Ritual Network: Bringing AI Natively On-Chain
May 5, 2025
TL;DR
Bridging AI and Blockchain: Ritual is building the infrastructure to integrate AI computation directly into decentralized applications and smart contracts.
Open AI Infrastructure: It aims to provide a censorship-resistant, privacy-first, and verifiable network for AI models on-chain.
Beyond Crypto x AI: While focusing on AI, Ritual's architecture supports various heterogeneous compute tasks like ZK proofs and TEEs, becoming a hub for advanced computation in Web3.
Purpose-Built Architecture: Ritual Chain is a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for AI and compute-intensive workloads, unlike chains retrofitting these capabilities.
Dual Components: The network consists of Ritual Chain (the L1) and Infernet (an oracle network bringing AI to other chains, also integrated into Ritual Chain).
Network Status: Ritual Chain is currently running on private testnet.
Introduction
As our digital world rapidly advances, the push for decentralized systems combined with smart tech is more pressing than ever. Ritual Network is stepping up with a fresh and innovative approach. While blockchain tech has delivered unmatched transparency and security, AI often remains tied down within centralized systems, which can stifle its potential and bring about worries around privacy, censorship, and integrity. Ritual Network is carving a path to weave AI seamlessly into decentralized applications, dreaming of a future where AI models are open, verifiable, and censorship-resistant in any protocol or smart contract. This vision ushers in a new era of intelligent behavior on the blockchain.
Understanding Ritual Network
Traditional centralized AI architectures face significant challenges regarding data privacy, security, and transparency. Such systems often require access to sensitive data, raising risks and hindering trust among users and organizations. Ritual offers an alternative approach to these limitations. Unlike centralized systems where control and data processing primarily reside in a single location or entity, a decentralized network distributes these functions across multiple nodes or participants within the network.
Leveraging blockchain technology, Ritual is designed for AI processing functions by enabling computational tasks while protecting the confidentiality and security of the underlying data. This architecture addresses privacy concerns by processing data without requiring complete central access or control. On top of that, providing on-chain proof of AI interactions creates a transparent, immutable record of how models perform and interact with data, which is fundamental for establishing verifiable trust in AI applications.
Ritual is purpose-built as the open AI infrastructure necessary to bring AI capabilities directly on-chain for any protocol or application. Its architecture is specifically designed to be flexible enough to produce computations that respect privacy and verification needs for different use cases. By distributing the AI processing load and utilizing blockchain for verification and transparency, Ritual provides a secure and trustworthy environment, effectively challenging the limitations of traditional centralized AI and fulfilling the urgent need for privacy-preserving, verifiable AI solutions.
What are the Key Features of Ritual Network
Ritual Network brings to the table a range of features crafted to empower developers and unveil new possibilities for decentralized applications, particularly at the Cryptocurrency and AI intersection:
Expressive, Heterogeneous Compute: Supports specialized execution directly on-chain for AI inference, ZK proofs, TEE code, and even accessing cross-chain states.
Scheduled Transactions: Lets smart contracts automatically trigger actions based on set conditions, cutting out the need for outside automation services.
Enshrined On-Chain AI Models: Offers tools to manage the lifecycle of AI models on-chain, covering training, tracking, and trading, ensuring their authenticity and integrity.
Model Marketplace: Makes it easy to monetize AI models with a clear and verifiable history.
EVM++ Extensions: Includes native support for in-demand Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that significantly improve both user and developer experience.
Native Account Abstraction: Improves functionality and the user experience of standard blockchain accounts.
Modular Computational Integrity: Gives developers the freedom to pick verification methods based on their application needs.
Native Infernet Integration: Ritual Chain nodes seamlessly tap into Infernet, Ritual’s compute oracle network, which can also serve other EVM chains.
Verifiable Provenance: Establishes unalterable, on-chain records for tracking the origin and development of AI models.
