Onchain Inference Markets Post Record Token Usage
Surplus usage rose ~2.3x in under a month to a record 312.6B tokens on Oct 18, as rivals' volumes climb and critics demand dollar figures.
Onchain inference is scaling fast. Base-based Surplus Intelligence's dashboard shows daily tokens climbing from 133.6B on Sep 23 to 312.6B on Oct 18 (UTC), and 0xJeff says Dolphin "hit 32.2B after 1 week of API going live," up from "~14B tok/day" he cited three days earlier. The open question, again, is how much of it is paid demand.
What's the Scoop?
Pushback: AntSeed co-founder Amos Meiri, whose inference marketplace is a competitor, wrote "Token count say almost nothing!" and said "at minimum, we should ask for transparent USD spend." Surplus's dashboard reports user savings, not spend.
Dollar Bar: As an example, Meiri held up Venice "with 500b tokens daily and $150m ARR." Onchain dollars elsewhere stay small: AntSeed has settled about $310K on Base since launch, keeping roughly $12K in fees.
Bigger Picture: Inference has emerged one of the most dominant intersections of AI and crypto, with the latter offering advantages like discounted model access and some pseudonymity, paying from a wallet rather than an account tied to an email, card, or KYC profile.
David Christopher
David is a writer/analyst at Bankless. Prior to joining Bankless, he worked for a series of early-stage crypto startups and on grants from the Ethereum, Solana, and Urbit Foundations. He graduated from Skidmore College in New York. He currently lives in the Midwest and enjoys NFTs, but no longer participates in them.
