The referee (ARB) settled to make a splash.
The Layer 2 network, which houses an increasing number of decentralized the AI platforms, was preparing to announce a mile mindset.
Then came the pivot.
“We received some last -minute communications from Nvidia that requested to stop the announcement, however, they did not provide any specific detail of why,” a spokesman told Coindesk in an email.
It is a revealing moment, and a reminder that despite Crypto’s continuous efforts to align with the AI Sector, Nvidia programs still explicitly exclude projects related to cryptography. A quick look at the starting accelerator criteria (the ignition is a branch of it, given the starting badge in its place) shows a clear disqualifier: cryptocurrency.
This position is not new, and although it can frustrate cryptographic developers who seek to take advantage of the Nvidia ecosystem, it reflects a longer story of distance and occasional contempt, the leadership of the company.
In 2018, co -founder and CEO Jensen Huang described the consequences of ICO’s boom as giving Nvidia a “cryptography hangover.” Ethereum’s pricing collapse left the company full of GPU inventory not sold, and Nvidia then paid a fine of $ 5.5 million on how it reported an impact on revenue related to cryptography.
Years later, in a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan was more direct: “Cryptography does not bring anything useful for society,” he said, he added: “I never believed that that [crypto] It is something that will do something good for humanity “, contrast it with AI.
This skepticism has been in marked contrast with the hug of artificial intelligence of Nvidia and the occasional tolerance of blockchain.
At the company’s Graphic Technology Conference, Huang appeared on stage with Illia Poosukhin, co -author of attention, is all you need, the document that introduced the transformer models, which are the base of modern the tools such as Chatgpt. While Poosukhin also co -founded the nearby blockchain, the discussion focused directly on AI, not on cryptography.
The wink closest to the industry occurred when Huang, in characteristic strokes, said: “We obtained programmable humans, we obtained programmable proteins, we obtained programmable money.” The comment, probably rhetorical, was not a sign of support for cryptography, despite AI tokens bulls, and in fact not any strategic change.
Although Nvidia has been clear in her position on cryptography, some in the industry continue to perform moments like these as cracks at the door, a soft potential that could eventually lead to inclusion. But with Crypto still formally excluded from Nvidia’s flagship programs and the company that refuses to comment on its current position, the door appears equally closed.
For now, Nvidia’s message seems clear: Crypto is not invited.
