Sentient’s NFT campaign empowers community-controlled AI Dobby, setting a new standard for decentralized AI ownership - IcoHolder.
In a groundbreaking move for both the AI and NFT spaces, Sentient has completed one of the largest NFT minting campaigns in crypto history. With over 650,000 participants, the campaign centered around the minting of fractional ownership NFTs called “Fingerprints,” granting holders access to Dobby, a decentralized, open-source AI model. This bold step reflects a larger vision to foster community-controlled artificial intelligence (AI) that moves away from centralized control.
The minting event was a crucial part of Sentient’s mission to create an AI model governed by its community, not corporations. To mint a Fingerprint, participants had to prove their humanity by passing a randomized IQ test—a unique mechanism to ensure the integrity and intelligence of the AI’s users. Each NFT grants fractional ownership and access to Dobby, which is designed to evolve under the guidance of its community, as opposed to a corporate-controlled AI model.
Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon founder and core contributor to Sentient, explained the significance of Dobby’s decentralization. He argued that the first emerging artificial general intelligence (AGI) should be “community-controlled and community-owned to guarantee its loyalty.” Nailwal emphasized that Dobby’s fingerprinting mechanism enables communities to exert ownership, control, and alignment over open-source AI models, a critical move away from the centralized, closed-source systems used by major corporations.
“This incentivizes communities to come together and build high-quality open-source models,” Nailwal said, adding that the long-term goal is to shift control of AGI away from large institutions, ensuring it remains accessible to everyone, both individually and collectively.
A New Model for AI Governance
The success of the Dobby NFT mint follows Sentient’s launch of DeepSeek, an AI-powered chatbot developed with a significantly lower budget than competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Sentient’s approach to AI models, such as Dobby and DeepSeek, addresses the issue of centralization in the AI landscape. Unlike proprietary models like ChatGPT, Sentient’s models are open-source, meaning their source code is available for developers to use, modify, and improve.
Himanshu Tyagi, co-founder of Sentient, stated that Dobby’s decentralized architecture addresses a “crucial problem” in the AI industry. He explained that Dobby’s “loyalty” feature—defined by ownership, alignment, and control—ensures the community holds the power to guide the AI’s development and principles. This alignment allows the community to have granular control over which behaviors the model can exhibit, making Dobby unique among other AI systems.
Setting the Stage for Open-Source AI
The success of the minting campaign for Dobby marks a new chapter in the evolution of AI, one where communities take charge of AI governance and direction. Sentient’s push to decentralize AI ownership has sparked renewed investor interest in AI agents, a trend accelerated by the recent success of autonomous blockchain agents like Luna.
As the campaign concluded, Sentient's achievement set a new benchmark in the industry. The record-breaking NFT mint, following closely behind the $88 million ecosystem fund launched by the 0G Foundation, signals an increasing demand for decentralized AI-powered projects. It also paves the way for a future where AI systems are not just tools for corporations but are truly owned and governed by the communities they serve.