What Makes Ritual Network Unique
What truly distinguishes Ritual Network is its proof-system agnostic strategy for computational integrity, acknowledging that different apps have varying needs for security, cost, and performance. Its modular system allows developers to select and mix verification methods like:
ZKML (for top-notch security and privacy),
OPML (for efficiently verifying larger models),
PPML (for cost-effective, non-interactive statistical verification), or
TEEs (for hardware-based security)
This flexibility provides developers with the right tools for their specific application needs, rather than forcing a single, potentially inefficient method.
With innovative elements like:
Node Specialization for finely-tuned tasks,
Resonance fee market for efficient computing pricing, and
Symphony consensus protocol for scaling,
Ritual is crafting a network ready to support the next wave of intelligent, decentralized applications.
Technical Architecture Overview
The technical backbone of Ritual Network is shaped for the demands of integrating AI and specialized computation. It’s built on two main, interconnected components: Ritual Chain and Infernet.
Ritual Chain: This is Ritual's independent Layer 1 blockchain, meticulously crafted for native AI computation and other diverse tasks. Built from the ground up, it includes novel elements and a design optimized for tasks beyond typical smart contract execution, like AI inference and generating ZK proofs. Ritual Chain boasts key innovations like the Resonance fee market for efficient computing pricing and the Symphony consensus protocol for robust scaling and distributed verification. It aims to be the primary execution layer for decentralized applications that demand advanced, verifiable computation.
Infernet: As Ritual’s initial offering, Infernet is a decentralized oracle network focused on delivering verified AI computing to existing EVM-compatible blockchains. It allows developers on chains like Ethereum or Polygon to access AI capabilities without moving their decentralized applications. Crucially, Infernet is deeply integrated into Ritual Chain’s architecture, acting as a core component for delegating and managing specialized compute tasks across the network, boosting scaling and efficiency. This dual role crafts a comprehensive ecosystem for on-chain computing, offering immediate utility while powering Ritual’s Layer 1 vision.
Ritual News Bulletin
A few notable partnerships powering Ritual’s reach:
Integration with Arweave to enable permanent, trustless storage for AI models, data, and proofs on-chain, bolstering security, verifiability, and the future of decentralized AI applications.
Bringing AI capabilities to the Arbitrum ecosystem, allowing developers on Arbitrum chains to access on-chain AI models by leveraging Ritual Chain as a coprocessor, removing barriers to integrating AI and enabling smarter decentralized applications within the Arbitrum stack.
Partnering with StarkWare to bring native on-chain AI capabilities to the Starknet ecosystem and other StarkWare appchains, allowing developers to leverage Ritual Chain as a coprocessor to access AI models seamlessly and build smart, scalable dApps.
Allora Network collaboration to build a transparent, community-governed ecosystem for AI application development and deployment, with Allora serving as the Intelligence Layer (for model sharing/improvement) and Ritual as the Execution Layer (for deploying/running applications), enabling Ritual nodes to execute inferences for models on Allora and Ritual developers to use Allora's platform for model development.
Story Protocol partnership to pioneer the use of on-chain primitives for registering AI models and their outputs as IP, enabling users to bring AI assets on-chain via Ritual and register them as programmable IP Assets on Story Protocol to enhance provenance and unlock new monetization/management use cases in the AI landscape.
Conclusion
All in all, Ritual Network marks a substantial stride forward in bridging the gap between decentralized tech and Artificial Intelligence. By creating a Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for diverse computing and native AI integration, Ritual tackles key limitations in current AI infrastructure, unlocking the potential for truly intelligent decentralized applications. The blend of the specialized Ritual Chain and the adaptable Infernet oracle network forms a solid foundation. With core features like on-chain model management, flexible verification, innovative economic mechanisms, and a focus on enabling new user functionality, Ritual is poised to become the essential infrastructure for the next generation of Web3, charting a course where powerful AI is seamlessly integrated, verifiable, private, and censorship-resistant within the decentralized world.
For more information and to stay up to date on Ritual’s latest developments, visit:
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