Oort

OORT is establishing a decentralized cloud infrastructure tailored for artificial intelligence applications, aiming to address critical issues of data privacy, cost, and transparency inherent in traditional centralized systems. The company was founded in May 2021 by Dr. Max Li, who also serves as its CEO. Dr. Li's background includes foundational 5G systems design at Qualcomm and a current role as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where his research in AI and blockchain spurred the creation of OORT. The venture originated from a research project in his lab in 2018 and was formally launched to tackle high-cost computing issues by pooling idle resources.

The firm's business model revolves around a suite of products that form a comprehensive, decentralized AI data cloud. This ecosystem leverages a global network of over 83,000 nodes contributed by users, who are incentivized with the native $OORT token for providing unused storage and compute resources. OORT serves a range of clients, from individual developers to large enterprises like Dell, Tencent Cloud, and Githon (formerly Lenovo Image), by offering solutions that can reduce operational costs significantly. The company generates revenue by providing these services, with clients able to pay in fiat currency or at a discount using OORT tokens.

OORT's core technology is the Olympus Protocol, a proprietary Layer-1 blockchain with a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure, designed for high throughput and low transaction fees. A key feature of this protocol is its patented "Proof of Honesty" (PoH) consensus mechanism, which verifies the integrity of network nodes and the data they process, ensuring a trustworthy and secure environment. The product suite includes OORT Storage, an S3-compatible, decentralized storage solution; OORT DataHub, a platform for crowdsourcing data collection and labeling; and the forthcoming OORT Compute, which will provide on-demand GPU resources for AI model training. OORT DataHub, a flagship product, allows AI companies to source diverse, high-quality datasets directly from a global community of over 300,000 contributors, who are rewarded for their participation.

Keywords: decentralized AI, DePIN, cloud computing, data infrastructure, Layer-1 blockchain, Olympus Protocol, Proof of Honesty, OORT DataHub, decentralized storage, AI model training, data collection, data labeling, Web3 infrastructure, edge computing, decentralized applications, crypto-incentives, AI data monetization, trustworthy AI, data privacy, AI solutions