The month of February 2026 was marked by a contrast between the stagnating crypto asset market and the rapid progress of AI-based blockchain initiatives.
Decentralized AI, compute market, and on-chain data coordination projects demonstrated consistent growth, indicating that builders remain focused on execution despite macroeconomic volatility.
Bittensor, for instance, increased its research and developer presence by engaging with academia, including a talk at Tsinghua University and an international subnet ideathon. The project's live subnets reached 128, showcasing its expanding influence in the machine intelligence market.
Meanwhile, Render Network continued to drive decentralized GPU infrastructure into mainstream creative production, with notable applications in the Octane toolset and an A$AP Rocky music video. The project also took a step forward towards migrating to Solana, aiming for increased throughput and reduced transaction costs.