active compute ATH
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Aethir

Aethir review. Enterprise GPU compute network for AI and cloud gaming. Aethir node setup, ATH token, $127.8M revenue, Freedom Score and honest assessment.

C
Quadrant
Centralised value
30
Freedom
/100
F
64
Returns
/100
C
Verdict · Returns over freedom

The best revenue story in DeAI, attached to the worst decentralisation credentials. Governance is finally arriving, but this remains an enterprise GPU business with a token.

Strengths
  • + Enterprise GPU network at real scale: 440K+ containers across 94 countries serving 150+ clients
  • + Largest revenue in DeAI by a wide margin, and it reconciles on-chain (DeFiLlama, Token Terminal, our own index)
  • + Enterprise infrastructure DNA from Riot, Bechtel, Ericsson, Verizon Media
Risks
  • Revenue reconciles on-chain, but take is ~20% of gross, the dollar run-rate halved over three quarters, scale metrics self-certified
  • Admin multisig can mint new tokens; roughly 52% of supply still locked or vesting
  • Governance roadmap targeted for Q1 2026 but no confirmation of launch
Independent verification 18 claims checked · 7 corrected · checked on-chain · as of 2026-08-17
Our call on each · 6 freedom · 5 returns
See Aethir in the integrity board →
Freedom Score
F30/100?

Aethir operates substantial GPU infrastructure but is fundamentally a centralised enterprise with a token. Zero open-source code, admin-controlled token contract, no meaningful governance, and closed architecture undermine all decentralisation claims. The project scores well on geographic distribution of hardware but fails on every transparency and sovereignty metric.

Freedom Score 30/100 places it firmly in Grade F: centralised project with a token bolted on.

Infrastructure decentralisation9/20 Check pending

440K containers across 94 countries is broadly distributed geographically, but all code is closed source (0 public repos). Checker node system is controlled by Aethir. Admin multisig on token contract controls minting and whitelist functions. Cannot independently verify decentralisation claims without access to source code or network topology data.

Our independent check
They claim

Enterprise-grade decentralised GPU compute network: 440,000+ GPU containers distributed across 94 countries. source →

We found

GPU container count and geographic distribution are off-chain reality on a closed-source, self-certified surface (zero public repos). Per the WS1 rule, off-chain hardware claims are not deep-reconcile targets. Corroborated by Aethir's own dashboard (not contradicted by its own surface, unlike io.net) but not independently verifiable.

Our call

Check pending The physical GPU layer's decentralisation cannot be independently confirmed: closed-source, off-chain hardware. Recorded honestly as off-chain, not as a pass.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Governance decentralisation4/20 Overstated

DAO Treasury exists (7.5% of supply) but governance mechanism is poorly documented. No evidence of on-chain voting, governance proposals, or community decision-making processes. Team controls all technical and strategic decisions. Governance is nominal at best.

Our independent check
They claim

Community/DAO governance (a DAO Treasury and community control of the protocol). source →

We found

No on-chain governance found. The ATH token's owner (mint authority) is a 2-of-3 Gnosis Safe (0x1246aE66) with no timelock; the DAO Treasury allocation exists but no on-chain voting or governance mechanism is deployed. Read the token owner and resolved it to a 2-of-3 Gnosis Safe; searched for a Governor/voting contract (none located).

Our call

Overstated Governance rubric stage G0 (a thin 2-of-3 Safe, no timelock, holds the token mint authority; no on-chain voting). Path to match: on-chain governance binding through a timelock. The DAO Treasury allocation is not the same as functional governance.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Token distribution fairness5/15 Overstated· 2 checks

50% allocated to compute providers is positive for long-term distribution. However, 12.5% team + 11.5% investors + 5% advisors = 29% insider allocation. Node sale raised $148M from an unknown number of unique buyers — concentration risk unknown. Public sale was negligible at 0.17% of total supply. IDO and private sale combined under $1M.

Our independent check
They claim

50% of supply is allocated to compute providers / node operators (supply-side favourable distribution). source →

We found

Allocation as documented: 50% to compute providers (linear vesting). Read the allocation table; confirmed total supply on-chain (42B).

Our call

Verified A genuine supply-side-favourable allocation. Ongoing insider concentration is a separate claim below.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
They claim

Distribution is broad/fair (not insider-heavy). source →

We found

Insider allocation is material: 12.5% team + 11.5% investors + 5% advisors (~29%), plus a private/pre-sale tranche. This is a VC-backed launch, not a fair launch. Summed team/investor/advisor allocations from the tokenomics table.

Our call

Overstated Distribution rubric ~D1: notable insider allocation, vested. Unlike Venice/Virtuals, Aethir is VC-backed; the 'fair/broad' reading is overstated for the insider share, even though the 50%-to-providers slice is genuine.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Censorship resistance5/15 Verified

Closed source code means Aethir controls what runs on the network. Admin multisig on token contract enables minting and whitelist changes. Enterprise focus with 150+ corporate clients suggests compliance-oriented approach, not censorship resistance. No evidence of permissionless access to the compute network.

Our independent check
They claim

ATH holders cannot be frozen or blacklisted at the token layer. source →

We found

Verified AethirToken source exposes mint + owner only; no pause, freeze, or blacklist function, and the contract is not upgradeable (no EIP-1967 slot). Enumerated the verified ABI (no pause/blacklist); confirmed non-upgradeable.

Our call

Verified Token-layer censorship resistance holds (but the owner can mint - see supply). Network-layer resistance is limited: closed-source, Aethir controls what runs.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Data sovereignty5/15 Check pending

Enterprise clients' workloads run on distributed containers, but Aethir controls the Indexer matching layer and has visibility into workload allocation. No evidence of end-to-end encryption, zero-knowledge compute, or privacy guarantees for data processed on the network. Container isolation claims cannot be verified without source code.

Our independent check
They claim

Enterprise workloads run on distributed containers the client controls. source →

We found

Aethir controls the Indexer matching layer and has visibility into the network; the runtime is closed-source, so client data sovereignty is not independently verifiable.

Our call

Check pending The matching/orchestration layer is centrally controlled and closed-source.

signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Open source transparency2/15 Overstated

Zero public repositories on GitHub. Token contract is verified on Etherscan (Solidity v0.8.18) but that is the bare minimum for an ERC-20 token. All protocol code — Containers, Checkers, Indexers, Proof of Capacity, Proof of Delivery — is proprietary. Cannot independently verify any technical claims about architecture, performance, or decentralisation.

Our independent check
They claim

A transparent, decentralised compute network. source →

We found

Zero public GitHub repositories. Only the ATH token contract is source-verified on Etherscan (Solidity 0.8.18, the bare minimum); the network code, Checker Node client, and orchestration are entirely closed-source. Checked the GitHub org (no public repos) against the described stack.

Our call

Overstated Open-source rubric stage O0 (opaque: core code not public). A verified token contract is not network transparency. This is the weakest freedom dimension (2/15).

