Big investment firms from BlackRock to Grayscale suggest that blockchain networks are uniquely suited to host fast-growing computer-sharing networks needed to process AI queries.
But for now, blockchain projects’ share of the AI computation market remains tiny, according to a new report from Blockworks Advisory, the consulting arm of crypto data and analysis firm Blockworks.
Seven providers served about 211 billion tokens daily over the past month, roughly 1% of traffic on OpenRouter, which routes requests to AI models. The comparison excludes providers’ direct business and most global demand.
The report puts OpenRouter’s daily average at 21.9 trillion tokens, compared with an estimated global daily volume of about 400 trillion.
Privacy-focused Venice led the group of crypto projects examined in the Blockworks report, with 86.8 billion tokens a day, followed by confidential-computing provider Phala at 54.6 billion and Darkbloom at 15.3 billion. Rounding out the list were io.net, AkashML, NEAR AI and Chutes (a subnet on the Bittensor network).
Token consumption on OpenRouter, by crypto project. (Blockworks Advisory)
Earlier DeAI News coverage found that BlackRock sees potential for agents to shop across computing providers, while Grayscale identified decentralized alternatives for financing AI infrastructure. BlackRock also cautioned that compute-market liquidity remained limited.
Blockworks disclosed that Eigen Labs commissioned it for advisory services. The report covers EigenCloud projects Darkbloom and Yukon.
The DeAI angle: As the Blockworks consultants put it, "It is not clear if crypto has a unique moat to win this market, but experiments and innovation are promising."
HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: I drafted this story in Hermes using an OpenAI model and a custom skill, then used the Distro Publisher MCP connector to file the draft directly to DeAI News on the web app DistroVerse. I then used the DistroVerse built-in story-editing interface to do the final edit and upload the chart and table.