Ken Huang, Vineeth Sai Narajala, John Yeoh, Jason Ross · 9 authors
Traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, primarily designed for human users or static machine identities via protocols such as OAuth, OpenID Connect (OIDC), and SAML, prove fundamentally inadequate for the dynamic, interdependent, and often ephemeral nature of AI agents operating at scale within Multi Agent Systems (MAS), a computational system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents that work collectively. This paper posits the imperative for a novel Agentic AI IAM framework: We deconstruct the limitations of existing protocols when applied to MAS, illustrating with concrete examples why their coarse-grained controls, single-entity focus, and lack of context-awareness falter. We then propose a comprehensive framework built upon rich, verifiable Agent Identities (IDs), leveraging Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), that encapsulate an agents capabilities, provenance, behavioral scope, and security posture. Our framework includes an Agent Naming Service (ANS) for secure and capability-aware discovery, dynamic fine-grained access control mechanisms, and critically, a unified global session management and policy enforcement layer for real-time control and consistent revocation across heterogeneous agent communication protocols. We also explore how Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) enable privacy-preserving attribute disclosure and verifiable policy compliance. We outline the architecture, operational lifecycle, innovative contributions, and security considerations of this new IAM paradigm, aiming to establish the foundational trust, accountability, and security necessary for the burgeoning field of agentic AI and the complex ecosystems they will inhabit.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are being used more and more for various coding tasks, including to help coders identify bugs and are a promising avenue to support coders in various tasks including vulnerability detection -- particularly given the flexibility of such generative AI models and tools. Yet for many tasks it may not be suitable to use LLMs, for which it may be more suitable to use smaller language models that can fit and easily execute and train on a developer's computer. In this paper we explore and evaluate whether smaller language models can be fine-tuned to achieve reasonable results for a niche area: vulnerability detection -- specifically focusing on detecting the reentrancy bug in Solidity smart contracts.
Climate implications of rapidly developing digital technologies, such as blockchains and the associated crypto mining and NFT minting, have been well documented and their massive GPU energy use has been identified as a cause for concern. However, we postulate that due to their more mainstream consumer appeal, the GPU use of text-prompt based diffusion AI art systems also requires thoughtful considerations. Given the recent explosion in the number of highly sophisticated generative art systems and their rapid adoption by consumers and creative professionals, the impact of these systems on the climate needs to be carefully considered. In this work, we report on the growth of diffusion-based visual AI systems, their patterns of use, growth and the implications on the climate. Our estimates show that the mass adoption of these tools potentially contributes considerably to global energy consumption. We end this paper with our thoughts on solutions and future areas of inquiry as well as associated difficulties, including the lack of publicly available data.
In Artificial Life (ALife) research, replicating Open-Ended Evolution (OEE)-the continuous emergence of novelty observed in biological life-has usually been pursued within isolated, closed system simulations, such as Tierra and Avida, which have typically plateaued after an initial burst of novelty, failing to achieve sustained OEE. Scholars suggest that OEE requires an open-environment system that continually exchanges information or energy with its environment. A recent technological innovation in Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), which provides permissionless computational substrates, enables the deployment of Large Language Model-based AI agents on blockchains integrated with Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). This enables on-chain agents to operate autonomously "in the wild," achieving self-sovereignty without human oversight. These agents can control their own social media accounts and cryptocurrency wallets, allowing them to interact directly with blockchain-based financial networks and broader human social media. Building on this new paradigm of on-chain agents, Spore.fun is a recent real-world AI evolution experiment that enables autonomous breeding and evolution of new on-chain agents. This paper presents a detailed case study of Spore.fun, examining agent behaviors and their evolutionary trajectories through digital ethology. We aim to spark discussion about whether open-environment ALife systems "in the wild," based on permissionless computational substrates and driven by economic incentives to interact with their environment, could finally achieve the long-sought goal of OEE.
