InfStones Joins Sahara AI's SIWA Testnet as an Early Participant

InfStones is excited to announce our early participation in the Sahara AI SIWA testnet, a project that's tackling one of the most pressing challenges in today's AI landscape: ownership and attribution. As a leading provider of blockchain infrastructure services, we're contributing as an early validator to support this ambitious initiative that aligns with our commitment to advancing next-generation Web3 ecosystems.

This collaboration represents a natural convergence of our expertise in decentralized infrastructure with Sahara's mission to democratize AI development, data ownership, and attribution through blockchain technology.

What is Sahara AI?

Sahara AI is building a decentralized infrastructure layer that enables developers, researchers, and organizations to build, own, and monetize AI assets—models, datasets, and pipelines—on a secure and permissionless blockchain network. By putting provenance, attribution, and licensing on-chain, Sahara AI creates a trustless platform where contributors receive fair compensation for their AI contributions.

The Sahara Blockchain isn't just another layer-1. It's an AI-native blockchain purpose-built to support dynamic AI assets with modular execution environments, ownership NFTs, smart contract-enforced licenses, and verifiable data usage histories.

The protocol's design ensures AI developers can publish their models and datasets with full control over permissions and usage, while supporting automated royalty sharing when those assets are reused, fine-tuned, or deployed via API.

The protocol's design ensures AI developers can publish their models and datasets with full control over permissions and usage, while supporting automated royalty sharing when those assets are reused, fine-tuned, or deployed via API.

What is the SIWA Testnet?

Launched in May 2025, SIWA (Sahara Infrastructure With Attribution) is Sahara AI's public testnet. It allows developers, contributors, and validators to engage with Sahara's core protocols in a live environment ahead of the mainnet release.

SIWA goes beyond traditional testing by building a community through the Sahara Points program, which rewards meaningful contributions like running nodes, publishing AI assets, and exploring licensing features.

Sahara is designed with a suite of impactful features—such as data registration, programmable licensing, contributor attribution, and decentralized node participation—that together form the foundation of a robust, AI-native blockchain ecosystem.

AI Asset Registration – Developers can register datasets and models on-chain using a structured metadata and ownership system. This creates tamper-proof records and ties each asset to a unique Ownership NFT that governs its lifecycle.

Licensing & Revenue Sharing – Once assets are registered, contributors can define usage terms through programmable licenses (e.g., for training, fine-tuning, or API access). Sahara's protocol automates revenue distribution based on these licenses using smart contracts and on-chain attribution logic.

Validator Participation & Node Operation – Sahara encourages permissionless decentralization by enabling the community to run validator and full nodes using clear documentation and open APIs. This secures the network while democratizing access to participation rewards.

Attribution for Pipelines & Derivatives – Sahara supports sophisticated lineage tracking across AI development chains. Relationships like TRAINED_ON and FINETUNED_FROM allow contributors to receive automated royalties and recognition for downstream AI outputs built on their work.

These features are being tested incrementally and designed to work seamlessly together once Sahara's mainnet launches later this year.

Why InfStones Joined the SIWA Testnet?

At InfStones, our mission is to empower the Web3 world with reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure. We operate thousands of validators and full nodes across 80+ blockchain networks, and Sahara's vision of combining AI ownership with blockchain provenance aligns with our long-term industry perspective.

As an early SIWA testnet participant, InfStones is actively running validator nodes to help secure the network, provide feedback, and assist in decentralizing Sahara's infrastructure. We're working alongside Sahara Labs to share insights on node performance, deployment tooling, and community onboarding best practices.

Through this collaboration, we're not just operating infrastructure. We're partnering in the development of a transformative platform.

What Makes Sahara AI Special?

Many blockchain projects claim to intersect with AI, but few are truly AI-native at the protocol level. Sahara distinguishes itself through ground-up design for managing dynamic AI assets:

OpenAPI-first documentation and integration – Sahara allows developers to publish OpenAPI-compatible endpoints and AI models directly into the network's registry, making them discoverable and callable through blockchain-verified access.

Tokenized ownership with attribution baked in – Whether you're a dataset creator, model trainer, or fine-tuner, Sahara's Global Asset Registry ensures your contributions are logged, attributed, and compensated when reused.

Smart licensing infrastructure – Using license tokens, contributors can define exact terms under which their assets may be used (e.g. royalty fees, usage caps, API gating), all enforceable via smart contracts.

Composable AI pipelines – Sahara's metadata system supports relationships between assets, allowing complex pipelines to be constructed, reused, and monetized collaboratively.

Sahara Studio and Marketplace (upcoming) – Developers will soon be able to publish, monetize, and browse AI models in a decentralized marketplace, bringing greater discoverability and utility to AI assets in the Web3 world.

This architecture isn't an afterthought. It's purpose-built for today's collaborative, composable AI workflows. That's what makes Sahara not just innovative, but necessary.

Looking Ahead: From Testnet to Mainnet

With the SIWA testnet in full swing and tens of thousands of contributors already registered, Sahara AI is on track for a Q3 2025 mainnet launch. InfStones' participation in the testnet represents our commitment to supporting innovative projects at the intersection of blockchain and AI. Through our testnet validation work, we're contributing valuable infrastructure expertise while gaining insights into AI-native blockchain design.

We see Sahara AI not only as a technological advancement but as a movement that puts data sovereignty, model transparency, and contributor attribution at the heart of AI innovation. These values are essential for building trust and fairness into AI systems that will increasingly shape our world.

Our current collaboration with Sahara Labs and the broader community focuses on optimizing testnet performance, expanding tooling resources, and supporting the onboarding of new participants during this critical development phase. As Sahara approaches its mainnet launch, we're excited about the possibilities this platform represents for the broader Web3 ecosystem.

For updates on our ongoing testnet work and other cutting-edge Web3 infrastructure projects, follow InfStones as we continue building the foundational layer for tomorrow's decentralized applications.