After a year of Decentralization AI coalition, cracks have appeared. What are the motivations behind Ocean Protocol's exit from the ASI alliance?

Author: Zen, PANews

The ASI Alliance (Artificial Superintelligence) was jointly initiated by Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol, aiming to create a unified decentralized AI ecosystem through token integration and technological collaboration.

However, with the recent announcement of the Ocean Protocol Foundation's official withdrawal, this consortium, regarded as a leading decentralized ecosystem, has ultimately shown signs of fracture, and the framework of the alliance has undergone substantial adjustments.

From the outside, this move not only prompts people to reassess the feasibility of the “decentralized AI alliance” path, but also introduces new variables for the future development of Ocean and ASI.

The Ocean Foundation has left, and the ASI Alliance is hard to avoid splitting up one year after its establishment.

On October 9, the Ocean Protocol Foundation announced in 2025 that it would immediately withdraw from the ASI Alliance. The Ocean Foundation has withdrawn its designated board position at ASI Alliance Company (Singapore), resigned from its membership in the alliance, and exited the cooperation framework.

In response to Ocean's departure, the ASI Alliance stated through X that it respects the team's decision, emphasizing that the alliance's cooperation is fundamentally based on voluntary participation, and this transition “happened naturally.” Both the alliance and Fetch.ai officials expressed that Ocean's exit does not affect the core technology stack of the alliance, and the founding team remains aligned in advancing the mission of open decentralized AI infrastructure.

On the unofficial level, the community's response to this breakup event is clearly not as dignified and restrained, with opinions contrasting sharply between supporting Ocean's independent development and concerns about the alliance's prospects. Many Ocean supporters welcomed the project's regained independence, and this sentiment contributed to a significant surge in the price of the OCEAN token. Conversely, some members of the alliance community expressed discontent, with some even angrily labeling Ocean's move as a “Trojan horse plan” within the alliance, believing that Ocean's exit has severely weakened the ASI alliance.

The ASI Alliance was established in March 2024, initiated by three major decentralized AI projects: Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol. The alliance aims to integrate resources from various parties to create the largest independent AI research and development collaboration platform, and through token consolidation to form a unified AI ecological token.

According to the plan announced at the time, the three projects decided not to issue new tokens but to merge the OCEAN token from Ocean Protocol and the AGIX token from SingularityNET into the FET token of Fetch.ai. As a result, the FET token became the foundational token of the alliance, later being given the new name and mission of “ASI.” The alliance hopes to make this unified token a universal value carrier supporting decentralized AI infrastructure through the sharing of economy and technology.

It is reported that since the token merger began in July 2024, about 81% of the OCEAN supply has been converted into Fetch.ai's FET tokens as planned. However, there are still approximately 270 million OCEAN tokens that have not been converted, distributed across 37,334 addresses, accounting for about 19% of the total supply.

After completing the initial tripartite merger, the ASI Alliance continues to attract like-minded partners. In September 2024, the blockchain computing project CUDOS announced its joining of the ASI Alliance, with its network and token supply integrated into the ASI ecosystem to strengthen the alliance's decentralized computing infrastructure. Thus, the ASI Alliance now brings together four major projects: Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, Ocean Protocol, and CUDOS.

During the alliance period, each member maintained the independence of their respective teams and governance, but engaged in multiple collaborations at the technical and community levels. The alliance officially built a unified website and governance structure, and established a council to jointly make decisions on alliance affairs. However, the ASI alliance moved from a high-profile merger to member separation in just over a year, ultimately unable to escape the fate of “what is long united will divide.”

What is the technical route, token price, and the reason for Ocean's withdrawal from the group?

From the official statement, Ocean Protocol has chosen to withdraw from the ASI Alliance at this time, with the core motivation being the pursuit of independent funding and governance. The Ocean team hopes to control the source of its own development funding, rather than continue to be restricted by the alliance's unified funding arrangements, while also wishing to have autonomous decision-making authority over the economic model of the OCEAN token, including the implementation of deflationary measures.

In addition, the low value of tokens and inflationary pressures may be significant reasons for triggering exits. Since the merger, Fetch.ai has issued approximately 600 million FET (ASI) tokens to absorb the OCEAN supply. The large number of newly issued tokens has kept the FET price under pressure for a long time due to the lack of synchronized value support, which has long been a source of complaints among alliance members and the community.