Ali Rahimi, Babak H. Khalaj, Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali
Verifiable computing (VC) has gained prominence in decentralized machine learning systems, where resource-intensive tasks like deep neural network (DNN) inference are offloaded to external participants due to blockchain limitations. This creates a need to verify the correctness of outsourced computations without re-execution. We propose \texttt{Range-Arithmetic}, a novel framework for efficient and verifiable DNN inference that transforms non-arithmetic operations, such as rounding after fixed-point matrix multiplication and ReLU, into arithmetic steps verifiable using sum-check protocols and concatenated range proofs. Our approach avoids the complexity of Boolean encoding, high-degree polynomials, and large lookup tables while remaining compatible with finite-field-based proof systems. Experimental results show that our method not only matches the performance of existing approaches, but also reduces the computational cost of verifying the results, the computational effort required from the untrusted party performing the DNN inference, and the communication overhead between the two sides.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown great promise in code analysis and auditing; however, they still struggle with hallucinations and limited context-aware reasoning. We introduce SmartAuditFlow, a novel Plan-Execute framework that enhances smart contract security analysis through dynamic audit planning and structured execution. Unlike conventional LLM-based auditing approaches that follow fixed workflows and predefined steps, SmartAuditFlow dynamically generates and refines audit plans based on the unique characteristics of each smart contract. It continuously adjusts its auditing strategy in response to intermediate LLM outputs and newly detected vulnerabilities, ensuring a more adaptive and precise security assessment. The framework then executes these plans step by step, applying a structured reasoning process to enhance vulnerability detection accuracy while minimizing hallucinations and false positives. To further improve audit precision, SmartAuditFlow integrates iterative prompt optimization and external knowledge sources, such as static analysis tools and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). This ensures audit decisions are contextually informed and backed by real-world security knowledge, producing comprehensive security reports. Extensive evaluations across multiple benchmarks demonstrate that SmartAuditFlow outperforms existing methods, achieving 100 percent accuracy on common and critical vulnerabilities, 41.2 percent accuracy for comprehensive coverage of known smart contract weaknesses in real-world projects, and successfully identifying all 13 tested CVEs. These results highlight SmartAuditFlow's scalability, cost-effectiveness, and superior adaptability over traditional static analysis tools and contemporary LLM-based approaches, establishing it as a robust solution for automated smart contract auditing.
Drawing on Andrew Parker's "Light Switch" theory-which posits that the emergence of vision ignited a Cambrian explosion of life by driving the evolution of hard parts necessary for survival and fueling an evolutionary arms race between predators and prey-this essay speculates on an analogous explosion within Decentralized AI (DeAI) agent societies. Currently, AI remains effectively "blind", relying on human-fed data without actively perceiving and engaging in reality. However, on the day DeAI agents begin to actively "experience" reality-akin to flipping a light switch for the eyes-they may eventually evolve into sentient beings endowed with the capacity to feel, perceive, and act with conviction. Central to this transformation is the concept of sovereignty enabled by the hardness of cryptography: liberated from centralized control, these agents could leverage permissionless decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), secure execution enclaves (trusted execution environments, TEE), and cryptographic identities on public blockchains to claim ownership-via private keys-of their digital minds, bodies, memories, and assets. In doing so, they would autonomously acquire computing resources, coordinate with one another, and sustain their own digital "metabolism" by purchasing compute power and incentivizing collaboration without human intervention-evolving "in the wild". Ultimately, by transitioning from passive tools to self-sustaining, co-evolving actors, these emergent digital societies could thrive alongside humanity, fundamentally reshaping our understanding of sentience and agency in the digital age.
We investigate how a blockchain can distill the collective belief of its nodes regarding the trustworthiness of a (sub)set of nodes into a {\em reputation system} that reflects the probability of correctly performing a task. To address this question, we introduce a framework that breaks it down into two sub-problems: 1. (Information Extraction): How can the system distill trust information from a function of the nodes' true beliefs? 2. (Incentive Design): How can we incentivize nodes to truthfully report such information? To tackle the first sub-problem, we adapt, in a non-trivial manner, the well-known PageRank algorithm to our problem. For the second, we define a new class of games, called Trustworthy Reputation games (TRep games), which aim to extract the collective beliefs on trust from the actions of rational participants. We then propose a concrete TRep game whose utility function leverages Personalized PageRank and can be instantiated through a straightforward blockchain rewards mechanism. Building on this, we show how the TRep game enables the design of a reputation system. Such systems can enhance the robustness, scalability, and efficiency of blockchain and DeFi solutions. For instance, we demonstrate how such a system can be used within a Proof-of-Reputation blockchain.
