Nebula AI ( NBAI) ICO Review

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Before blockchain gains popularity last year, the hottest technology was Artificial Intelligence(AI). In 2016, Google’s AI system, AlphaGo beat the world champion at the game Go, and Hanson Robotics’ social humanoid robot, Sophia made her first appearance. AI is still a very popular subject today and blockchain technology is also becoming more and more mature. Therefore, we might wonder what will happen if these two emerging technologies are integrated together?
The relationship between AI and blockchain is like the Yin and the Yang ☯️. AI is probabilistic, it uses what is learnt to predict the future, whereas blockchain is deterministic, the same inputs will always produce the same outputs. AI is also always changing as more and more data is provided to update the system. Blockchain on the other hand is permanent and unchangeable. The purpose of AI algorithms is to guess at reality while blockchain algorithms are used to record reality. There are already some AI + blockchain projects in the market, but this particular project, Nebula AI, is trying to solve some real issues that the industries are facing.

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What is Nebula AI?
Nebula AI presents itself as a decentralized blockchain integrated with AI and sharing economies. We all know that AI machines require high computational power and it is very expensive due to the high fees charged by cloud computing services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Recently, many mining farms with high computational power are built to mine Bitcoin or Ethereum. However, many computing power are wasted in the hash game of mining cryptocurrencies. What if part of the power can be allocated to run AI calculations? Well, miners will be able to do this with Nebula AI and they will receive cryptocurrency, the Nebula AI tokens in return. The distributed computing network of Nebula AI will provide a cheaper solution for AI developers.

Running AI also requires a large amount of data. Today, these data are stored in a centralized way, in the servers of Google for instance. It is never safe to let a third party to control our own data. Using the system of Nebula AI, your data is stored securely in the blockchain and only you with the private keys can access it.

Furthermore, Nebula AI will be the first to provide the tools for developers to develop Decentralized AI Applications (DAI) on top of their blockchain. Currently on their website there is a demo of a DAI, called Quant AI, which can be used to predict cryptocurrency's price. The blockchain and AI technology can also be used for Sentiment Analysis and Writing Recognition.

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Nebula AI Ecosystem
How does it work?
According to the whitepaper, the Nebula AI (NBAI) Ecosystem consists of two components, the NBAI foundation and the NBAI system.

The NBAI Foundation will be a non-profit and independent organization where different universities, institutes and research centers will join force to conduct research about AI.The NBAI Foundation is also responsible to train AI engineers as well as to promote AI.

The NBAI system is where we can find the core technologies. Nebula AI will use a new consensus algorithm, called the Proof of Group (PoG). Miners use their computing power to perform AI algorithms calculation and they will receive NBAI tokens as rewards. If you would like to understand more about the PoG algorithm, it is very well-explained in the whitepaper.

Nebula AI has actually planned for the wide-adoption of their AI blockchain in the future by cooperating with large-scale third-party data centers in Quebec. Quebec has always been the best place to built a data centre thanks to the low electricity rates, low temperature and government’s effort to attract AI talents. The last component of the NBAI system is of course the AI mining machines. Common AI algorithms and other useful libraries will be pre-installed and the machines can be used to run AI calculations as well as to mine coins.

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Team
23 members are listed on the website. Most of them are blockchain developers and AI engineers.

The CEO and co-Founder, Charles Cao, graduated from Fudan University, one of the most prestigious universities in China, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronic Engineering. He previously worked at IBM, SAP, Autodesk and Expedia before founded Nebula AI. He is also the founder of Montreal IT Association with more than 700 members.

Dr. Xiong Tengke, the AI Architect, has a Ph.D in Computer Science. He has more than 10 years of experiences in AI and has published many articles regarding data mining and machine learning.

The team is also backed by some reputable advisors. One of them is Yu Guan, who was Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and is currently the CTO of Domum Link, an online residential property management platform.

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Partners

Nebula AI has partnered with McGill University and Concordia University. McGill University School of Medicine and Nebula AI is working together to study the use of AI in surgery, while Concordia University’s professor, Yan Liu, who is also one of their advisors, is helping Nebula AI with the encryption. One of their partners is WeHash, a mining farm where Nebula AI can use the computational power to test their products. They also have secured some partners in China, like Beepay and Detrust.

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Investors
So, who has already invested in Nebula AI? It is great to see the title of some famous investors like Consensus Capital (invested in OmiseGO, Filecoin, Zilliqa, etc) and Fengshui Capital (invested in NEO, Dragonchain, Quantstamp, etc).

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Token metrics
Nebula AI is currently in the stage of public sale and it will run for one more week, until 20th April. Currently NBAIs are ERC20 tokens but they will be swapped once the main net is launched.
Token: NBAI
Price: 1 ETH = 100 000 NBAI
Soft cap: 5000 ETH
Hard cap: 30 000 ETH
Total supply: 6,7 Billion
Circulating supply: 3 015 000 000 (45%)
Market cap: Around 18M (with 1 ETH = 600 USD)

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Summary
Nebula AI is definitely one of the most under-the-radar blockchain project right now (their Telegram has less than 5000 members!). It is the first blockchain for AI and it lays the fundamental infrastructure to enable developers to deploy innovative AI applications, in various industries, with high efficiency and low cost. Blockchain and AI are two technologies that are currently changing our world. It is just a matter of time until AI (the Yin) and blockchain (the Yang) are combined seamlessly together.