As one of the merged parties, Ocean's native token has been bound by a fixed exchange rate for a long time, and its market performance has been poor: since the beginning of this year, the price of OCEAN has been on a downward trend, hovering at historical lows before the exit. This situation may prompt Ocean's management to reflect on the pros and cons of the merger—if they continue to stay in the alliance, OCEAN will eventually be completely absorbed by ASI, and the brand and influence of the Ocean project itself may be diluted. On the other hand, exiting could revitalize the OCEAN brand, re-energize the community, and simultaneously free it from the drag of FET inflation.

There are also views that Ocean's core business focuses on data asset trading and sharing, which differs from the emphasis of Fetch.ai's autonomous agents and SingularityNET's general AI platform. Over the past year, there may have been some strategic differences in technical direction and resource allocation within the alliance, and Ocean's choice to exit is also to focus on its own areas of strength, avoiding being constrained by the broader AI vision of the alliance. These factors together constitute the important background for Ocean's exit.

However, it should be emphasized that Ocean's official stance has not publicly accused the alliance of any issues. The wording of the exit statement is restrained and maintains respect for other members, indicating that this decision seems more like a proactive adjustment based on business strategy rather than a rupture caused by escalating conflicts.

Although Fetch.ai responded that Ocean's exit has “no impact” on technology, operations, and common goals, and reiterated that the mission of the ASI alliance and the cooperation foundation among the three parties (Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, CUDOS) remain solid. However, it is undeniable that after losing such an important partner as Ocean, the alliance's ecological landscape will inevitably shrink, and there will be a gap in capabilities in the data field.

In the future, the ASI Alliance may focus more on areas where Fetch.ai and SingularityNET excel, such as the integration of autonomous agents and general AI platforms. The alliance has also stated that it will continue to promote the deployment and application of ASI tokens across multiple chains to enhance their practical value and appeal. One of the founders of the alliance, Ben Goertzel, who is also the head of SingularityNET, recently reaffirmed his commitment to the vision of decentralized AI on social media, stating that the remaining members of the alliance will collaborate more closely moving forward.

Under the deflationary plan, what is the outlook for the OCEAN token?

The buyback and burn measures proposed by the Ocean Foundation in the announcement are a highlight of this exit action. Specifically, Ocean plans to use the profit portion from its technology derivative projects (such as those generated from application or infrastructure incubation) to buy back OCEAN tokens on the secondary market and burn them, thereby achieving ongoing deflation. According to the official statement, this buyback and burn mechanism will become a “permanent and ongoing means of supply reduction.”

Considering that about 81% of the original supply of OCEAN has been converted into FET, the actual circulating amount of OCEAN has significantly decreased. Coupled with future buybacks and burns, the circulating supply of OCEAN is expected to tighten further. As the supply decreases and the project refocuses on its core business, investors anticipate that the value of OCEAN will also face revaluation.

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Under the influence of the news, the OCEAN token surged over 30% in a single day. In contrast, the alliance token FET (ASI token) faced downward pressure after Ocean's exit, with the price dropping about 6.9% to a new low of $0.51 on that day. This alternating trend indicates that the two tokens began to reflect their fundamental expectations after “decoupling”. Specifically, OCEAN rose due to increased scarcity, while FET was hindered by potential overissuance and selling pressure.

In addition, during the token merger period, OCEAN was delisted or renamed on some exchanges, but the news of Ocean's exit from the alliance has given it another chance to regain favor from exchanges. Currently, major platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, Upbit, and Binance US still support spot trading of OCEAN.

Among them, Binance US retained the OCEAN trading pair during the merger, while Coin Security Exchange plans to suspend the OCEAN trading pair in July 2024 according to the alliance plan. With Ocean choosing to operate independently, the market generally expects exchanges, including Coin Security Exchange, to reassess the possibility of listing OCEAN again. Ocean's official statement also clearly indicates that any exchange that delisted OCEAN due to the merger “can decide for itself whether to relist OCEAN.” This means that OCEAN is expected to restore broader market liquidity.