The Ora Protocol (formerly known as HyperOracle) is a verifiable oracle protocol that brings AI and complex computation on-chain. It was co-founded by Kartin Wong in September 2022. ^[1][2]

Overview

Ora has two main products:

• AI Oracle (OAO): Brings AI onchain.
• ZK Oracle: Brings complex compute and historical data on-chain.

Ora expands the capabilities of smart contracts by integrating richer data sources and computing power, enabling developers to innovate without constraints. Ora's solutions have gained trust from various entities, including Compound, Ethereum Foundation, Polygon, and Uniswap. ^[3]

Ora positions itself as an oracle solution for developers, offering practical AI Oracle functionality usable on Ethereum. Additionally, their ZK Oracle is trustless and solely cryptography-based. The on-chain AI engine supports LlaMA 2 (7B) and Stable Diffusion, available for direct on-chain integration, with plans to support any ML model in the future. Ora aims for fast deployment across various networks, including any network and any Layer 2, enabling developers to create their own programmable, permissionless, and censorship-resistant AI / ZK oracles. ^[3]

Technology

Ora provides developers with a way to build end-to-end trustless and decentralized applications, with AI Oracle (OAO, Onchain AI Oracle introduced on February 14, 2024) and ZK Oracle. ^[4]

Ora's decentralized protocol and network is used by developers to define custom computations, register those computations to ORA protocol, and utilize ORA CLE standards to enhance their smart contracts with automation or AI. ^[4]

zkOracle can be described as a node, similar to an Ethereum node, that carries out computations but also produces zero-knowledge proofs. The Ora protocol is operated by AI / ZK Oracle Nodes to execute and secure computations with verifiable proofs. ^[4]

Ora Protol offers an on-chain oracle protocol (zkOracle protocol) that handles arbitrary computations for blockchain smart contracts. Meanwhile, Ethereum provides a blockchain smart contract network. ^[5]

zkPOS for Data Provenance

HyperOracle zkPoS provides trustless access to the Ethereum blockchain as source data, by proving the whole Ethereum consensus. zkPoS can be likened to the core root data of the HyperOracle network. ^[6]

zkGraph for Programmability

After obtaining the Ethereum source data through zkPoS, zkGraph acts as a "smart contract" like program to define the custom computation of the source data, but with a higher degree of flexibility and boundless computation power. If zkOracle is a CD player, zkGraph is one of the different CDs. Also, a zkOracle can decide how many zkGraphs it wants to run, either in terms of number or in terms of specific types. ^[5]

Initial Model Offering (IMO)

Introduced on March 1, 2024, IMO tokenizes the AI model on-chain. For token holders, IMO lets anyone capture the value of AI models on-chain, and for AI models, IMO enables sustainable funding for open-source AI models to win over proprietary AI. ^[7][9]

IMO tokenizes the ownership of open-source AI models, sharing its profit with the token holders. ^[7][8]

"The IMO allows fundraising for the development of a specific AI model from the global market and provides incentivization for open-source contributors to collaborate on models through token-based shares of model revenue. This removes silos in fundraising for AI projects and democratizes access to revenue associated with open-source projects." - Ecosystem Growth Manager, Alec James wrote on Linkedin^[17]

IMO requires two core components: the Onchain AI Model with Verifiability, and the Revenue Sharing of Onchain Usage. ^[7][8]

Onchain AI Model

IMO needs a way to run AI models fully on-chain and verifiably. The opML and opp/ai were invented for this use case. They are the only two solutions to make any AI model on-chain. Currently, opML is at the core of OAO (Onchain AI Oracle), which is essential to bring AI models to IMO. ^[8][9]

Revenue Sharing

Holders of IMO tokens will receive the benefits of revenue streams including but not limited to:

• Revenue of model usage (Model Ownership, ERC-7641 Intrinsic RevShare Token): Each use of the AI model on-chain will incur a fee, which will be distributed to IMO tokens.
• Revenue of AI-generated content (Inference Asset, eg. ERC-7007 Zero-Knowledge AI-Generated Content Token): Each use of the AI model generates a specific output and result (e.g. Stable Diffusion for an image NFT and Sora for a video NFT), which may carry a royalty fee and a mint fee that can be distributed to IMO tokens. ^[8]

Computational Entity (CLE)

CLE, or computational entity, is the customizable and programmable software-defined by developers and the underlying oracle network running that software. ORA CLE makes Oracle complete. ^[10]

There are two types of CLE:

• CLE of AI Oracle: The AI/ML models integrated in OAO. CLE of AI Oracle includes Stable Diffusion and LlaMA2-7B, with distributed nodes of the AI Oracle network.
• CLE of ZK Oracle: The zk-powered programs (previously zkGraph) are powered by ZK Oracle nodes. CLE of ZK Oracle is fully decentralized and permissionless so that anyone can build one. CLE of ZK Oracle can be used in zk rollup, zk automation-based applications, zk historical data, zk bridge, zk coprocessor, zkML applications, etc. ^[10]

Team

• Kartin Wong - Co-founder & Generator ^[11]
• Alec James - Ecosystem Growth ^[12]
• Cathie So - Chief Scientist ^[13]
• Shuxiao Miao - Software Developer ^[15]
• Suning Yao - Research Engineer ^[14]
• Levi Sledd - Zero Knowledge Circuit Engineer^[16]