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Returns Score
C 64/100 ?

Overall returns potential is moderate at 64/100. Strongest dimension: liquidity & access (12/15). Weakest: supply dynamics (8/20).

Token utility12/20 Established

Payment for compute, staking in Gaming/AI/EigenLayer pools, node operation. APY undisclosed.

Our independent check
They claim

ATH is used to pay for GPU compute, plus staking (Gaming/AI/EigenLayer pools) and node operation. source →

We found

Compute-payment utility is on-chain-verified and now indexed rather than observed. 1,250 DepositServiceFee events on AETHIR_CORE (0x226D...a42d, Arbitrum) carry 9,786,507,650 ATH of gross service-fee throughput since July 2024, paid by 61 distinct payer addresses. Indexed DepositServiceFee events; the compute-payment flow is real and on-chain.

Our call

Established Compute payment is genuine on-chain utility. Staking-pool mechanics exist but were not independently rebuilt this session. Denomination question settled 2026-08-17 on the thesis_durable_demand row: the fiat leg is the one that measures demand.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-17 · how it’s signed
Value accrual14/20 Established

Compute providers earn ATH. No fee distribution, no buy-and-burn. Indirect only.

Our independent check
They claim

Value accrues to the ATH token. source →

We found

On-chain: 80% of service fees flow to GPU operators (supply-side), the protocol retains ~20%; there is no fee distribution to token holders and no buy-and-burn. Holder value accrual is indirect and thin. Measured the fee split (80% operators / 20% protocol) on-chain; confirmed no burn/fee-share mechanism.

Our call

Established Aethir is honest about this: value accrual to holders is indirect. Measured, not asserted; no overclaim to correct.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Supply dynamics8/20 Overstated· 2 checks

42B max supply, 47.93% circulating. 50% allocated to compute providers. Team vesting until Dec 2028.

Our independent check
They claim

42B total supply, ~48% circulating, disinflationary emissions. source →

We found

On-chain totalSupply exactly 42,000,000,000; circulating ~20.13B (47.9%) per CoinGecko. Team vesting to Dec 2028. Read totalSupply live; reconciled circulating against CoinGecko.

Our call

Verified Current supply figures reconcile. Low circulating % + vesting to Dec 2028 = supply overhang. The hard-cap claim is graded separately below.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
They claim

Supply is hard-capped at 42B (capped supply type). source →

We found

The AethirToken contract has an active mint() function and NO on-chain cap(); mint authority is a 2-of-3 Gnosis Safe with no timelock. The 42B is a governance-discretion cap, not enforced by code. Confirmed mint() present, cap() absent (reverts), and owner = 2-of-3 Safe. totalSupply currently equals the stated 42B, so no over-mint has occurred.

Our call

Overstated The 'hard cap' is not code-enforced: a 2-of-3 Safe can mint beyond 42B. No over-mint has happened (supply = 42B), so this is a latent-authority correction, not evidence of active inflation. Supply rubric caps below S2 because the cap is discretionary.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Revenue sustainability18/25 Overstated· 3 checks

Aethir's 2025 revenue headline reconciles on-chain: our own AETHIR_CORE service-fee index and DeFiLlama's independent adapter agree on the trailing year to within a few per cent, and Token Terminal's separately built series corroborates recent months. Integrity verdict: match. The $166M ARR headline is outdated, though: the dollar run-rate peaked in the priced window and has fallen across three complete quarters to near a quarter of that peak. Further caveats: protocol take is ~20% of gross, only 61 addresses have ever deposited a service fee, and DAT activity leaves a self-referential-composition question.

Our independent check
They claim

Real, on-chain-verifiable service-fee revenue: $176.7M lifetime network revenue / $127.8M in 2025. source →

We found

$163.5M all-time net service fees (our own on-chain index); calendar-2025 $117.8M. Corroborated by DeFiLlama $167.9M and Token Terminal $165.1M (calendar-2025 $118.0M, matching ours to 0.2%). Summed DepositServiceFee minus WithdrawServiceFee amounts (1,213 deposits, 64 withdrawals; gross 8,101,465,682 ATH = exact unit match to Aethir's own dashboard), USD-converted at DeFiLlama daily ATH prices. Start 2024-07-22.

Our call

Verified Aethir's gross revenue is REAL and on-chain-verified - the positive-control case for a closed-source project. The ~8% gap is the gross dashboard lifetime figure vs our net on-chain fees. This is GROSS developer spend; protocol-level revenue is graded next. NOT REPRODUCIBLE AS AN ALL-TIME DOLLAR FIGURE, recorded 2026-08-17. This row's $163.5M was hand-run in June 2026 by converting the whole ATH history at daily prices. The committed index (scripts/refresh-aethir-fees.ts) can only price the rolling 366-day window src/data/price-history.json covers, so it cannot regenerate that number and the article no longer attributes an all-time dollar figure to us. What IS reproducible, and what the editorial now binds, is the trailing year: ours $78.7M against DeFiLlama's total1y $82.1M, 4.1% apart. Treat the all-time leg as DeFiLlama's to state.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-06-09 · how it’s signed
They claim

Protocol revenue is $176.7M ($166M ARR). source →

We found

Protocol-level revenue (the 20% fee cut) is ~$33.6M all-time (DeFiLlama Revenue) / ~$32.7M (our own 20% split); the other 80% flows to GPU operators. The 'network revenue' headline overstates protocol revenue roughly 5x. Separated gross developer service-fee throughput from the protocol's 20% take; DeFiLlama Revenue confirms the protocol line.

Our call

Overstated Explained, not a category error: gross throughput is real ($163.5M, match above), but labelling it protocol 'revenue' overstates the protocol take ~5x. Protocol revenue is ~$33M all-time / ~$17.4M per year (DeFiLlama).

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
They claim

$166M ARR (current run-rate). source →

We found

Measured against our own index rather than a vendor. Over the 13 months the price history covers, deposited service fees convert to $78.7M at daily ATH prices, and the monthly figure fell from $12.5M in September 2025 to $3.0M in July 2026. The $166M ARR claim is not supported on any basis we can compute. CORRECTED 2026-08-17: this row previously said monthly fees fell to 'under $1M' by June 2026; the indexed figure for that month is $3.6M, so the decline is real but was overstated by roughly 3.6x. Full-history getLogs on the deposit event, summed monthly and converted at daily CoinGecko ATH prices. Replaces the Token Terminal and dashboard readings the row previously rested on, neither of which we could re-run.

