Solana integrates AI with ChatGPT plugin

(Kitco News) – The rise of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces in 2023 has taken the world by storm, prompting many in the cryptocurrency ecosystem to wonder how the technology could be applied to the blockchain industry and what benefits it might offer.

That question just received its first answer as developers at the Solana Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana network, have announced that the Solana blockchain has become the first Layer 1 blockchain to integrate artificial intelligence with a ChatGPT plugin developed by Solana Labs.

The ChatGPT plugin integrated with Solana, which is currently available for download on Github, “serves as a reference for how AI can make it easier to understand Solana data and protocols, or surface data about Solana’s computing infrastructure and DeFi projects,” the announcement said.

With the plugin, users can easily buy NFTs, transfer tokens, inspect transactions, interpret public account data, and find NFT collections by floor price.

“Every developer building consumer-oriented apps should be thinking about how their app is going to be interacted with through an AI model because this is a new paradigm for telling computers what to do,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana co-founder and Solana Labs CEO. “AI will make Solana more usable and understandable.”

When asked how AI integration with Solana might be different from other blockchains, Yakovenko highlighted the low-cost nature of the Solana network as being ideal for integration with artificial intelligence.

“For right now, ChatGPT plugin is reading on-chain data that can help construct transactions that can be run on-chain,” Yakovenko said. “But Solana is cheap and fast so we hope that people will be able to run these transactions within a ChatGPT loop. That means that the machine interface to the chain is cheap enough for ChatGPT to be able to do it. You need both speed and cost advantages to make a good user experience, otherwise, it doesn’t really work.”

To go along with the release of the new plugin, the Solana Foundation also announced an AI accelerator program for university students and a strategic grant program to accelerate the usage and integration of AI on Solana.

The Foundation has pledged $10 million for the AI-focused strategic grants program, which is intended to “encourage the ecosystem to explore new use cases of machine learning models interacting with Solana protocols in safe and interpretable ways.” The grants program has already received 50 applications, they said.

To help get development started, the Solana Foundation launched a 3-month long accelerator program for university students that has a full cohort dedicated to experimenting with blockchain and AI.

The accelerator has already yielded results, including the release of an ‘ask Solana U’ chatbot, “which answers questions about Solana development and helps find the right Solana documentation,” as well as Solana Audits AI, “which is designed to enhance security for Solana-based programs.”

Several projects within the Solana ecosystem have also started utilizing AI technology to improve their offerings. One example is Hivemapper, which launched AI Trainers in mid-April to accelerate the ability of its AI to convert real-world imagery into high-quality digital maps with necessary details covering speed limits, warning signs, and other street-related information.

And the team at MarginFi has introduced its Omni chatbot, which can answer questions about Solana and a range of Solana-based projects, including Meteora, Jupiter, Tensor, Mango Markets, Zeta, Kamino, Lido, and Orca, among others.