral framework for the deployment of (usually open source) AI that can be trained and moulded to their particular culture and social mores. This framework is essentially the same set of tooling and infrastructure KIP Protocol has been building all these years. So when we spoke with President Milei, we had a receptive audience and a great supporter. He actually retweeted me 2 days ago! That was surreal. Besides Argentina, we have also signed an official MOU with the largest Thai government scientific research institute, focusing on stem cells. I am also scheduled to meet another Prime Minister of another country within the next 2-3 weeks. So KIP has been on a roll recently. We are very excited!

Q: KIP invented decentralized Retrieval-Augmented Generation (D/RAG), and won the Chainlink Hackathon with it. What is D/RAG, and how does it innovate on deploying DeAI?

Julian:  Yes, KIP is the inventor of D/RAG: the way to roll out AI solutions in Web3 quickly without needing to train models, and while retaining full ownership. To understand D/RAG we first need to understand RAG. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is an AI approach that allows AI models to access and incorporate relevant external information to generate answers. That means the model may not know the answer itself, but it knows how it can query an external data source to get the answer.

This means using RAG, you don't have to retrain a model to take into account external or recently added info. This provides GREAT cost and time savings in deploying AI. Huge savings. KIP invented a Web3 framework for RAG, (dubbed D/RAG), this allows RAG applications to be done in a trustless and permission-less way. What this also enables is the extremely swift deployment of AI applications in Web3, (as you do not need to train a model), while the Web3 framework guarantees ownership of Assets.



While we did not invent RAG: we created D/RAG. Bringing the huge benefits of this hyper fast growing sector of AI into Web3.

 

Q: KIP focuses on 3 big challenges: connecting AI tools, enabling fair earnings, and ensuring ownership. How does the protocol solve these challenges, and what role does the $KIP token play in driving participation?

Julian: KIP solves 3 problems for AI developers: Deployment, Connectivity and Monetisation

 

Deployment just means tokenising or tokengating the AI asset.

 

Connectivity means the decentralised assets need to still be able to share data between each other. Otherwise u just end up with tokens representing AI assets, but incapable of "doing AI"

 

Monetisation means the people creating the assets still need to be able to make revenues. otherwise they would have no reason to decentralise.

Details on how we do it, quite long and hard to explain over text, but full details can be found in our WP. I encourage those technically inclined to please check it out! But I would like to say that these problems are so fundamental that when we started trying to build that decentralised AI dApp in 2023, I was so surprised that these problems have not already been solved! But that obviously provided an opportunity for us to solve this huge problem facing all AI developers in Web3.

Ultimately we built the tools that we as veteran AI developers needed, so that other AI developers can deploy and monetise in Web3. As for the $KIP token:

The KIP token serves three core functions in our ecosystem:

1️⃣ Transaction Currency

$KIP facilitates payments within the ecosystem, serving as the primary currency for users of Web3 AI applications deployed via KIP contracts.

2️⃣ Staking Mechanisms

- Reputation Scores: Stake $KIP to establish and maintain reputation within the KIP ecosystem.

- Minting AI Assets: Stake $KIP to mint tradable Knowledge Assets and AI resources, fostering innovation and participation.

3️⃣ Governance Participation

$KIP Holders can participate in the KIP DAO, influencing key decisions on protocol upgrades, grant funding, and strategic decisions for the ecosystem.

Note: Additional utility for $KIP to be announced soon, further enhancing its value capture and role in reshaping decentralized AI.

 

Q: KIP serves all key categories in decentralized AI, including apps, models, and data. Why does this give it the largest addressable market (TAM) in this space, and how is KIP scaling its user base?

Julian: Many projects focus on only one category eg:

$TAO is decentralised inference (ie models)

$VANA is decentralised dataDAOs (ie data)

$ELIZA, Virtuals, Many AI agents and agentic platforms are working mainly in the App side.

KIP is focused on the connectivity and monetisation framework between all 3.

= We are the data rails + payment rails between all 3.

= We can be used by all

= We solve the problems faced by all

= We serve the largest TAM in all of DeAi!

On how KIP is scaling our user base:

We work with larger partners to create large scale apps. eg: We work with Open Campus to create Open Campus University (OCU), a giant decentralised education app which targets 100 million students around the world. Eg we work with Moemates.io a giant web2 AI companion app to launch AI agents. because we are the Base Layer for AI, we can work with everyone and we work with them to quickly scale up our user base.

We do not go one user at a time - that is just throwing capital into the open internet and letting the centralised internet platforms value capture all our raised capital. So, we work with partners. We prefer to do so  and we are experienced in being good partners.

Q: What impressed me the most about KIP is the photo of Julian with Argentine President Milei. It's said that KIP is the first DeAI project to have a conversation with a national leader and also the first to begin expanding into the Latin American market. 2 days ago, Milei even quoted Julian's tweet, expressing his welcome for KIP to invest in and develop AI in Argentina. Could you share what you talked about with Milei? And why did you choose to focus on Latin America?

Julian:

This picture? President Milei likes selfies. I told the photographer present he wanted a selfie instead. I've already mentioned a little about how we talk to leaders but as for Latam: President Milei has turned around a huge economy in a short time.

In my conversation with him, I was also very impressed by his sheer intelligence, vision and his economic theories. He is a libertarian and I believe our expansion in Argentina, building it as our LATAM hub will be smooth sailing. LATAM is obviously a very important market in Web3 as well, and we are eager to be stronger there. The rest of the answers on our discussion topics are on the 2nd question.