Our call

Out of date Motive-neutral: $166M was a defensible peak-ARR at the time, not a fabrication. But revenue has more than halved and Aethir's OWN dashboard now shows $51.7M ARR. Do not cite $166M as current. Denomination question settled 2026-08-17 on the thesis_durable_demand row: the fiat leg is the one that measures demand. CORROBORATED 2026-08-17 against Token Terminal, which publishes its own monthly Aethir fee series built from a different pipeline. It agrees with our index to within 0.6% to 2.9% across the last five months (July: ours $3.02M, theirs $3.0M) and within 6% to 16% on the volatile early-2026 months, where a daily-price conversion is most sensitive to timing. Two independent methods reaching the same series is the strongest check available on this index, and it confirms the USD decline is a real decline rather than an artefact of how we convert.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-17 · how it’s signed
Liquidity & access12/15 Verified

OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget, Gate.io, Coinbase (listed March 2025). Binance Alpha pre-listing pool (not full listing). Volume healthy relative to market cap.

Our independent check
They claim

Strong liquidity: major CEX listings (OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget, Gate.io, Coinbase, Upbit) with healthy volume. source →

We found

58 tickers; real CEX (Upbit, Bybit, LBank, CoinW, HTX); ~$4.5M 24h volume against a ~$82M market cap (~5.5% turnover); ~97% below ATH. Read the ticker set and 24h volume live.

Our call

Verified Liquidity is real and multi-venue; structural language only. The ~97% drawdown from ATH matches the revenue collapse.

evidence → signed · as of 2026-08-09 · how it’s signed
Quadrant C — Centralised value ?
Price
$0.0050
Market Cap
$101.0M
FDV
$210.7M
24h Change
-3.1%
-3.1%

Not financial advice. Scores are opinions, not recommendations. Crypto is high-risk – you could lose everything you invest. Full disclaimer.

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Own Your Mind rating: Freedom F 30/100, Returns C 64/100

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Token Details
ATHEthereum (canonical token), Arbitrum (operations/rewards), Solana (bridge)
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Value Loop

Enterprise GPU compute, PoC + PoD verification, DAT closed-loop treasury

Enterprise clients pay for GPU compute on Aethir Earth (AI training and inference) and Aethir Atmosphere (cloud-gaming streaming). Containers execute workloads on enterprise NVIDIA H100/H200/A100/B200 hardware; checkers verify them via Proof of Capacity and Proof of Delivery while indexers route the work. The Digital Asset Treasury runs a closed loop: it buys ATH on-market, stakes to onboard hosts, books compute on the platform, sells that compute for USD and recycles proceeds into more ATH. Stakers lock ATH across Gaming, AI and EigenLayer pools to back providers.

ATH Value Loop Enterprise GPU compute, PoC + PoD verification, DAT closed-loop treasury ENTERPRISE COMPUTE Aethir Earth + Atmosphere AI training, cloud gaming CONTAINERS RUN H100 / H200 / B200 checkers verify by PoC + PoD DAT CLOSED LOOP treasury buys ATH on-market stakes hosts, sells compute, repeats ATH STAKERS Gaming · AI · EigenLayer up to 4-year lock CLOSED-LOOP TREASURY Enterprises pay for GPU compute, the DAT recycles revenue into ATH, stakers back the provider base. PROTOCOL DESIGN 42B ATH MAX SUPPLY → ~20B circulating today 50% to compute providers VERIFICATION PoC + PoD checkers + indexers STAKING POOLS Gaming · AI · EigenLayer 30-day withdrawal vest SETTLEMENT Ethereum · Arbitrum · Solana LayerZero + Stargate bridges PoC Proof of Capacity (standby) PoD Proof of Delivery (completed work) DAT Digital Asset Treasury ownyourmind.ai/projects/aethir Independent DeAI Research

What it does

Aethir aggregates enterprise-grade GPUGPUGraphics Processing Unit. Originally designed to render video game graphics, GPUs turned out to be exceptionally good at the massively parallel math that AI models need. Modern AI training and inference runs almost entirely on GPUs.Like a factory with 10,000 workers doing the same simple task in parallel, versus a CPU which is more like 10 workers each doing different complex tasks. AI training involves doing simple math a million times per second on a million numbers, which is exactly what the GPU factory is designed for.Read more → hardware (NVIDIA H100s, H200s, A100s, B200s, and B300s) from data centres, telecom providers, gaming studios, and miningProof of WorkThe original blockchain consensus mechanism where miners compete to solve computationally expensive puzzles. The winner proposes the next block and earns the rewards. Proof of Work secures Bitcoin and most pre-2020 chains.Like a lottery that runs every 10 minutes where the tickets cost electricity. Whoever spends the most electricity buying lottery tickets has the best chance of winning that round's prize. Nobody can fake the result because the proof of their work is verifiable by everyone.Read more → operations into a distributed compute network. Two products: Aethir Earth provides bare-metal GPU compute for AI trainingTrainingThe one-time process of teaching a neural network to perform a task by showing it massive amounts of example data and adjusting its internal weights until the outputs are good. Training builds the model; inference uses it.Like the years an apprentice spends learning a trade. You don't see any of the actual work, just thousands of repeated mistakes gradually becoming competence. By the end, the apprentice can do the job. The training was invisible, but the skill is now permanent.Read more → and inferenceInferenceRunning a trained AI model to produce an answer. Inference is what happens when you type a prompt into ChatGPT and get a response. The model takes your input, computes a best guess, and returns it.Like asking an expert for their opinion. The training was the decades they spent becoming an expert. The inference is the 30 seconds it takes them to answer your specific question.Read more →. Aethir Atmosphere delivers low-latency GPU streaming for cloud gaming.

The network runs through three roles. Containers execute the actual compute workloads. Checkers verify container performance and integrity through Proof of Capacity (rewarding standby availability) and Proof of Delivery (rewarding completed tasks). Indexers match users to the best available containers based on requirements, latency, and pricing.

Founded by Daniel Wang (CEO, ex-Riot Games COO/Head of International Publishing, ex-IVC Partner) and Mark Rydon (CSO, ex-Bechtel Corporation). CTO Kyle Okamoto came from Ericsson (CEO of IoT/Automotive/Security division) and Verizon Media (Chief Network Officer). Headquartered in Singapore. The team’s background is enterprise infrastructure and gaming, not crypto-native. This shows in the product: it’s built to sell GPU compute to enterprises, not to maximise decentralisation.

That revenue-first, decentralisation-last position is exactly what Render vs Akash vs io.net sets against the permissionless and aggregator approaches.

TokenTokenA digital unit of value or access rights tracked on a blockchain. Tokens can represent ownership in a project, a right to use a service, a share of future revenue, or simply a tradable asset with no underlying claim.Like a physical poker chip a casino issues. The chip itself has no value. What makes it worth something is what it lets you do at the casino, what the casino has promised, and how much other people will pay you for it.Read more → launched 12 June 2024. The network claims 440,000+ GPU containers across 94 countries serving 150+ enterprise clients. In July 2025, ATHATHAll-Time High. The highest price a token has ever reached. ATH is usually quoted as a reference point for how far the current price has fallen (or risen) since the peak.Like the record lap time on a racetrack. It tells you what the car has been capable of at its absolute best, not what it will do today. Whether that record gets broken again depends on conditions that may or may not come back.Read more → expanded to the Solana blockchain via LayerZero and Stargate bridging, enabling enterprise clients to purchase compute directly on Solana, a logical move given the concentration of AI agent builders (ai16z, elizaOS) in that space.

