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What is iExec?

Founded in 2016 by Gilles Fedak and Haiwu He in Lyon, France, iExec is an open-source decentralized cloud computing platform built on Ethereum. Initially positioned as an alternative to cloud providers like AWS and Azure, the iExec team has since updated its roadmap to focus on developer tools that make confidential computing simple.

Backed by strategic partnerships with Intel, Aethir, and AR.IO, iExec is part of a growing ecosystem focused on building infrastructure for secure, decentralized AI and DePIN applications.

This article explores how iExec enables confidential AI and DePIN through developer tools for privacy, and how Arweave provides the verifiable, permanent storage layer that supports the iExec ecosystem.

Protecting User Privacy in the AI Era

The rapid growth of AI has led to a data privacy crisis. Users routinely hand over sensitive information to centralized databases and AI systems with little visibility into how it’s processed or monetized.

As Nathan Chiron, CRO at iExec, warns:

We are in the age of AI, where we are providing immense amounts of data to these models, with many of them being centralized. (Source: This Isn’t About Hiding, It’s About Owning, July 2024)

To address these concerns, iExec has developed privacy tools that leverage Intel SGX and TDX hardware alongside blockchain governance. These tools provide builders with access to confidential computing for AI and DePIN applications across the iExec ecosystem.

Technical Overview: Confidential Computing

In the iExec network, confidential computing tasks are executed by a decentralized set of worker nodes running Intel CPUs with SGX or TDX hardware extensions. These extensions enable secure enclaves within the CPU, known as Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), that protect data during computation from unauthorized access.

After executing a task, each worker node submits a cryptographic attestation to the iExec network to prove that the task was performed on authorized hardware.

iExec Confidential Computing Workflow

1. Submit Task: Users select a TEE-compatible application and submit a job through the iExec marketplace.

2. Assign Worker: The task is matched to a certified worker node equipped with an SGX- or TDX-supported CPU.

3. Initialize the Enclave: The worker launches a secure enclave and sends an attestation report to the Secret Management Service (SMS), which verifies the enclave’s integrity by checking its cryptographic hash.

4. Provision Secrets: Once verified, the SMS securely transmits encrypted inputs, such as API keys or model weights, into the enclave via a protected channel.

5. Execute Privately: The application runs entirely within the enclave, ensuring complete confidentiality of both code and data.

6. Generate and Validate Results: After execution, the enclave encrypts the output and generates a proof of execution containing metadata (task ID, execution hash, timestamps). This proof is submitted to the Bellecour blockchain for validation under iExec’s Proof-of-Contribution (PoCo) protocol.

7. Finalize and Reward: Once validated, the task is marked complete on-chain, the worker is rewarded in RLC tokens, and the user receives the encrypted result.

Web3Telegram

iExec makes integrating confidential computing straightforward. The network includes developer tools and ready-to-use code, making it ideal for confidential AI inference and data processing.

One example of an application built using iExec’s privacy tools is Web3Telegram, a messaging service developed by iExec. It enables users to send and receive encrypted messages via Telegram using only their Ethereum address, without exposing their Telegram ID. All chat IDs are encrypted within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), and users can grant or revoke access at any time.

How Web3Telegram Works

1. An authorized sender submits a message request to Web3Telegram.

2. Inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), the system creates and uses an encrypted version of the user's Telegram chat ID.

3. This encrypted chat ID is stored on Arweave for future retrieval.

4. When a message needs to be sent, the encrypted chat ID is fetched from Arweave and decrypted inside the TEE to dispatch the message. The raw Telegram ID remains private and never leaves the TEE.

Arweave Partnership

To ensure permanent and verifiable access to encrypted data, iExec partnered with AR.IO to integrate Web3Telegram with Arweave’s decentralized storage layer. Through AR.IO’s gateway network, iExec publishes encrypted metadata—such as transaction IDs, timestamps, signatures, and custom tags—to the Permaweb, ensuring tamper-proof and persistent availability.

Integration Benefits

This integration enhances Web3Telegram by enabling:

• Permanent, censorship-resistant storage of encrypted outputs from confidential tasks.

• Decentralized publishing and retrieval of metadata, increasing transparency and removing central points of failure.

• Seamless interoperability between iExec and the Arweave ecosystem, making it easy for confidential applications to manage persistent, auditable data.

This collaboration also opens the door for future integrations, where Arweave’s Permaweb could provide permanent, verifiable storage for other confidential computing applications in iExec’s ecosystem.

Other Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations

In addition to its partnership with AR.IO, iExec is scaling its confidential computing ecosystem through collaborations focused on enterprise adoption and real-world applications.

