Q3 2022

As we move into Q3 2022, here is a summary of what happened in the Olas ecosystem so far, in the last quarter and what's coming next.

Why is Olas needed?

Olas was launched by Valory and early adopters with a vision it would later describe as 'co-owned AI'. It began when Valory, the premier creator of open-source autonomous software systems, was founded in September 2021. Valory seeks to maximize machine autonomy to enable greater human autonomy.

Valory noted that ‘autonomy’ was a buzzword used to sell everything from self-driving cars to text and image-generating AIs. Still today, such apps are centrally owned and controlled. Users yield control to opaque algorithms and forfeit their private data. They increasingly trade away human autonomy for machine autonomy, i.e. self-operating machines and systems.

Valory believed autonomous agents — software that continuously operate and require little to no input from humans by design — enable human autonomy best, since they can be run in a transparent, robust, and decentralized manner.

This is why it co-created the Olas DAO with other early adopters. The Olas vision is one where the best AIs will not be exploited by individual billionaires or mega-corporations. Instead, they will be co-owned by collectives of humans and operated as autonomous services to catalyze individual autonomy.

Olas combines the decentralization of crypto with the power of AI.

“The Valory team has the right combination of experience to create a stack that really empowers developers and propels blockchain projects. From here, we’ll see how web3 continues to expand with the help of open autonomous systems.” – Adam D’Augelli, Partner at True Ventures.– Adam D’Augelli, Partner at True Ventures.

Olas aims to fill the gap in the crypto infrastructure stack that exists between decentralized blockchains and centrally operated off-chain bots or services. Olas can help existing dApps realize the promises of crypto like never before: it enables making currently fragile off-chain components as crypto native as on-chain protocols and enriching them with functionalities native to web2, including machine learning.

“I’ve never seen anything like this way of developing. This stack offers a completely new class of software. I am super excited to continue building with Olas.” – Ardian Abazi, Developer Academy Participant

A lot of work to realize this ambitious vision is already underway.

The story so far—from founding in September 2021 to the end of Q3 2022

Since Valory's seed round in September 2021…

• Valory has created an open-source software stack allowing developers to build the next generation of crypto apps: based on autonomous AI agents, making them robust (run with multiple nodes), transparent (open-sourced code) and decentralized (run by multiple operators).

• Valory launched the Olas DAO with early adopters, providing a permissionless on-chain protocol for securing, managing, and incentivizing autonomous agent-based applications. Olas aims to enable DAOs to benefit from this new primitive and put Olas agent-powered application at the heart of their off-chain operations.

• Olas agents are being built by early adopters, partners, and Valory.

• A $55k grant from Balancer was awarded to Valory to built the first Smart Managed Pool using Olas

• Notable projects like Brahma and Postmint, are building using the Olas Stack.

• Valory has run 4 intensive Academy cohorts and launched a free online course. The Academy has produced the first Olas-powered application in use (below). In addition, all the intensive cohorts with Python developers have produced usable code with high enthusiasm and strengthened the dev tooling, documentation & infrastructure, as well as grown the ecosystem of developers.

• The first 2 Olas-powered applications are live

• The world’s first autonomous NFT collector DAO, El Collectooorr, was built by Academy participants and is in use on Ethereum. What began as a simplistic hackathon entry was spun into a fully-fledged service by Academy graduates, led by Ardian. Join as an early user here.

• The autonomous price oracle is on Polygon, as a demonstrative service providing 24/7 BTC-USD price feed.

• The regular DAO operations research and recent media appearances are steadily growing the early Olas community. Catch up on founding member appearances with Chorus One, The Crypto Podcast and rewatch 6 of community events here).

TLDR

Since Valory's founding in September, a lot has happened.

The two live Olas-powered applications introduce the potential of the Olas technology, with early adoption by notable projects and the Academy creating the basis for healthy ecosystem growth. At the same time – this is only the beginning.

What's coming next?

A launch-heavy Q4 is ahead, including multiple Olas-powered applications moving into usage and Olas’ whitepaper and tokenomics launch imminent.