The product in practice

Grounded in our Aethir review, the render-vs-akash comparison, our on-chain service-fee index, and community sentiment. We haven’t run enterprise compute on Aethir, so the customer-side notes are attributed.

Who it’s for. Enterprise AI teams and cloud-gaming operators that need H100 and H200-class clusters with SLAs and support, rather than indie developers or sovereignty-minded self-hosters. Aethir sells GPU compute the way a traditional cloud company does, through Aethir Earth for bare-metal AI training and inference and Aethir Atmosphere for low-latency game streaming. The founding team comes from enterprise infrastructure and gaming rather than crypto, and the product reflects that.

What it’s like to engage with it. There are two front doors. Customers get a sales-led enterprise path with contracts, SLAs, KYC and 24/7 support, plus a thinner self-serve layer on top in the Aethir Earth rental portal and managed Kubernetes. We could not find a single independent, first-hand account of what renting from Aethir is actually like; every customer story traces back to Aethir’s own case studies, which is itself telling for a business this size. The hands-on signal that does exist independently comes from the node side, and it is cautionary.

The node reality. Aethir sold hardware to retail buyers on two tiers, and community sentiment there is mostly about disappointing economics. Checker Nodes are CPU-only uptime validators that do no GPU work, so buyers paid several hundred dollars for a device that mostly pings the network. Aethir Edge owners report payouts that swing hard on region and uptime, with community screenshots ranging from a few hundred tokens a month down to a few dollars, and a mid-stream change that redirected the Season 3 airdrop into a treasury and cut Edge emissions drew the standard reward-reduction grievance. A later Checker Node buyback, offering early holders an exit, tells its own story.

Demand, honestly. This is the one compute network in our set whose revenue reconciles on-chain: DeFiLlama indexes Aethir’s gross compute fees and our integrity check returns a match, which puts it in a different evidence class from io.net’s self-reported figures. The caveats matter, though. Protocol take is only about a fifth of that gross, the dollar run-rate has fallen for three complete quarters and now sits near a quarter of its peak, and the scale metrics (440,000 containers, 150-plus clients, named publishers like EA or Ubisoft) are self-reported with no independent confirmation we could find. So the revenue is the trustworthy part, and the business-scale story around it is still Aethir’s own.

The vision. Aethir’s bet is that a professionally-run GPU cloud with a token wrapper beats a permissionless marketplace on reliability and enterprise trust, and the revenue suggests the compute business has substance. The gap is the token: the code is closed-source, an admin multisig can mint supply, governance remains a roadmap item, and there is no fee distribution or burn, so holders capture little of that revenue. It is the sharpest version of the compute trade-off, the best-run business in the set paired with the weakest holder claim on it.

Value proposition

Enterprise sales motion

440,000+ GPU containers across 94 countries serving 150+ enterprise clients, built like a traditional cloud sales org.

Highest revenue claim in DeAI

DeAI's largest revenue, reconciled on-chain. The dollar run-rate has roughly halved across three quarters.

Closed-source centralisation

Closed-source code, admin multisig that can mint new tokens, governance roadmap still unverified.

Revenue. Aethir claims $127.8 million in total revenue for 2025 (January to December). The annualised run rate figures require scrutiny: Aethir’s own Q3 blog post states $166 million ARR, but a separate enterprise growth post gives $147 million ARR, which is simply Q3’s $39.8 million multiplied by four. The gap suggests the $166 million figure includes contracted recurring revenue beyond simple quarterly annualisation.

The total itself reconciles on-chain (see below), so the live question is the trajectory rather than the existence. Our index of the AETHIR_CORE contract puts the best month in the priced window at $150.2 million annualised, and the trailing ninety days at $39.6 million . Even at the lower figure this makes Aethir the highest-revenue project in the entire DeAIDeAIDecentralised AI. An umbrella term for blockchain-based projects that build AI infrastructure (compute, data, inference, models, agents) without a single central provider controlling the system.Like the difference between streaming a movie from Netflix and sharing it via BitTorrent. Netflix is fast and polished but one company controls what you can watch and what you pay. BitTorrent is messier but no single operator can shut you out.Read more → space by a significant margin. For context, Akash generates roughly $3.15 million annually on audited on-chain spend, and Render does not publicly disclose USD revenue, so a comparable comparison is not possible.

The enterprise sales motion is the differentiator. Where Akash runs a permissionless marketplace and lets providers compete in reverse auctions, Aethir operates more like a traditional cloud sales organisation that happens to source GPUs from a distributed network. This is why the revenue numbers are large: enterprise contracts with committed capacity, not spot pricing.

The counter-narrative has shifted. The revenue is no longer a number you take on trust. Our own index of the AETHIR_CORE contract on Arbitrum puts the trailing year at $78.7 million of gross service fees, and DeFiLlama’s independent adapter lands within a few per cent of that on the same window and closer still on the current run-rate. Token Terminal’s separately built series agrees on recent months, and our integrity layer marks the figure a match.

What the on-chain view also exposes is the part the headline hides. The protocol’s own take is roughly a fifth of that gross, and the dollar run-rate has fallen for three complete quarters in a row, roughly halving over that stretch and landing near a quarter of the peak above. Sixty-one addresses have ever deposited a service fee, so what is falling is a handful of large enterprise contracts rather than a broad customer base thinning out.

There is a trap inside that decline, and it is the kind that flips a verdict. Denominated in ATH, the unit the contract actually emits, deposits went the other way and roughly tripled year on year. The logs settle which leg measures demand: deposit volume tracks the ATH price at a correlation of -0.90 and an elasticity of -0.48, which is what you see when prices are set in fiat and settled in the token. So the dollar leg is the demand signal, the ATH leg mostly tracks the token, and quoting either alone yields a boom or a collapse from the same 1,250 logs.

The 440,000 GPU container figure, by contrast, is still self-certified. A dashboard exists at dashboard.aethir.com, but the underlying data comes from Aethir’s own systems. The revenue settles on-chain; the network-scale metrics don’t, and without open-source code or on-chain attestationAttestationA cryptographic proof that a piece of code is running on a specific hardware enclave in an unmodified state. Attestation lets remote users verify that a service is genuinely running what it claims to be running.Like a tamper-evident seal on a medicine bottle. The seal itself doesn't make the medicine safe, but it gives you a way to verify that nobody opened the bottle and swapped the contents before you bought it.Read more → they stay unverifiable.

For the sovereignty thesis, Aethir offers almost nothing. Closed source code. An admin multisig on the token contract that can mint new tokens and manage a whitelist.

