Solana Foundation Highlights AI-Related Activities on Solana
Overview
The Solana Foundation has highlighted a range of artificial intelligence (AI)-related activities currently happening on the Solana blockchain. From chatbots to accelerators to grant programs, Solana is at the forefront of integrating AI with its layer 1 blockchain.
Interview with Anatoly Yakovenko
Solana co-founder and Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko discussed his views on AI with Jonathan Abramovich, who leads infrastructure business development for the Solana Foundation.
AI’s Impact on Solana
Jonathan Abramovich: What are your broad views on AI and how it impacts Solana?
Anatoly Yakovenko: I think the natural language interface that ChatGPT has enabled is interesting and cool. It feels like it’s as big of a shift as when Microsoft Windows and the computer mouse were first introduced. So now we’re going into reasonably well-working text-based interfaces that can do complex actions.
ChatGPT Plugin
Jonathan Abramovich: Is that the intention with the ChatGPT plugin?
Anatoly Yakovenko: Yes, exactly. The plugin just gives you a text interface, like a text-based block explorer. You can describe an object on-chain and it will respond by telling you that it is an NFT account or something like that. So that’s kind of cool but it won’t yet mint an NFT set. What I want it to do is be able to write to the chain but we’re not there yet. The plugin was easy to do, though – one of our devs did the initial build in a weekend.
AI’s Potential on Solana
Jonathan Abramovich: Why is AI coming to Solana right now in a way that it’s not happening on other chains?
Anatoly Yakovenko: For right now, ChatGPT plugin is reading on-chain data that can help construct transactions that can be run on-chain. But Solana is cheap and fast so we hope that people will be able to run these transactions within a ChatGPT loop. That means that the machine interface to the chain is cheap enough for ChatGPT to be able to do it. You need both speed and cost advantages to make a good user experience, otherwise, it doesn’t really work.
Current Stage of AI on Solana
Jonathan Abramovich: What is the stage we’re in for applying AI to Solana?
Anatoly Yakovenko: Right now, we’re in the stage of discovering what AI can do. I encourage devs to go write plugins for whatever software they are working on, interact with it, and discover what it can do. I don’t think anyone knows where it’s supposed to go. It’s just really, really cool that you can basically treat it like a Star Trek computer. The Star Trek computer wasn’t perfect – it couldn’t answer arbitrary questions, but you could tell it to do something and it would go do it. This is where I think LLMs have brought us. That’s a pretty different experience than normal computer interactions or even Siri.
Impact of AI on Solana Ecosystem
Jonathan Abramovich: How else will AI make an impact on the Solana ecosystem?
Anatoly Yakovenko: I already see developers using it to document and understand the code more, like using GPT models for documentation and plugins for automation. Other large language model style things are going to make it easier for devs to generate code for smart contracts, find bugs, and then write test code. I think it could be used to even find vulnerabilities.
Validator Front
Jonathan Abramovich: What about on the validator front?
Anatoly Yakovenko: That’s interesting. There’s a lot of data that validators monitor. I bet somebody could build AI-optimized monitoring tools for data – maybe someone is already working on that.
Firedancer
Jonathan Abramovich: When Firedancer gets up and running there will be two unique code bases that Solana runs on – does that just imply that there’s just twice as much information and data to comb through, and could an AI help with that?
Anatoly Yakovenko: Ooh, I wonder – a sophisticated-enough AI should be able to look at the two code bases and write a third one that isn’t dependent on the other two. That would be cool.
Specific Applications of AI on Solana
Jonathan Abramovich: What about specific applications of AI on Solana?
Anatoly Yakovenko: I expect to see AI that is differentiated by the data that it is trained on. Crowdsourcing data is really hard so very up-to-date data sources will probably come from crowdfunded, crypto-based projects, such as Hivemapper. Another thing that I think would be cool is an AI plugin that you tell, "Hey, I want to do an NFT set with 10,000 images in this style with these traits”, and then stable diffusion generates the whole thing, mints them on chain, sets up a Discord group, starts answering questions, and starts building out lore and stories. I think there’s a lot of interesting, weird things that could happen.
Conclusion
The integration of AI with Solana’s layer 1 blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the way developers interact with the chain. With the ChatGPT plugin and other AI-related activities, Solana is poised to become a leader in the development of AI-powered blockchain solutions.
FAQs
Q: What is the current stage of AI on Solana?
A: We’re in the stage of discovering what AI can do and encouraging developers to experiment with AI-powered plugins.
Q: How will AI impact the Solana ecosystem?
A: AI will make it easier for developers to generate code for smart contracts, find bugs, and write test code, and could even be used to find vulnerabilities.
Q: What about on the validator front?
A: AI-optimized monitoring tools for data could be built to help validators monitor and manage their nodes.
Q: Will AI take away the fun work of development?
A: No, it will take away the hard and annoying work, allowing developers to focus on the creative aspects of their projects.