• Intel Partner Alliance: iExec became a Gold Member in July 2025, marking a milestone in a multi-year collaboration with Intel focused on combining Intel SGX with blockchain. Their work includes co-authoring the EEA’s Off-Chain Trusted Compute Specification and developing secure AI model monetization. See iExec’s article for more details.

• Aethir Collaboration: iExec partnered with Aethir to power Confidential AI using Aethir’s decentralized NVIDIA H100 GPU infrastructure. The integration enables scalable, privacy-preserving AI workloads by combining iExec’s TEE architecture with Aethir’s globally distributed GPU compute. See Aethir’s blog post for more details.

• DeCC Alliance: iExec is a founding member of the DeCC Alliance, helping lead efforts to promote TEE-based privacy in Web3 through events, education, and ecosystem coordination. See iExec’s article for more details.

• NVIDIA Inception Program: Through the NVIDIA Inception Program, iExec gained access to advanced GPU technology to support confidential AI. The team is integrating NVIDIA H100 GPUs to power complex AI workloads alongside Intel TDX. See iExec’s article for more details.

Future Outlook

As AI advances and the demand for privacy grows, iExec is uniquely positioned at the intersection of secure offchain computing and decentralized blockchain verifiability. With its privacy tools powering GPU-enabled confidential AI and a growing network of tools and partners, iExec is building the trust layer for DePIN and AI.

In 2025, iExec will accelerate its efforts across developer support, AI agent tooling, and token utility, scaling infrastructure and adoption while making confidential computing accessible to both builders and end users.

Learn more in iExec’s Academy article on Decentralized Confidential Computing (DeCC), or follow @iEx_ec on X for the latest updates.

Start Building on Arweave, the Permanent Storage Layer for AI

Developers need a foundation that’s not only decentralized but also secure, private, and persistent. Whether you're building autonomous agents, AI protocols, or data-heavy apps, Arweave ensures your data stays verifiable and immutable forever.

Future‑proof your AI stack with Arweave:

• Start building on Arweave

• Explore the developer docs

• Join the community

About the author: Vitti is a Web3 writer who turns complex ideas into clear content.

Follow Vitti on X for insights into AI and Web3.

Founded in 2023 by machine learning experts Ron Chan and Colin Gagich, Inference Labs is solving one of AI's most critical challenges: how to verify AI outputs without exposing sensitive data. The Canadian startup operates Omron (Subnet 2) on the Bittensor network, now the world’s largest zkML proving cluster.

Through partnerships with EigenLayer, EZKL, Bagel, and Arweave, Inference Labs is building the cryptographic trust layer for verifiable, decentralized AI.

The team has raised over $6.3 million from Delphi Ventures, Mechanism Capital, and DACM—alongside a $1 million public sale on Legion in June 2025.

This article explores how Inference Labs solves the AI trust problem, the Omron subnet, and Arweave’s role as the decentralized storage layer for AI.

The AI Trust Problem

As AI adoption accelerates and autonomous agents emerge, there's a pressing need for trustless systems to verify model outputs and ensure agent actions are auditable by third parties. This requires verifying the computing party, the specific model used, and how input data is handled. However, performing such verification without privacy protections may expose internal model data and compromise user privacy.

"The AI trust problem is a $50 billion market waiting to be solved. When autonomous agents are managing your finances or making medical decisions, you need mathematical guarantees, not just promises." — Colin Gagich, Co-founder

To solve this problem, Inference Labs has built a zkML system as a subnet on Bittensor (Omron) that verifies model outputs without trusting the operator or revealing the model’s inputs or weights. Let’s explore how Omron works.

Technical Overview: How Omron Works

Omron is a decentralized network that incentivizes model distillation (reducing model size for verifiable AI) and prover optimization. It uses a Proof-of-Inference mechanism to cryptographically verify zero-knowledge proofs of AI outputs, confirming a specific model produced a result without exposing the model or input data.

1. Model Distillation

Zero-knowledge proofs are inherently compute-intensive and often impractical for large models. Omron addresses this challenge by incentivizing miners in the Bittensor network to distill and run models that generate fast, valid proofs inside zero-knowledge circuits (programs that prove a model produced the correct output without revealing how). Model distillation and optimization significantly reduce proof generation time and costs, making verifiable inference viable at scale.

2. Proof of Inference

While model distillation enables scalable zkML, it doesn’t guarantee that AI outputs can be trusted.

To ensure each inference is computed as claimed, Inference Labs built an optimized proof network where subnet validators verify model outputs and use an on-chain scoring system to reward miners based on correctness and latency.

How Proof of Inference works:

1. Users or applications submit AI inference tasks to the network, which validators broadcast to miners.

2. Miners select a model they believe will perform best, run the inference, and generate a cryptographic proof of correctness. The proof reveals neither the model weights nor the input data.