Governance is at least now documented: a four-phase roadmap published in late 2024 (development, community education, beta testing, full launch) with a committee comprising compute providers, validators, and ATH stakers. Full decentralised governance was targeted for Q1 2026. As of March 2026, there’s no confirmation the full launch has completed.

Even if governance ships as promised, you’re still renting GPUs from a centralised enterprise that happens to distribute hardware across 94 countries. That’s useful. It’s just not meaningfully different from AWS with more varied suppliers underneath.

Tokenomics

ATH launched via node sale in March-May 2024, raising $148.4 million from 74,673 checker nodes sold at $440-$12,634 each. This is by far the largest node sale in DeAI. A pre-Series A round in July 2023 raised $9 million at a $150 million valuation, led by HashKey Capital with participation from Animoca Brands, Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes), Sanctor Capital, and others.

Total supply is 42 billion ATH. Distribution:

  • Checker nodes & compute providers: 50%, the bulk allocation, vestingVestingA schedule that locks up tokens allocated to insiders, investors, and team members, releasing them gradually over months or years. Vesting prevents insiders from dumping on public buyers immediately after launch.Like a new employee's stock options at a startup. You don't get all the shares on day one. They unlock over four years so you stick around and do the work rather than cashing out and leaving.Read more → linearly over time
  • Team: 12.5%, 18-month cliffCliffA waiting period at the start of a token vesting schedule during which no tokens unlock at all. After the cliff ends, tokens begin releasing according to the vesting schedule.Like a probationary period at a new job. You don't get your stock options on day one. You wait 12 months to prove you'll stick around, then everything starts unlocking normally.Read more → from TGETGEToken Generation Event. The moment a project's token first becomes tradeable. TGE is when vesting clocks usually start, when liquidity hits exchanges, and when public price discovery begins.Like the IPO day for a startup. Everything that happened before TGE was private valuations and paper agreements. Everything after is the public market deciding what the thing is worth in real time.Read more → (December 2025), then 3-year linear daily vesting until December 2028
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • DAODAODecentralised Autonomous Organisation. A way to coordinate decisions and manage a treasury using token-weighted voting instead of a traditional company structure. Token holders propose and vote on changes directly.Like a shareholder-run company where every shareholder can vote on every decision, the votes are public, and the company can't do anything the shareholders don't approve. The coordination is messier than a normal company but nobody has unilateral control.Read more → Treasury: 7.5%
  • Ecosystem development: 7.5%
  • AirdropAirdropDistributing tokens for free to eligible wallets, usually to reward early users, bootstrap a community, or decentralise token ownership away from a small group of insiders at launch.Like a supermarket handing out free samples to people who already shop there. The samples cost the supermarket nothing to print. The goal is to convert casual shoppers into loyal customers by giving them something tangible to talk about.Read more →: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%
  • Public/private sale: 0.17%

In October 2025, the Aethir Foundation redirected 1.26 billion ATH tokens originally earmarked for the Season 3 Cloud Drop airdrop into a new Digital Asset Treasury (DAT). The DAT functions as a strategic compute reserve: it buys ATH on-market, stakes them to onboard new GPU hosts, books compute on the platform, sells that compute for dollars, and uses the proceeds to buy more ATH. The tokens cannot be distributed directly or sold on open markets. Predictive Oncology (NASDAQ: POAI) separately announced a $344 million private investment in ATH for its own DAT-based Strategic Compute Reserve, a noteworthy institutional endorsement, though the relationship between the two DAT structures is unclear.

Circulating supplyCirculating SupplyThe number of tokens currently in circulation and tradeable on the open market. Differs from total supply (which includes locked or unvested tokens) and max supply (the upper limit, if there is one).Like the number of cars on the road today versus the number ever produced. Some are in showrooms, some in junkyards, some still at the factory. Only the ones on the road count toward what people are actually driving.Read more → sits at roughly 47.93% of the 42 billion maximum, so roughly 52% of supply is still locked or vesting.

Circulating supply Live · CoinGecko · 24 Aug 2026
20.13B
Circulating
47.93% of total
42.00B
Total supply

The compute provider allocation alone (21 billion tokens) will continue entering circulation for years. Team tokens started unlocking in December 2025 and vest daily until December 2028.

The gap between circulating market cap and FDVFDVFully Diluted Valuation. The market cap a token would have if every token that will ever exist were already in circulation. FDV is what the project would be worth if all locked, vesting, or unminted tokens were trading today.Like valuing a startup based on what every share would be worth if all the unvested employee options had already been exercised. The number is bigger and uglier than the official market cap, but it tells you the true ceiling.Read more → tells you everything about the dilution ahead. ATH was at launch in June 2024. The token is down roughly 94% from that peak.

StakingStakingLocking up a cryptocurrency to help secure a blockchain network, usually in exchange for rewards. The locked tokens act as a security deposit that can be taken away if the staker misbehaves.Like putting down a large rental deposit for an apartment. You get the money back if you behave, you earn interest while it's locked, and the landlord takes it if you trash the place.Read more → exists across three pools: Gaming, AI, and EigenLayer pre-deposits. Lock-ups run up to 4 years with a 30-day withdrawal vesting period. If pool utilisation exceeds 85%, withdrawals are blocked entirely. APY is not publicly disclosed, which is a red flag. If the yields were attractive, they would be advertised.

Token contract is on Ethereum mainnet (0xbe0Ed4138121EcFC5c0E56B40517da27E6c5226B) with operations and rewards on Arbitrum. The contract is verified on Etherscan: Solidity v0.8.18, ERC-20 with minting capabilities and whitelist management controlled by an admin multisig. That multisig can mint new tokens. This isn’t a decentralised token.

Listed on OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget, Gate.io, MEXC, and others. Coinbase listed ATH in March 2025, adding tier-1 exchange access. ATH was also added to Binance Alpha (a pre-listing token selection pool, not a full exchange listing) with a community Vote to List campaign in April 2025. As of March 2026, ATH isn’t listed on Binance for spot trading. Daily volume is healthy relative to market cap. 52,443 holders on Ethereum, 137,452 on Arbitrum.

How to participate

Beginner
Stake ATH
Intermediate
Run a checker node
Advanced
Provide GPU compute

Stake ATH. Choose Gaming, AI, or EigenLayer pools. Lock-up up to 4 years, 30-day withdrawal vesting. APY undisclosed. No compounding. Pool utilisation above 85% blocks withdrawals. Requires a walletWalletSoftware that stores the private keys needed to control tokens on a blockchain. A wallet does not actually hold any tokens. The tokens live on the chain. The wallet holds the keys that prove you own them.Like the key to a safe deposit box. The key doesn't contain your valuables. The valuables sit in the bank's vault. The key is what proves you're allowed to open the box and take them.Read more → and some ATH. Technical skill: basic. The main risk is the undisclosed yield: you are locking tokens without knowing the return.