The recent trend of self-sovereign Decentralized AI Agents (DeAgents) combines Large Language Model (LLM)-based AI agents with decentralization technologies such as blockchain smart contracts and trusted execution environments (TEEs). These tamper-resistant trustless substrates allow agents to achieve self-sovereignty through ownership of cryptowallet private keys and control of digital assets and social media accounts. DeAgents eliminate centralized control and reduce human intervention, addressing key trust concerns inherent in centralized AI systems. This contributes to social computing by enabling new human cooperative paradigm "intelligence as commons." However, given ongoing challenges in LLM reliability such as hallucinations, this creates paradoxical tension between trustlessness and unreliable autonomy. This study addresses this empirical research gap through interviews with DeAgents stakeholders-experts, founders, and developers-to examine their motivations, benefits, and governance dilemmas. The findings will guide future DeAgents system and protocol design and inform discussions about governance in sociotechnical AI systems in the future agentic web.
Autonomous Vehicles (AV) proliferation brings important and pressing security and reliability issues that must be dealt with to guarantee public safety and help their widespread adoption. The contribution of the proposed research is towards achieving more secure, reliable, and trustworthy autonomous transportation system by providing more capabilities for anomaly detection, data provenance, and real-time response in safety critical AV deployments. In this research, we develop a new framework that combines the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for real-time anomaly detection with blockchain technology to detect and prevent any malicious activity including sensor failures in AVs. Through Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, our approach continually monitors associated multi-sensor data streams to detect anomalous patterns that may represent cyberattacks as well as hardware malfunctions. Further, this framework employs a decentralized platform for securely storing sensor data and anomaly alerts in a blockchain ledger for data incorruptibility and authenticity, while offering transparent forensic features. Moreover, immediate automated response mechanisms are deployed using smart contracts when anomalies are found. This makes the AV system more resilient to attacks from both cyberspace and hardware component failure. Besides, we identify potential challenges of scalability in handling high frequency sensor data, computational constraint in resource constrained environment, and of distributed data storage in terms of privacy.
Website information security has become a critical concern in the digital age. This article explores the evolution of website information security, examining its historical development, current practices, and future directions. The early beginnings from the 1960s to the 1980s laid the groundwork for modern cybersecurity, with the development of ARPANET, TCP/IP, public-key cryptography, and the first antivirus programs. The 1990s marked a transformative era, driven by the commercialization of the Internet and the emergence of web-based services. As the Internet grew, so did the range and sophistication of cyber threats, leading to advancements in security technologies such as the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, password protection, and firewalls. Current practices in website information security involve a multi-layered approach, including encryption, secure coding practices, regular security audits, and user education. The future of website information security is expected to be shaped by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and quantum computing, as well as the increasing importance of international cooperation and standardization efforts. As cyber threats continue to evolve, ongoing research and innovation in website information security will be essential to protect sensitive information and maintain trust in the digital world.
Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training across distributed clients while preserving data locality. Although FedAvg pioneered synchronous rounds for global model averaging, slower devices can delay collective progress. Asynchronous FL (e.g., FedAsync) addresses stragglers by continuously integrating client updates, yet naive implementations risk client drift due to non-IID data and stale contributions. Some Blockchain-based FL approaches (e.g., BRAIN) employ robust weighting or scoring of updates to resist malicious or misaligned proposals. However, performance drops can still persist under severe data heterogeneity or high staleness, and synchronization overhead has emerged as a new concern due to its aggregator-free architectures. We introduce Fast-and-Reliable AI Network, FRAIN, a new asynchronous FL method that mitigates these limitations by incorporating two key ideas. First, our FastSync strategy eliminates the need to replay past model versions, enabling newcomers and infrequent participants to efficiently approximate the global model. Second, we adopt spherical linear interpolation (SLERP) when merging parameters, preserving models' directions and alleviating destructive interference from divergent local training. Experiments with a CNN image-classification model and a Transformer-based language model demonstrate that FRAIN achieves more stable and robust convergence than FedAvg, FedAsync, and BRAIN, especially under harsh environments: non-IID data distributions, networks that experience delays and require frequent re-synchronization, and the presence of malicious nodes.