3. Miners return both the model output and the proof to the validator.

4. Validators verify each proof to ensure the inference was executed using the specified model and that the output is valid. Only outputs with valid proofs are accepted.

5. The validator returns the verified result and proof to the user, and then scores miners based on proof validity and latency. These scores determine on-chain rankings and TAO rewards. Miners who consistently fail to provide valid proofs or perform slowly receive reduced rewards.

Proof of Inference economically incentivizes miners to compute truthfully and optimize their hardware for proof acceleration, creating a competitive marketplace for verifiable compute that can scale with demand.

To understand how Omron fits into the broader Bittensor ecosystem, explore the Bittensor documentation and subnet development guide.

Arweave Integration: Why AI Proofs Need Permanent Storage

While Omron stands as the first fully decentralized zkML proving network, Inference Labs realized that making AI inference outputs transparent and persistently verifiable requires storing proofs on a permanent, decentralized storage network.

To solve this, Inference Labs partnered with AR.IO to develop the Proof of Publishing system to permanently record proofs on Arweave’s Permaweb. This system allows Subnet 2 validators to automatically publish inference proofs as permanent Arweave transactions. Each proof is timestamped and linked to a specific model, input, and miner.

Unlike centralized storage, Arweave uses cryptographic guarantees and economic incentives to ensure data permanence. As a result, every model output from the Omron zkML network stored on the Permaweb becomes publicly accessible, tamper-proof, and independently auditable by anyone worldwide.

For Inference Labs, the choice of Arweave was strategic. "Arweave gives us something no other storage solution can—mathematical certainty that these proofs will exist forever. When you're building trust infrastructure for AI, permanence isn't optional," says Colin Gagich.

How the Proof of Publishing works:

1. Validator Submission: After receiving inference results and their corresponding zero-knowledge proofs from miners, validators forward both to the Proof of Publishing System (PPS).

2. Upload to Arweave: The PPS uses AR.IO's open-source Turbo SDK to bundle the data and upload it to the Permaweb via a subsidized server configured by Inference Labs.

3. Permanent Record: Once confirmed, each proof is stored immutably on Arweave. Validators receive a transaction ID that serves as a permanent, content-addressed pointer—allowing anyone to retrieve and independently verify the data at any time.

Arweave Integration Benefits

Inference Labs’ integration with Arweave provides Omron with the following benefits:

• Real-time verification, allowing APIs, applications, and DeFi protocols to instantly access published proofs for re-verification and risk mitigation.

• Enterprise-grade auditability, making AI outputs suitable for industries such as finance, healthcare, and governance.

Omron’s Technical Achievements

Since launching on Bittensor, Omron achieved the following:

• Operates the world’s largest zk-inference marketplace via a global peer-to-peer proving cluster.

• Enables verifiable AI across EVM-compatible chains.

• Reduced median proving times from 15s to 5s.

• Supports multiple proving frameworks such as EZKL, Circom (Groth16), and a16z’s Jolt.

Strategic Partnerships

In addition to Arweave, Inference Labs has partnered with other leading decentralized AI protocols to build zkML solutions:

• EigenLayer: Integrated its economic security infrastructure into Inference Labs’ ZK‑VIN, creating the Sertn AVS, which achieves 76% faster zkML proof generation. See the EigenLayer blog post for more details.

• EZKL: Developed Metal bindings to enable zero-knowledge proofs on mobile devices; Inference Labs integrated these into Subnet 2 to support privacy-preserving applications like on-device age verification. See the EZKL blog post for more details.

• Bagel: Collaborated with Inference Labs to integrate verification protocols into Bagel’s decentralized fine-tuning marketplace, ensuring model integrity and protecting intellectual property. See the Inference Labs blog post for more details.

These partnerships position Inference Labs as a leader in zkML, as they build the infrastructure layer for verifiable, transparent AI outcomes.

Conclusion

Inference Labs combines Bittensor’s decentralized inference with Arweave’s permanent storage to create a scalable security stack for autonomous agents. As AI agents surpass human users online, trustless infrastructure becomes essential. Inference Labs leads decentralized AI and zkML development, aiming to scale AI while preserving privacy and ownership over personal and proprietary models.

Learn more in Inference Labs’ blog post on their Arweave integration, or follow their updates on Twitter/X.

Start Building on Arweave, the Permanent Storage Layer for AI

Developers need a foundation that’s not only decentralized but also secure, private, and persistent. Whether you're building autonomous agents, AI protocols, or data-heavy apps, Arweave ensures your data stays verifiable and immutable forever.

Future‑proof your AI stack with Arweave:

• Start building on Arweave

• Explore the developer docs

• Join the community

About the author: Vitti is a Web3 writer who turns complex ideas into clear content.

Follow Vitti on X for insights into AI and Web3.