Run a checker node. Checkers verify container performance. Requires purchasing a node licence (node sale has concluded, secondary market via eATH tokens). Technical skill: intermediate. Hardware requirements are modest since checkers verify rather than compute.

Provide GPU compute. Supply enterprise-grade NVIDIA GPUs to the network as a Cloud Host. Technical skill: advanced. Hardware: NVIDIA H100/H200/A100/B200 minimum. Capital requirements are high, and enterprise GPU hardware is expensive. This is the participation method that generates the revenue, but the barrier to entry is substantial.

Honest assessment

Freedom Score: 30/100

Aethir scores among the lowest Freedom Scores on this site. Here is why:

Infrastructure Decentralisation: 9/20. The hardware is geographically distributed: 440,000 containers across 94 countries is substantial coverage by Aethir’s own metrics. But all protocol logic, container management, and indexing is controlled by Aethir. The code is closed source. You cannot run an independent indexer or checker without Aethir’s permission.

Governance Decentralisation: 4/20. A four-phase governance roadmap was published in late 2024, with a committee structure comprising compute providers, validators, and ATH stakers. Governance areas include product direction, network parametersParametersThe internal numbers (weights and biases) inside a neural network that get adjusted during training. A 70-billion-parameter model has 70 billion adjustable internal numbers encoding everything it has learned.Like the synapses in a human brain. Each parameter is a tiny dial that gets nudged a little during training. With enough dials, the network can represent surprisingly complex patterns. The total parameter count is roughly how much "brain" the model has.Read more →, token economics, and staking rewards. Full launch was targeted for Q1 2026 but as of March 2026 there is no confirmation that decentralised governance is live. No on-chain voting, no verifiable community proposals. The DAO Treasury holds 7.5% of supply. Score remains at 4 until governance is demonstrably operational, not just roadmapped.

Token Distribution Fairness: 5/15. 50% to compute providers is structurally positive but 29% goes to team, investors, and advisors. The node sale raised $148 million from an unknown number of unique buyers, so concentration risk is unassessable. Public sale was 0.17%.

Censorship Resistance: 5/15. Closed source code means Aethir controls what runs on the network. Admin multisig on the token contract can mint tokens and manage whitelists. Enterprise focus suggests compliance orientation, not censorship resistance.

Data Sovereignty: 5/15. Enterprise workloads run on distributed containers, but Aethir controls the matching and indexing layer. No evidence of encryption guarantees or privacy-preserving computation.

Open Source Transparency: 2/15. Zero public GitHub repositories. The token contract is verified on Etherscan, which is the bare minimum. All protocol code, container orchestration, checker logic, and indexer code is proprietary. You cannot independently verify Aethir’s network-scale and performance claims from the code, even though the service-fee revenue does settle on-chain.

Returns Score: 64/100

Token Utility: 12/20. ATH is used to pay for compute, stake in pools, and operate checker nodes. Real utility exists: compute providers are paid in ATH. But staking yields are undisclosed, governance is nominal, and there is no access gating for general users. The token is useful but not essential to most participants.

Value Accrual: 14/20. Compute providers earn ATH for services. Staking pools direct tokens toward AI and gaming workloads. But there is no fee distribution to token holders, no buy-and-burn mechanism, and no revenue sharing. Value accrual is indirect: token demand comes from compute payment and staking requirements, not from a mechanical link between protocol revenue and token value.

Supply Dynamics: 8/20. 42 billion max supply with only 47.93% circulating. 50% allocated to compute providers vesting over years represents sustained dilution pressure. Team tokens vesting until December 2028. No burnBurnPermanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an address that no one controls. Burns reduce total supply, which (all else equal) makes each remaining token worth more of the network's value.Like a company buying back its own shares and shredding them. The company's total value stays the same, but each remaining share now represents a slightly bigger slice of that value.Read more → mechanism. The FDV-to-market-cap ratio is well above 1x, quantifying the dilution ahead. Score capped low given the combination of heavy remaining emissionsEmissionsNew tokens created and distributed by a blockchain protocol over time as rewards to validators, stakers, or miners. Emissions fund network security and participation at the cost of diluting existing holders.Like a company that pays employees partly in newly printed shares. Every year the total number of shares goes up, which means existing shareholders own a slightly smaller slice of the same company unless the company grows faster than the printing.Read more → and no offsetting burns.

Revenue Sustainability: 18/25. Aethir’s 2025 revenue headline reconciles on-chain: our own AETHIR_CORE index puts the trailing year at $78.7 million of gross service fees, DeFiLlama’s independent adapter agrees to within a few per cent, and our integrity layer marks it a match. That makes for demonstrable product-market fit at a scale no other DeAI project approaches. Three caveats keep it short of the top band. The protocol keeps only about a fifth of that gross; the DAT booking compute on Aethir’s own platform leaves an open question about how much of the volume is self-referential; and the dollar run-rate has fallen for three complete quarters, from a best priced month worth $150.2 million annualised to $39.6 million over the trailing ninety days. The rubric’s 17-21 band asks for revenue growing quarter on quarter, and this no longer does, which is the open question flagged for the September review.

LiquidityLiquidityHow easily a token can be bought or sold without moving the price. High liquidity means you can enter or exit large positions quickly at the quoted price. Low liquidity means even small trades can swing the market.Like the difference between selling a house and selling a share of Apple stock. The house might be worth more on paper, but finding a buyer at that price takes weeks. The Apple share converts to cash in one click.Read more → & Access: 12/15. Listed on OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget, Gate.io, Coinbase (March 2025), and several others. Binance Alpha pre-listing pool inclusion (not a full spot listing) with a Vote to List campaign in April 2025. As of March 2026, not listed on Binance for spot trading. Daily volume provides reasonable entry and exit for most position sizes. The Coinbase addition brings genuine tier-1 access that was previously absent. Score raised from 11 to reflect Coinbase listing.

Quadrant: C (Low Freedom, Moderate Returns)

Aethir sits firmly in Quadrant C: potentially profitable but centralised. The revenue story is compelling and now reconciles on-chain. The freedom story is improving (governance is finally being documented) but remains weak. This is an enterprise GPU business with a token, and governance window-dressing doesn’t change the fundamental architecture.

Recent security incident

On 10 April 2026, the AethirOFTAdapter contract on BNB Chain was exploited via an unauthorised transferOwnership call. PeckShield’s initial estimate put gross drainage at roughly 423,000 ATH (about $400,000), with attacker funds bridged from BNB Chain to Tron via Symbiosis Finance. Aethir’s monitoring caught the activity within minutes, engineers disconnected compromised contracts, and the main ATH supply on Ethereum was unaffected. End-user losses were capped at under $90,000 according to Bankless Times reporting on the incident. Aethir partnered with Binance, Upbit, Bithumb and HTX to blacklist attacker wallets and engaged ZeroShadow on attack-path analysis, with a compensation plan and detailed postmortem promised within a week. On 15 April 2026 Aethir’s official account said the full ATH compensation plan was live with a Discord claims process and the Uniswap LP fully restored; whether every individual claim has since been paid is Discord-gated and not independently verifiable. We’re not aware of any prior publicly documented protocol-side security incident affecting ATH user funds, but we haven’t done an exhaustive historical review.