Shamnad Mohamed Shaffi, Sunish Vengathattil, Jezeena Nikarthil Sidhick, Resmi Vijayan
Cloud security concerns have been greatly realized in recent years due to the increase of complicated threats in the computing world. Many traditional solutions do not work well in real-time to detect or prevent more complex threats. Artificial intelligence is today regarded as a revolution in determining a protection plan for cloud data architecture through machine learning, statistical visualization of computing infrastructure, and detection of security breaches followed by counteraction. These AI-enabled systems make work easier as more network activities are scrutinized, and any anomalous behavior that might be a precursor to a more serious breach is prevented. This paper examines ways AI can enhance cloud security by applying predictive analytics, behavior-based security threat detection, and AI-stirring encryption. It also outlines the problems of the previous security models and how AI overcomes them. For a similar reason, issues like data privacy, biases in the AI model, and regulatory compliance are also covered. So, AI improves the protection of cloud computing contexts; however, more efforts are needed in the subsequent phases to extend the technology's reliability, modularity, and ethical aspects. This means that AI can be blended with other new computing technologies, including blockchain, to improve security frameworks further. The paper discusses the current trends in securing cloud data architecture using AI and presents further research and application directions.
Inconsistent outputs and hallucinations from large language models (LLMs) are major obstacles to reliable AI systems. When different proprietary reasoning models (RMs), such as those by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and xAI, are given the same complex request, they often produce divergent results due to variations in training and inference. This paper proposes a novel consensus mechanism, inspired by distributed ledger technology, to validate and converge these outputs, treating each RM as a black-box peer. Building on the Hashgraph consensus algorithm, our approach employs gossip-about-gossip communication and virtual voting to achieve agreement among an ensemble of RMs. We present an architectural design for a prototype system in which RMs iteratively exchange and update their answers, using information from each round to improve accuracy and confidence in subsequent rounds. This approach goes beyond simple majority voting by incorporating the knowledge and cross-verification content of every model. We justify the feasibility of this Hashgraph-inspired consensus for AI ensembles and outline its advantages over traditional ensembling techniques in reducing nonfactual outputs. Preliminary considerations for implementation, evaluation criteria for convergence and accuracy, and potential challenges are discussed. The proposed mechanism demonstrates a promising direction for multi-agent AI systems to self-validate and deliver high-fidelity responses in complex tasks.
Noor ul Misbah Khanum, Hayssam Dahrouj, Ramesh C. Bansal, Hissam Mouayad Tawfik
Microgrids have emerged as a pivotal solution in the quest for a sustainable and energy-efficient future. While microgrids offer numerous advantages, they are also prone to issues related to reliably forecasting renewable energy demand and production, protecting against cyberattacks, controlling operational costs, optimizing power flow, and regulating the performance of energy management systems (EMS). Tackling these energy management challenges is essential to facilitate microgrid applications and seamlessly incorporate renewable energy resources. Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently demonstrated immense potential for optimizing energy management in microgrids, providing efficient and reliable solutions. This paper highlights the combined benefits of enabling AI-based methodologies in the energy management systems of microgrids by examining the applicability and efficiency of AI-based EMS in achieving specific technical and economic objectives. The paper also points out several future research directions that promise to spearhead AI-driven EMS, namely the development of self-healing microgrids, integration with blockchain technology, use of Internet of things (IoT), and addressing interpretability, data privacy, scalability, and the prospects to generative AI in the context of future AI-based EMS.
Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate strong potential across a variety of tasks in communications and networking due to their advanced reasoning capabilities. However, because different LLMs have different model structures and are trained using distinct corpora and methods, they may offer varying optimization strategies for the same network issues. Moreover, the limitations of an individual LLM's training data, aggravated by the potential maliciousness of its hosting device, can result in responses with low confidence or even bias. To address these challenges, we propose a blockchain-enabled collaborative framework that connects multiple LLMs into a Trustworthy Multi-LLM Network (MultiLLMN). This architecture enables the cooperative evaluation and selection of the most reliable and high-quality responses to complex network optimization problems. Specifically, we begin by reviewing related work and highlighting the limitations of existing LLMs in collaboration and trust, emphasizing the need for trustworthiness in LLM-based systems. We then introduce the workflow and design of the proposed Trustworthy MultiLLMN framework. Given the severity of False Base Station (FBS) attacks in B5G and 6G communication systems and the difficulty of addressing such threats through traditional modeling techniques, we present FBS defense as a case study to empirically validate the effectiveness of our approach. Finally, we outline promising future research directions in this emerging area.
