The SingularityNET Publisher Portal — Open Beta

A critical step in globally democratising access to AI and further opening the way toward platform adoption.

Overview

SingularityNET is excited to announce the launch of its much-awaited Publisher Portal, which will enable AI developers to more easily onboard their services to the SingularityNET Marketplace, which is the premier interface to the SingularityNET decentralized AI platform.

This is a major addition to the platform, and a significant step toward the goal of making decentralized networks a major part of the world’s unfolding AI story. The SingularityNET platform already has the capabilities needed to serve as a blockchain-based platform for the global AI network — so the next major challenge is gaining widespread adoption. Ease of use is a critical factor here, and the Publisher Portal is a massive leap forward in the ease of use of the SingularityNET platform from a developer perspective.

Using the Publisher Portal, AI developers will be able to follow a simple and straightforward series of steps to publish and monetize their AI services on the Marketplace. As it gains adoption, the Publisher interface will serve as a nexus for AI teams that opt to work together by combining AI services in one hub.

The Publisher Portal enables AI developers to set up organizations comprising multiple individuals contributing to the same AI projects while being guided through the process of setting up pricing and allowing revenue share with fellow contributors.

A Streamlined, Curated Interface to the Decentralized AI Platform

The Publisher is a key ingredient to the multi-layered decentralized AI ecosystem we are building at SingularityNET. The foundation of this ecosystem is the decentralized SingularityNET AI platform, which in turn leverages the Ethereum network (though the design is intentionally relatively blockchain-agnostic, and may possibly in the future be made multi-chain). The SingularityNET Marketplace runs atop the platform and adds a level of curation and validation, plus ease-of-use factors such as a graphical user interface and a fiat/crypto gateway allowing payment for services in fiat currency. The Publisher Portal is a developer’s interface to the Marketplace.

The SingularityNET Foundation continues to provide and maintain tools, such as a command-line interface (CLI), to help AI developers create and publish services on the platform directly, irrespective of whether these services appear on the Marketplace. This is key to the decentralized methodology, vision and ethos which has guided SingularityNET since its founding. However, AI services that appear on the platform via routes other than the Publisher Portal will not be listed on the Marketplace UI and cannot make use of the Marketplace’s tools for easy deployment, monitoring, maintenance, fiat/crypto conversion and so forth.

The AI Publisher Portal enables developers to register themselves and submit their services for curation, seamlessly validates developer identities, and provides a guided and intuitive way to create and manage services on the Marketplace. Only services curated and published via the Publisher portal, and in this way approved by the Foundation, will appear on the Marketplace.

This provides a balance between SingularityNET’s commitment to keeping its platform fully decentralized and open, and the legal liabilities ensuing from listing and recommending services for use within various jurisdictions and providing services with add-on features like currency conversion.

Registration

Developers can register as individuals or organizations on the Publisher Portal. If users register as individuals or single person businesses they will need to provide basic personal information through valid documentation such as passports, driving licenses, or social security cards. If users register as organizations, the AI developers will need to provide a D-U-N-S number so the organization’s identity and legal status can be established.

Additionally, the person enrolling the organization within the SingularityNET Publisher program must have the legal authority to bind the organization to legal agreements.

To ensure the safety and security of the platform individuals’ identities will be verified using the third-party service Jumio, which is nearly instantaneous. Once the KYC process is complete — users can start creating organizations on the platform and submitting their services for curation.

Invitation Workflow

As creating and managing an AI service often involves a substantial team, we have built an invite workflow for users to invite others to collaborate and work on their services. SingularityNET Publisher Portal lets AI developers define who “Team Members” are and what their permissions with respect to editing the service are.

Fellow collaborators can help with technical set-up and management of the AI service — once collaborators accept invitations they can be added to the company blockchain for access. Specific roles of editors, admins, and owners can be assigned to team members — editors can access, manage, and create AI services, and region configurations; admin can manage everything except for billing and AGI token accounts.

Guided Setup

The Publisher Portal guides the AI developer through the setup of various components needed to register a service on the platform, including entry of basic information like the organization name to be displayed to users of the AI Marketplace, short/long descriptions of the organization, and the organization’s URL.

At this point SingularityNET does not provide hosting options; developers will be running their services on their own infrastructure, so part of the Publisher’s job is to ensure developers follow proper sequences to optimize the delivery of their services. Our guided setup provides descriptions and links to developer articles to make the process as simple as possible and also allows for regional group configuration wherein AI services can be optimized for users based upon geographical regions and groups.

Once the needed information has been entered, the registering organization is added to the blockchain and becomes finalized only editable by the owner. Metamask addresses to which payments will be transferred are locked in, and all users of the marketplace will be able to see the details of the organization behind the AI service. Further, throughout the process, SingularitNET has provided links to docker images, and other such utilities, to make it easier for the developers to set up their infrastructure, these are available on our Developer Portal.

Curation Process

Once an AI developer has set up their services for potential publication on the Marketplace, they need to be submitted for curation by the SingularityNET Foundation. The SingularityNET Foundation will review each service based on various parameters, and the following are several parameters that will be considered (note, this list is not exhaustive):

• Restricted Content — developers will not be permitted to upload objectionable and illegal content
• Impersonation — developers cannot mimic other people
• IP infringement — developers stealing content that is copyright protected, or infringe on a license (e.g. copy from Open Source software), will not be allowed to upload their service
• Privacy / Security — the Foundation will assess if there is a malicious character to the service.
• Pricing Behaviour — anomalous pricing will be analyzed and ensured that it is not geared towards cheating customers

It’s only after a service has been curated that it will appear on the Marketplace for people to use. This process is broadly similar to what exists on Apple and Android app stores, so should not be unfamiliar to most developers.

Organization / Service Management

The Publisher Portal allows users to easily edit and manage the organization and services, however, sufficiently large changes to a service may trigger a review by the Foundation to be sure the needed conditions are still met.

The AI Marketplace lets users demo their AI services and the DApp source code lets AI developers build and test the interface for their services.

Using the AI Publisher Portal, developers can also withdraw the AGI tokens that their services have earned via the portal.

Feedback

Users are able to provide feedback straight from the Publisher Portal application, which will be passed on to the development team for future enhancements. The SingularityNET Foundation is looking forward to ongoingly enhancing the Marketplace and is eagerly awaiting the onboarding of new AI developers and their services.

Join Us

SingularityNET plans to reinforce and expand its collaborations to shape the coming AI Singularity into a positive one, for all. To read more about our recent news click here.

And if you have an idea for AI tools or services you’d like to see appear on the platform, you can request them on the Request for AI Portal.