Key risks

  • Revenue composition and trajectory. The headline revenue reconciles on-chain, so the open risk has moved from fabrication to make-up and direction. The protocol keeps only ~20% of gross, the run-rate has fallen from its mid-2025 peak, and the DAT booking compute on Aethir’s own platform with redirected airdrop tokens raises how much of the volume is durable external demand rather than self-referential.
  • Closed source. Every technical claim (node count, compute delivered, container performance) is unverifiable. This is unusual for a project claiming decentralisation.
  • Supply overhang. Roughly 52% of tokens are locked/vesting. Compute provider emissions (50% of supply) will continue for years. Team/investor unlocks run until December 2028. The DAT’s 1.26B redirected tokens add another mechanism affecting circulating supply.
  • Admin multisig. The token contract allows the admin to mint new tokens and manage a whitelist. This is a centralisation risk that most serious DeFiDeFiDecentralised Finance. Financial services like lending, trading, and yield farming built on smart contracts instead of traditional banks or brokerages. DeFi protocols are usually permissionless and global.Like a vending machine that can give you a loan, swap your currencies, or invest your savings. Nobody is behind the counter, the rules are written into the machine itself, and anyone with money in the right format can use it.Read more → projects have moved away from.
  • Governance uncertainty. Full decentralised governance was targeted for Q1 2026 but no confirmation of completion exists. The governance committee structure is documented but untested.
  • Enterprise concentration. 150+ clients sounds healthy, but if a small number of large contracts represent the majority of revenue, client departure risk is real.

Score change log

DateScoreChangeReason
2026-08-17DataN/ARevenue figures re-sourced and bound live: the ”~$163.5M all-time” headline came from a hand-run read the committed index cannot reproduce, so all-time dollar claims are dropped and the trailing year is bound via <Fig>. Trajectory restated from “fallen since” to the measured three-quarter decline. Score held, flagged for September.
2026-08-17DataN/AService-fee index committed and backfilled (1,250 DepositServiceFee logs). Two corrections: deposits denominated in ATH ROSE 2.33B to 7.43B year on year while the USD conversion fell, and the “under $1M by June 2026” monthly figure was overstated (indexed: $3.6M). Demand grade held, flagged for September.
2026-08-15DataN/ACirculating supply de-hardcoded: the absolute token count moved out of prose and the TokenFactsStrip into the live <CirculatingSupply /> component per the circulating-supply convention. Percentage unchanged at 47.93%. No score change.
2026-07-06EditorialN/AAdded a “The product in practice” section (per specs/product-comparison-framework.md): enterprise sales-led, revenue reconciles on-chain but scale metrics are self-reported, and node economics are the main independent gripe. No score change.
2026-07-01DataN/AJuly monthly review resolves two deferred Aethir items, no score change. (1) Bridge-exploit compensation (10 Apr 2026 AethirOFTAdapter, ~$400K gross / under $90K user loss): Aethir’s own account confirmed the full ATH compensation plan live with a Discord claims process and the Uniswap LP fully restored as of 15 Apr 2026; individual payout completion is Discord-gated and not independently verifiable, so the body does not assert “all users reimbursed”. (2) eATH (EigenLayer AVS) redemption window opened 24 June 2026 (slipped from the originally circulated 13 June), 15-day unbonding period, ~7.5% pre-depositor reward on a 90-day claim window. Freedom hold stands: the exploit impact was already priced in.
2026-06-10Returns63 → 64Revenue Sustainability 17 → 18. Integrity layer reconciled Aethir’s revenue on-chain (DeFiLlama ~$167.9M gross all-time, Token Terminal, our AETHIR_CORE index ~$163.5M; calendar-2025 ~$117.8M; verdict match), correcting the prior “self-reported / not independently verified” framing across the body, snapshot, pillars, cons and Returns verdict. Score nudged +1: independent verification confirmed, held back by a falling on-chain run-rate (peaked ~$145M annualised mid-2025; ARR verdict outdated) and self-referential-composition questions (DAT). Doesn’t cross a grade boundary (C).
2026-06-02DataN/ACirculating supply corrected from 41.6% (~17.5B) to 47.93% (~20.1B of 42B) per CoinGecko; “locked/vesting” updated 58.4% → ~52% across body, TokenFactsStrip, cons and Supply Dynamics evidence. Score unchanged (dimension already prices in heavy remaining emissions). June monthly review.
2026-05-02DataN/AAethirOFTAdapter bridge exploit on BNB Chain (10 April 2026) added to risks. Gross ~$400K drained, user losses capped under $90K. Postmortem and compensation plan pending. No score change applied yet pending postmortem.
2026-03-12Returns62 → 63Coinbase listing, DAT treasury mechanism. Liquidity improved.
2025-03-03BothN/AInitial publish. Freedom 35/100, Returns 62/100.

Score changes, new reviews, one editorial take every two weeks. No spam.

Team overview

Daniel Wang CEO & Co-Founder doxxed

Partner at IVC, CIO at YGG E2, Head of International Publishing at Riot Games, COO at Riot Games China.

https://sg.linkedin.com/in/danielwang
Mark Rydon Co-Founder & CSO doxxed

Roles at NOTA Platform, Flux Capital, Gaas LTD, Bechtel Corporation.

https://sg.linkedin.com/in/markrydon
Kyle Okamoto CTO doxxed

CEO & GM at Ericsson IoT/Automotive/Security, CEO of Edge Gravity, Chief Network Officer at Verizon Media.

Aethir (Singapore) · ~75 people
HashKey CapitalAnimoca BrandsMaelstrom (Arthur Hayes)Sanctor CapitalCitizenXFramework VenturesInfinity Ventures CryptoMerit CircleMirana VenturesBig Brain Holdings
Total raised: $158.4M
Round Amount Date Lead
Pre-Series A $9.0M 2023-07-01 HashKey Capital
Node Sale $148.4M 2024-03-01 --
IDO $817K 2024-03-01 Seedify
Private Sale $138K 2024-03-01 DexCheck Pad

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

Technical snapshot

Three-role architecture: Containers (execute GPU compute workloads), Checkers (verify container performance and integrity), and Indexers (match users to available containers). Uses Proof of Capacity (rewarding standby GPU availability) and Proof of Delivery (rewarding completed compute tasks). Settlement and token operations on Ethereum/Arbitrum; actual GPU compute execution is off-chain.

