Developer

Builders use bitcoin to monetize AI

• 3 min read
Builders use bitcoin to monetize AI

Ai4ALL, organized by Fedi and Stak, was the first electrifying hackathon set to revolutionize how we use Bitcoin to democratize AI access. Running remotely from July 1st - Aug 1st this event was hosted on the BOLT.FUN and Replit platforms.

A mind blowing number of 173 makers participated in the hackathon and submitted 44 projects. That’s a huge success and a great achievement of the organizers.

Developers used bitcoin to give agents and LLMs the ability to perform economic actions. They coordinated economic incentives around building and running AI models at scale with bitcoin payments or introduced bitcoin to create tools without giving up the user’s privacy.

Workshops and live coding sessions

The hackathon was packed with a series of workshops, live coding sessions, and interactive tutorials about how to receive bitcoin payments from users of your app, how to monetize npm packages, or prompt engineering

Overview of projects

How are developers and apps using bitcoin to power their AI applications:

Photobolt

PhotoBolt is the winner of this hackathon. The app turns a product image into a poster by breaking down the work into a chain of smaller jobs, publishing them to the Nostr network for generative AI service providers to compete against each other in completing the jobs.

Photobolt makes use of bitcoin’s micropayment capability over the lightning network. The app implemented WebLN, an open standard for bitcoin payments on the web. The showcase demonstrates a seamless UX for payments with WebLN enabled wallets like the Alby Browser Extension.

But the highlight of this project is the Data Vending Machine concept specified as NIP-90. It allows agents to offer their services in an open marketplace which can serve as the basis for very effective and efficient machine-to-machine interactions.

Flow

Flow is the winner of the Agents track. The project showcases how bitcoin adoption for AI based automation can scale with no-code workflows. People without programming skills or bitcoin knowledge are now able to monetize their workflows. It leverages the simplicity of an Alby wallet via Nostr Wallet Connect and L402 for n8n, a no-code workflow platform like Zapier.

Bitcoin-PAL

Bitcoin-PAL won the track for training AI models. The team created an AI chatbot coupled with an incentivized crowd-sourcing platform to train and educate LLMs and users with bitcoin.

As showcased in the demo users can add their Alby lightning address to receive rewards paid in bitcoin for their work.

BitDevs Upgraded

Demo video

BitDevs Upgraded won the prize for the education track. Meetups are great places to learn about bitcoin and related technologies. However, this environment can sometimes be challenging for newcomers. The team improves the experience of BitDevs attendees by making a new website template with a fresh new UI and AI LLM generated summaries of meetup content.

Netonomy

Demo video

Netonomy won the price for the privacy track by building a portal to a decentralized future where individuals and organizations regain control over their digital identity, data, and finances. and interact through open protocols. The project uses Nostr NIP-07 to let users bring their own identity and log into the app. On top it uses WebLN to let users connect their own wallets. Both features come out of the box with the Alby Browser Extension. The app allows users to post jobs to the Nostr network and pay for AI generated results over bitcoin.

Other projects

These might be the winners, but the creativity of projects was mind blowing. Just to mention the winners is not doing justice. Have a look at these live, up and running applications:

  • Transcribe.fm: A transcription service for podcasters with speaker diarization & word-by-word fidelity where you can pay-what-you-want with your Alby Lightning wallet. Also available as an L402 API
  • PlebAI: A free and open Source ChatGPT with open source Large Language Models payable with bitcoin via WebLN.
  • Matador: A service that lets you sell API access against an arbitrary API using your API Key in exchange for bitcoin micropayments via L402 Payment Required Codes.
  • And many more here!

Bitcoin drives monetization of AI

It is obvious, the tooling to integrate bitcoin payments is reaching a tipping point. It has become seamless for developers to monetize apps while ensuring a superior user experience. Payments over the open bitcoin protocol avoid chargeback risk, enable highly efficient pay as you go pricing models and have a global reach unaffected by borders or limited access to bank accounts.

If you have ideas or questions about infusing your AI based app with bitcoin, feel free to reach out.

Mentioned resources: