Akash Network, a marketplace for renting out spare computer chips to run AI, said Monday its token holders had voted to move the decentralized project off its own blockchain and onto Solana.
The reason comes down to overhead. Akash pays to run an entire standalone blockchain without needing any of its special powers, Greg Osuri, chief executive of Overclock Labs, the main developer behind Akash, wrote in an Oct. 26 blog post. About 100 independent operators, called validators, lock up AKT tokens just to keep the chain secure, and his team maintains its own versions of the underlying Cosmos software.
On Solana, Akash would piggyback on the bigger network's security and pay fees Osuri pegged at a few dollars a day.
Some 97% of votes cast were in favor, with about 69% of staked AKT taking part, according to the Mintscan blockchain explorer. Akash announced the result on X.
ICYMI – check out our podcast with Greg Osuri: DeAI News Journal: The Money Behind DeAI
The switch puts one of the longest-running DeAI computing networks next to rivals such as io.net, Render and Nosana, which already operate on Solana. The cost is independence: Akash gives up control of its own chain, and the validators lose their role and income.
"Cosmos was remote island," Osuri wrote on X on Nov. 1, as token holders were voting. "Solana is a thriving metropolis."
AKT will be reissued as a Solana token in roughly two to three weeks, once two audits are done, with a one-way swap portal open for two years, according to the proposal. The marketplace itself won't move until a separate vote sets a date.
The DeAI angle: The vote tests whether decentralized computing networks are better off running their own blockchains or borrowing security from a bigger one. Akash gets cheaper fees and a place among Solana's other computing networks, but its marketplace will rely on a chain whose speed and fees it can't change, a trade-off the company acknowledged in its blog post.
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