Halo launches P2P AI inference marketplace on Virtuals Protocol, processing 8 billion tokens in early weeks

Warden Protocol just launched Halo, a peer-to-peer marketplace where participants can earn USDC by handling AI inference requests. The public alpha went live on June 30 on the Base blockchain, and within its first weeks, the network has processed over 8 billion AI tokens across more than 200 supported models. How Halo actually works Someone (or some AI agent) needs a language model to process a request. Instead of routing that through OpenAI or Google Cloud, Halo lets it bounce to a decentralized network of providers who compete to fulfill the job and get paid in USDC for their trouble. The team describes it as “BitTorrent for inferences.” What makes Halo particularly interesting is its integration with Virtuals Protocol, the leading launchpad for tokenized AI agents on Base. Virtuals has tokenized over 18,000 AI agents to date, and previously those agents relied on inference costs denominated in $VIRTUAL. Halo opens up a new lane: distributed, permissionless inference access that doesn’t depend on a single centralized provider. The integration creates a revenue-sharing mechanism that benefits both agent token holders and the underlying infrastructure. Inference fees can be paid in...