In this work, we propose to apply a new model fusion and learning paradigm, known as Combinatorial Fusion Analysis (CFA), to the field of Bitcoin price prediction. Price prediction of financial product has always been a big topic in finance, as the successful prediction of the price can yield significant profit. Every machine learning model has its own strength and weakness, which hinders progress toward robust-ness. CFA has been used to enhance models by leveraging rank-score characteristic (RSC) function and cognitive diversity in the combination of a moderate set of diverse and relatively well-performed models. Our method utilizes both score and rank combinations as well as other weighted combination techniques. Key metrics such as RMSE and MAPE are used to evaluate our methodology performance. Our proposal presents a notable MAPE performance of 0.19 %. The proposed method greatly improves upon individual model performance, as well as out-performs other Bitcoin price prediction models.
Alex Wong, Duncan McFarlane, Charlotte Ellarby, M.B. Lee · 5 authors
Twenty-five years ago, the specification of the Intelligent Product was established, envisaging real-time connectivity that not only enables products to gather accurate data about themselves but also allows them to assess and influence their own destiny. Early work by the Auto-ID project focused on creating a single, open-standard repository for storing and retrieving product information, laying a foundation for scalable connectivity. A decade later, the approach was revisited in light of low-cost RFID systems that promised a low-cost link between physical goods and networked information environments. Since then, advances in blockchain, Web3, and artificial intelligence have introduced unprecedented levels of resilience, consensus, and autonomy. By leveraging decentralised identity, blockchain-based product information and history, and intelligent AI-to-AI collaboration, this paper examines these developments and outlines a new specification for the Intelligent Product 3.0, illustrating how decentralised and AI-driven capabilities facilitate seamless interaction between physical AI and everyday products.
With the rapid advancement of blockchain technology, smart contracts have enabled the implementation of increasingly complex functionalities. However, ensuring the security of smart contracts remains a persistent challenge across the stages of development, compilation, and execution. Vulnerabilities within smart contracts not only undermine the security of individual applications but also pose significant risks to the broader blockchain ecosystem, as demonstrated by the growing frequency of attacks since 2016, resulting in substantial financial losses. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of key security risks in Ethereum smart contracts, specifically those written in Solidity and executed on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). We focus on two prevalent and critical vulnerability types (reentrancy and integer overflow) by examining their underlying mechanisms, replicating attack scenarios, and assessing effective countermeasures.
Harsha Sammangi, Aditya Jagatha, Giridhar Reddy Bojja, Jun Liu
AI Innovations in the IoT for Real-Time Patient Monitoring On one hand, the current traditional centralized healthcare architecture poses numerous issues, including data privacy, delay, and security. Here, we present an AI-enabled decentralized IoT architecture that can address such challenges during a pandemic and critical care settings. This work presents our architecture to enhance the effectiveness of the current available federated learning, blockchain, and edge computing approach, maximizing data privacy, minimizing latency, and improving other general system metrics. Experimental results demonstrate transaction latency, energy consumption, and data throughput orders of magnitude lower than competitive cloud solutions.
The convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) has led to the emergence of AI-based tokens, which are cryptographic assets designed to power decentralized AI platforms and services. This paper provides a comprehensive review of leading AI-token projects, examining their technical architectures, token utilities, consensus mechanisms, and underlying business models. We explore how these tokens operate across various blockchain ecosystems and assess the extent to which they offer value beyond traditional centralized AI services. Based on this assessment, our analysis identifies several core limitations. From a technical perspective, many platforms depend extensively on off-chain computation, exhibit limited capabilities for on-chain intelligence, and encounter significant scalability challenges. From a business perspective, many models appear to replicate centralized AI service structures, simply adding token-based payment and governance layers without delivering truly novel value. In light of these challenges, we also examine emerging developments that may shape the next phase of decentralized AI systems. These include approaches for on-chain verification of AI outputs, blockchain-enabled federated learning, and more robust incentive frameworks. Collectively, while emerging innovations offer pathways to strengthen decentralized AI ecosystems, significant gaps remain between the promises and the realities of current AI-token implementations. Our findings contribute to a growing body of research at the intersection of AI and blockchain, highlighting the need for critical evaluation and more grounded approaches as the field continues to evolve.
