Lilypad, a distributed, permissionless compute network harnessing idle processing power to fuel an open AI data economy, announces the details of its IncentiveNet, which will reward participants providing services, utility, and value to the Lilypad Network. The Lilypad team, composed of developers from Web2 and Web3 giants like IBM, AWS, Protocol Labs, Coinbase, Near, Google, Atlassian and esteemed researchers from Stanford University, aims to democratise access to high-performance computing through a serverless, distributed multi-chain network.
IncentiveNet presents a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork for essential core compute infrastructure crucial for the viability of open, decentralised AI and to challenge the dominance of cloud oligopolies. Participants are encouraged to contribute to network stability and establish sufficient nodes at launch. This entails thorough testing to ensure resilience, detect bugs and vulnerabilities, and validate operational and game theory logic. Participants will be rewarded in the form of Lilybit_ credits, which will be redeemable for the Lilypad ERC20 Token at Mainnet Launch.
Alison Haire, CEO and Founder of Lilypad, said: “Artificial intelligence is the zeitgeist of our era, reshaping industries, revolutionizing work dynamics, and transforming daily life beyond previous imagination. As AI reshapes our world, we bear the responsibility to ensure it serves the public good, embodying an ethos of accessibility and availability akin to the early days of the web. High costs and resource intensity currently cement the power of dominant firms. At Lilypad, we believe an ethical AI future and open-source, decentralised networks are inextricably linked. The Lilypad team is building a solution to unleash the processing power of idle hardware, ensuring a distributed compute network as the backbone of the new digital AI age. We aim to provide a secure, performant decentralised compute network for the fourth industrial revolution.”
The Lilypad team champions compute as the cornerstone of an open web and AI framework striving to unlock access to a universal compute layer as a public good. Developers will be able to seamlessly execute internet-scale computation tasks from smart contracts (on any EVM-compatible chain), CLI, or traditional SaaS workflows. Use cases span AI, ML, gaming, DeFi, and DeSci. Serving as a coordination platform, Lilypad unites user demand for compute services with providers, offering new revenue streams and optimised efficiency to hardware businesses.
Originally incubated at Protocol Labs and built on Bacalhau, a peer-to-peer protocol that enables decentralised communication between computers, Lilypad is unlike other systems, where access to high-powered compute hardware is limited and costly. Instead, Lilypad endeavours to lower entry barriers and enable new use cases for developers and node providers through a permissionless and distributed job-based system. Lilypad provides a compute coordination platform and operates as the backend for compute where users, protocols, providers and projects can interact and feed into an open infrastructure stack to extend global access to efficient compute power.
Haire added: “Our mission is to equip developers with the necessary tools they need to build an open web and be a critical link in a collaborative, decentralised AI platform that anyone can contribute to and use.”
For more information, visit Lilypad’s IncentiveNet blog post or join the Lilypad community via Discord or X.