China Daily Global Edition (USA)
What is Cortex?
Who is Cortex?
In 2009, Bitcoin launched its genesis block and established itself as the first self-sustaining peer to peer digital financial system which incentivized participants to maintain its operation and provided limited but highly disruptive functionalities. In 2015, Ethereum went live, adding Turing-Complete smart contracts to the blockchain, allowing for consensus on the execution of short programs.
Turing Complete smart contract blockchains have attracted a large number of decentralized application developers. However, due to the actualized high cost, smart contracts limit their capabilities at the design stage and do not fully exploit Turing Complete immense computational potential. As a result, developers are limited to write short programs and access only a very small amount of resources.
This article describes a new public chain, Cortex. By revising and extending the instruction set, Cortex adds AI algorithms inference support for smart contracts so that anyone can add AI to their smart contracts. At the same time, Cortex has proposed an incentive mechanism for collective collaboration that allows anyone to submit and optimize models in Cortex, and the contributors to the models can be rewarded. Thanks to Cortex’s transparent, open sharing features, Cortex is set to create many models that transcend human capabilities.
Cortex’s main mission is to provide the best in class machine learning models on the blockchain, letting users make inferences using smart contracts on the Cortex blockchain. The Cortex goal also includes implementing a machine learning platform that allows users to post tasks on the platform, submit models, make inferences by calling intelligent contracts, and create their own AI DApps (Artificial Intelligence Decentralized Applications), making the following applications possible:
Information Services: Personalized Recommendation System, Search Engine, News Writing Service;
Finance: Credit, Intelligent Investment Advisory;
AI Assistant: Automatic Q&A, Industry Knowledge Map, Speech Synthesis, Face Attribute Prediction;
Simulation Environment: Autonomousdriving, Go and other Reinforcement Learning Applications; 1. AI Algorithms Support for Smart Contracts: Smarter Contracts
Cortex is a stand-alone public chain compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (“EVM”) smart contracts, and runs both existing contracts and inferred contracts with AI. Cortex allows users to write machine learning programs on the blockchain, and submit some interactions that depends on other contracts. For example, the interactions between pets on the electronic pet Cryptokitties running on Ethereum can be dynamic, intelligent, and evolutionary. Through the uploaded reinforcement learning model, given the smart AI contracts, users can easily achieve a variety of similar AI applications.
At the same time, Cortex provides AI interface calls for other blockchains. For example, Cortex can provide wallet address analysis results, based on smart AI contracts, for Bitcoin Cash and/or Ethereum. The models being used for addresses analysis will not only be helpful for regulation technologies but will also provide the general public with a risk-based assessment of the transaction recipient. 2. Incentive Mechanism for Collective Collaboration
Machine learning researchers around the world can upload well-trained corresponding data models to the storage layer. Other users who need this AI model can make inferences by using models and paying their providers. At each inference, a full node synchronizes the model and the data from the storage tier to the local site. Making an inference using Cortex’s unique virtual machine, CVM, synchronizes the results to the whole network, and returns the result.
Every time a user initiates a transaction, performs a smart contract, or performs an intelligent inference, the user needs to pay a certain amount of Endorphin. Endorphin is the pricing unit that is required to be paid for dealing transactions or executing AI smart contracts on the Cortex chain. The amount of Endorphin required for each payment depends on the difficulty of the model operation and the model ranking. The price of Endorphin is marketdriven, reflecting Cortex’s cost of executing smart contracts: The more transactions initiated or AI smart contracts executed at the same time, the higher the price of Endorphin.
Cortex also provides a submission interface for training off-chain. This will set up a bridge between computing power providers and algorithm providers for trading and collaboration. The user parses the model into Cortex’s CVM, the parameters into the storage layer, and publishes a generic interface for smart contract programmers to use. The model provider needs to pay a certain storage fee to ensure that the model can be persistently saved in the storage layer.
Part of the fee charged for inference by calling this model in a smart contract is delivered to the model provider. The provider can also withdraw and update accordingly if needed. In the case of withdrawals, in order to ensure that the smart contract calling this model works properly, Cortex will host it according to the usage of the model and keep invoking the model for a fee equal to the storage and maintenance costs. Cortex also provides an interface to upload the model to the storage layer and obtain the model hash. The provider then initiates a transaction, executing a smart contract to write the model hash into the storage, so that all users are apprised of the model’s input and output status.
Cortex was co-founded by Ziqi Chen and Weiyang Wang. Ziqi Chen is the founder of waterhole.io, a company focusing on cell phone blockchain mining. He has solid understanding and firsthand experience in mining, computing and digital wallets and a deep understanding of mining devices, consensus algorithms and public blockchain ecosystem.
Weiyang Wang, a National Mathematics Contest winner and Kaggle Contest silver medalist, Weiyang’s research interests lie in statistical machine learning and game theory. As a certified FRM and CFA Level II candidate, he had won championship in the 2017 Dorahack Hacking Marathon, leading a team creating ABS (Asset-Backed Securities) system prototype, based on the IBM Hyperledger.
Cortex is advised by Whitfield Diffie, one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography, and is partnered with Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.
This page is a sponsored supplement.