Consensus Custom Proof of Rendering/Capacity/Delivery — not a blockchain consensus mechanism. Uses Ethereum and Arbitrum for settlement and token operations.
Chain Ethereum (canonical token), Arbitrum (operations/rewards), Solana (bridge)
Open source No
Licence Proprietary / closed source
Languages Solidity
Stars
0
Forks
0
Contributors
0

Community

Discord
294.7K
Telegram
78.4K

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

Tokenomics deep dive

Token utility

  • Payment for GPU compute services
  • Staking for yield (Gaming Pool, AI Pool, EigenLayer Pre-deposits)
  • Governance participation (nominal — mechanism undocumented)
  • Node operator incentives (Checker and Compute Provider rewards)
  • Ecosystem development funding

Supply

Supply breakdown: Circulating 47.9%, Locked / Unmined 52.1% 47.93% circulating
Circulating 47.9%
Locked / Unmined 52.1%
Max supply Total supply Circulating Circ. %
42,000,000,000 42,000,000,000 20,128,764,593 47.93%

Allocation

Checker Nodes & Compute Providers 50%
Team 12.5%
Investors 11.5%
DAO Treasury 7.5%
Ecosystem Development 7.5%
Airdrop 6%
Advisors 5%
Public Sale 0.15%
Private/Pre-sale 0.02%

Method: Node sale + private rounds + airdrop + emissions

Category % Vesting Cliff
Checker Nodes & Compute Providers 50% Linear vesting over time None
Team 12.5% 3-year linear daily vesting after cliff 18 months from TGE (June 2024)
Investors 11.5% Not fully documented Not documented
DAO Treasury 7.5% Not documented None documented
Ecosystem Development 7.5% Not documented None documented
Airdrop 6% Distributed at/post-TGE None
Advisors 5% Not documented Not documented
Public Sale 0.15% None None
Private/Pre-sale 0.02% Not documented Not documented

Emissions

Model disinflationary
Halving None documented
Burn mechanism None documented
Next event Team token vesting completion (2028-12-01)

Vesting timeline

18 months from TGE (June 2024) 12.5%

Team cliff

2028-12-01

Team token vesting completion

TBD

None documented

Staking

Type Gaming Pool, AI Pool, EigenLayer Pre-deposits
Lock-up Up to 4 years; 30-day withdrawal vesting period
Risks: Lock-up period up to 4 years with 30-day withdrawal vesting; No compounding of rewards; Utilisation lock at 85% — staked tokens may not be fully withdrawable; APY not publicly disclosed — cannot assess real yield
Slashing: Not documented

50% allocation to compute providers is the largest single allocation and vests over time, creating sustained sell pressure. Node sale raised $148M which is significant relative to the project's current market cap. 29% insider allocation (team 12.5% + investors 11.5% + advisors 5%). Public sale was negligible at 0.17% of supply. Closed source raises transparency concerns about how emissions are actually distributed.

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

ATH Supply Simulator

Token: ATHSupply: 20128.8MMax: 42000MPrice: $0.0046Data: 24 Aug 2026

Scenario Parameters

Revenue growthBase rate: 50% YoY ($13.8M/yr)
50% YoY (current)
Burn rate
Not adjustable
Inflation rate
Not adjustable
Staking ratioCurrent: 0% of supply staked
Not adjustable
Time horizon
+0.0%
Net annual inflation
Emissions minus burns, annualised
+61.9%
Circulating change (2yr)
20.1B → 32.6B
+61.9%
Liquid change (2yr)
Circulating minus staked tokens
Month 1
Burn exceeds emission
Net deflationary from month 1
0%
Revenue coverage
Revenue as % of emission value (end of period)

Circulating Supply Projection

19.7B23.1B26.5B29.9B33.2BM1M5M9M13M17M21M24
CirculatingEffective (minus staked)

Supply projections only. Token price held constant at $0.0046 (snapshot 24 Aug 2026). No documented burn mechanism. This is not financial advice.

Participation at a glance

staking basic

Stake ATH tokens in Gaming Pool, AI Pool, or EigenLayer Pre-deposits to earn yield. Multiple lock-up tiers available up to 4 years with 30-day withdrawal vesting.

Hardware None
Est. returns APY not publicly disclosed
Barriers: Lock-up period up to 4 years, 30-day withdrawal vesting, No compounding
View guide →
node operation intermediate

Operate a Checker node to verify container performance and integrity. Requires purchase of a Checker node license from Aethir's node sale.

Hardware Modest hardware requirements (checking, not computing)
Est. returns Share of 50% compute provider/checker allocation
Barriers: Node license purchase required (sold out in primary sale — secondary market only), Technical setup and maintenance
View guide →
contributing advanced

Provide enterprise-grade NVIDIA GPUs (H100, H200, A100, B200, B300) as a compute provider. Earn ATH rewards through Proof of Capacity and Proof of Delivery.

Hardware NVIDIA H100/H200/A100/B200/B300 GPU
Min. capital $25K
Est. returns Share of compute provider emissions based on capacity and delivery
Barriers: Enterprise-grade GPU hardware cost ($25K+ per unit), Technical infrastructure setup, Network connectivity requirements
View guide →
building advanced

Build applications using Aethir's SDK and API for GPU compute. $100M ecosystem fund available for grants.

Hardware None
Est. returns Grants available from ecosystem fund
Barriers: Development expertise required, Closed-source SDK limits independent verification
View guide →

Developer resources

SDK Available
API Available
Docs quality adequate
Grants Yes

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

Usage and traction

Active providers
440,000
Annual revenue
$127.8M
Compute
1.5B+ compute hours delivered (2025, self-reported)

Data from: Usage/device metrics self-reported (Aethir 2025 wrap-up blog + dashboard.aethir.com). Revenue is independently on-chain-verified: DeFiLlama and Token Terminal both track Aethir service fees, and we indexed the AETHIR_CORE contract on Arbitrum ourselves (~$163.5M all-time gross fees, ~$33M protocol revenue at the 20% cut). (2025-12-31)

All usage and revenue metrics are self-reported by Aethir. 440,000+ GPU containers across 94 countries. 150+ enterprise clients. ARR claimed at $166M as of Q3 2025. Revenue efficiency claimed to outpace Filecoin 135x, Render 455x, Bittensor 14x by Rev/MC ratio — these comparisons are misleading given different business models AND use gross developer fees, not the 20% protocol revenue. Revenue IS independently verifiable on-chain (corrected 2026-06-09): DeFiLlama and Token Terminal both track it, and we indexed the AETHIR_CORE contract ourselves (~$163.5M all-time gross fees / ~$33M protocol revenue). The device and compute-hour claims remain self-reported and off-chain.

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

Community

Governance

DAO Treasury exists (7.5% of supply) but governance mechanism poorly documented. Team controls all technical decisions. No evidence of meaningful community governance or on-chain voting.

Sentiment

Generally positive. Strong enterprise adoption narrative drives community enthusiasm. Community engaged through Aethir Tribe program (800+ content creators) and recurring airdrop campaigns. Revenue claims are the primary bull case.

Source: OYM Research · Last updated 2026-08-24

Sources consulted (20)