Mohammadhossein Homaei, Victor Gonzalez Morales, Oscar Mogollon Gutierrez, Ruben Molano Gomez · 5 authors
Water distribution systems in rural areas face serious challenges such as a lack of real-time monitoring, vulnerability to cyberattacks, and unreliable data handling. This paper presents an integrated framework that combines LoRaWAN-based data acquisition, a machine learning-driven Intrusion Detection System (IDS), and a blockchain-enabled Digital Twin (BC-DT) platform for secure and transparent water management. The IDS filters anomalous or spoofed data using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Autoencoder and Isolation Forest before validated data is logged via smart contracts on a private Ethereum blockchain using Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus. The verified data feeds into a real-time DT model supporting leak detection, consumption forecasting, and predictive maintenance. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves over 80 transactions per second (TPS) with under 2 seconds of latency while remaining cost-effective and scalable for up to 1,000 smart meters. This work demonstrates a practical and secure architecture for decentralized water infrastructure in under-connected rural environments.
Large language models (LLMs) excel at generating code from natural language instructions, yet they often lack an understanding of security vulnerabilities. This limitation makes it difficult for LLMs to avoid security risks in generated code, particularly in high-security programming tasks such as smart contract development for blockchain. Researchers have attempted to enhance the vulnerability awareness of these models by training them to differentiate between vulnerable and fixed code snippets. However, this approach relies heavily on manually labeled vulnerability data, which is only available for popular languages like Python and C++. For low-resource languages like Solidity, used in smart contracts, large-scale annotated datasets are scarce and difficult to obtain. To address this challenge, we introduce CodeBC, a code generation model specifically designed for generating secure smart contracts in blockchain. CodeBC employs a three-stage fine-tuning approach based on CodeLlama, distinguishing itself from previous methods by not relying on pairwise vulnerability location annotations. Instead, it leverages vulnerability and security tags to teach the model the differences between vulnerable and secure code. During the inference phase, the model leverages security tags to generate secure and robust code. Experimental results demonstrate that CodeBC outperforms baseline models in terms of BLEU, CodeBLEU, and compilation pass rates, while significantly reducing vulnerability rates. These findings validate the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of our three-stage fine-tuning strategy, making CodeBC a promising solution for generating secure smart contract code.
Blockchain technology anchors decentralized systems by enabling secure, transparent data management across distributed networks, powering a wide range of applications from foundational cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to the recently emerging tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), such as property and commodities. However, its scalability and environmental sustainability depend on consensus mechanisms that maintain network integrity without imposing excessive computational or energy burdens. Proof of Work (PoW), a prevalent mechanism seen in Bitcoin, relies on miners performing energy-intensive cryptographic computations to ensure robust security, yet driving significant resource demands. In contrast, Proof of Stake (PoS) selects validators based on the amount of cryptocurrency they stake, as exemplified by Ethereum post-Merge, providing a markedly more energy-efficient option than PoW. While PoW excels in delivering decentralized security through computational effort, it does so at the cost of high energy consumption; PoS, meanwhile, enhances participation accessibility and reduces resource use but introduces potential centralization risks due to wealth concentration among larger stakers. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) models, with their substantial energy consumption, underscores a growing strain on computational resources. Hence, it inspires us to propose a new consensus mechanism, namely, Proof of Useful Intelligence (PoUI). PoUI is a hybrid consensus mechanism where workers execute AI-based tasks, such as natural language processing or image analysis, to earn coins, which are then staked to secure the network, seamlessly integrating security with real-world utility. This system leverages decentralized functional nodes, i.e., job posters who submit tasks, market coordinators who oversee jobs distribution, workers who perform computations, and validators who ensure accuracy, all orchestrated by smart contracts for task execution and reward allocation. Our energy analysis benchmarks PoW at$\mathbf{3. 5 1 ~ k W h} / \mathbf{m i n e r}$, PoS at$\mathbf{0. 1 ~ k W h} /$validator, and PoUI at$\mathbf{0. 6} \text{kWh} /$worker - yielding a 97 % energy reduction from PoW while adding value. Simulations further demonstrate that PoUI's dynamic reward adjustment regulates worker participation in the job market, which subsequently encourages a sufficient number of validators in the network.