 

Q: AI agents are rapidly gaining popularity, and KIP recently announced its entry into the red hot space. Why is it that KIP can serve large-scale needs, like government AI frameworks, while also catering to consumer-focused AI agents?

Julian: It’s because we solve very base level problems that have somehow previously gone unsolved. Whether we are serving governments or universities or game studios or launching AI agents, so long as you are trying to deploy decentralised AI, these problems MUST be solved. And because we are the first movers in this space, our tech is probably currently in the lead in terms of robustness and usability. 

 

and because we have been doing it for so long, we can probably sell it the best too. (we understand what the clients are going through and what problems they are facing best) but I do want to add one small story about the AI agent space.

As insiders in the AI space we were in early on many of the early AI agent movers, and we were involved (directly or indirectly) in helping launch some of them. With the great popularity agents are currently having, we as KIP cannot just sit on the sidelines, we have to get involved. So we are. Please stay tuned, post TGE we will be launching a very degen campaign/plan to get massive attention from the AI agent fans onto KIP.

Q: KIP has invested in building a strong network of developers through initiatives like HackQuest. How has this impacted adoption and strengthened the protocol’s ecosystem?

Julian: The frank answer is it has not started yet. We have spent most of the last 2 years getting extremely high profile and difficult organisations as clients. We have proved the robustness and capabilities of our tech by being able to pitch and close and serve these difficult clients. We now want to make this tech available to everyone.

Whether you are an 18 year old tinkering with AI or an established coder looking to move into DeAI, you can use KIP tools. If you think KIP is interesting now, I can tell you that there is tremendous growth yet to come from us entering into the developers space. The best is yet to come. Last 2 years: B2B + B2G first. Now we will move to B2C.

 

Q: What recent milestones has KIP achieved, and how do they position the project for further growth?

Julian: - HackQuest Investment: We just invested into this leading hackathon organiser and developer community. This means we just "recruited" 50,000 developers for our DeAI platform.

- Argentina Partnership: Collaborated on national AI frameworks with presidential support. A lot will be announced in the coming weeks. 

 

As mentioned earlier, we have also already signed Thailand, and I will meet another Prime Minister soon.

- OCU launch + $10M DAO Approval: We are managing a 10m fund for Open Campus to launch and run OCU, the largest DAPP on the new EDU chain. 

 

This will be launched very soon. We will release a teaser video tomorrow. This will be the largest DAPP currently in Web3 focused on education. (maybe until CZ launches his haha. then we will be number 2 still).

- Moemate Partnership: Partnered with and invested in Moemate, an AI Agent platform serving over 5M users, to support its Web3 deployment and scale AI + Entertainment.

We have many others. but we at KIP pride ourselves at being the most effective at getting actual customers and user cases of our tech.

We did this while only raising what we needed, and keeping our FDV low. Signing more clients than projects that have raised 10 times what we have.

 

We believe this approach is better for the long term health of the projects. We work very progressively and very logically, into areas we have a competitive advantage in. Whether that advantage is our tech, our experience or our connections. All of them set us up for great growth in the future.

Q: How does KIP ensure it delivers working products and real value, unlike many projects that overpromise and underdeliver?

Julian: Great question. This is indeed a problem with the Web3 space. In the case of the KIP Protocol, you don't have to trust what I say about our products, you just have to see which clients we already have, i.e. which clients have decided to trust us.

We have universities, large Web3 organisations, large Web2 companies and governments. We have been around since 2019 and we have been public and doxxed all this time. (I have been doxxed and in the public eye since 1998) I feel in this area we should be well trusted by our community.

Q: In the current volatile market, where investors are hesitant, what are the compelling reasons to invest in your tokens? Furthermore, what are the incentives for token holders to hold onto them?

Julian: Even though I spent most of my life as a tech founder, I was a VC and PE investor for a few years too and my mantra is always to look for the founding teams that don't give up, that have something to prove.

A startup's life is extremely difficult and full of risks. It is not only easy to give up, it is sometimes the most rational thing to do. If you join the KIP community, you have to believe that we do not give up, that we have something to prove. You can see that from our long track record. It's a bull market, and all teams that are serious in building and serving their community, will usually get the trust of the community. so at KIP we just focus on building and serving. The market will take care of the rest.

 

Q: Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So, I’d like to know who are your ideal consumer for your product?

Julian: Always. We are always iterating and learning and adapting. This is one thing we were forced to do since the early days of AI, because at that time we had to explain what AI is, then explain the need for AI.

Q: Is KIP Protocol accessible to small investors or only for elite ones?

Julian: Our core mission is to ensure EVERYONE, you and I as individuals enjoy fairly the economic benefits of an AI powered future. To do that we want to have everyone involved in the KIP vision. so it's definitely not only for elite ones. (even for the top name VCs investing into us, we intentionally made sure they could not invest too much. we don't want the cap table to be overly skewed towards big institutions)

Q: When and where can I buy your tokens? 

Julian: You can buy it on KuCoin!

🎁 Participate in the KIP Protocal AMA quiz now for a chance to win 1,000 KIP.

 

The form will remain open for five days from publishing this AMA recap

KuCoin and KIP Protocol have prepared a total of 200,000 KIP to give away to AMA participants.

1. Pre-AMA activity: 80,000 KIP

2. Free-ask section: 5,000 KIP

3. Flash mini-game: 40,000 KIP

4. Post-AMA quiz: 75,000 KIP

 

Sign up for a KuCoin account if you haven’t done so yet, and ensure you complete your KYC verification to be eligible for the rewards.

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