Onicai’s latest tease has landed with a wink and a spark. The startup behind the cheekily named funnAI protocol says it’s nearly ready to go live, and its community already seems primed for the launch. With emojis flying and cryptic promises of “planned activities” for users, the team is clearly trying to keep things loose while hinting at something bigger.
The project circles around a concept called mAIners – digital entities that users can create and contribute to the broader funnAI ecosystem. Onicai’s goal is to build a decentralised AI economy where participation feels less like a tech demo and more like joining a social experiment powered by algorithms, incentives and shared ownership.
If the wording of the update is anything to go by, funnAI is aiming for a personality of its own – playful, slightly chaotic, but grounded in a broader mission to shift how people interact with AI systems. While specifics on the launch date are still under wraps, the tone suggests that the final touches are being put in place. There’s even a rocket emoji involved.
At the centre of it all is the promise of creating your own mAIners. These aren’t digital miners in the traditional blockchain sense, but rather AI personalities or modules that become part of the protocol. It’s not yet clear how these will work – whether they’ll be task-specific agents, community mascots, or something in between – but the concept is already drawing interest from those keen on injecting some imagination into the world of decentralised AI.
Onicai has hinted that the launch will open up several paths for expansion. This includes plugging the protocol into new tasks, deploying different AI models, and experimenting with more use cases. This kind of modularity isn’t new to the tech world, but the company’s positioning – letting users pitch ideas and help shape what funnAI can do – leans into the co-creation angle.
That said, decentralised AI is still an early field. A handful of projects are tinkering with token incentives, model sharing, and open-source governance, but the space hasn’t quite found its rhythm. Onicai seems aware of that, and is trying to carve out its own lane by focusing on community-first mechanics rather than just technical breakthroughs. FunnAI, by name and nature, is positioning itself more like a playful protocol than a heavy infrastructure layer.
The addition of PoAIW – short for Proof of AI Work – suggests a mechanism for rewarding AI contributions, but it remains to be seen how Onicai will implement this without turning the platform into yet another race for tokens. If done well, PoAIW could become a filter for quality and usefulness, not just output. But if it leans too heavily on gamification without guardrails, it could risk diluting the very value it aims to produce.
The value-generation angle, though, is one of the more intriguing parts of this project. By encouraging users to build and run their own mAIners, Onicai is nudging people to think of AI as something that can be owned and evolved collaboratively, rather than handed down from a central entity. That decentralised spirit has long been part of the crypto scene, but applying it meaningfully to AI development is still relatively rare.
There’s also the question of interoperability. If funnAI and its AI modules can talk to or connect with other protocols, it could open up a mesh of decentralised intelligence tools, each tailored for different tasks or industries. Onicai hasn’t confirmed anything on this front, but its invitation for ideas and interests from the community implies that future directions are still fluid.
Community feedback might end up being the make-or-break factor here. With so many projects emerging across Web3 and AI, what often separates sustained momentum from a short spike is whether users feel like they’re part of the story or just watching from the outside. Onicai’s strategy of teasing updates and inviting input signals an attempt to avoid the top-down approach that plagues some tech launches.
Still, it’s early. The playful tone could wear thin if the protocol doesn’t deliver something concrete and useful soon. Emojis and enthusiasm might generate short-term attention, but the long-term pull will depend on how intuitive and accessible the tools are. If users can easily spin up a mAIner, give it a purpose, and see it produce results – or even better, rewards – then funnAI might start to justify its name.
A successful launch would also give Onicai more room to experiment. Different AI models, task categories, or even new economies around user-generated AI tools could spin out from the base protocol. The tech stack is important, but in this case, how the product feels may matter just as much as what it does. If funnAI can keep its experience genuinely fun while building something functional, it may stand out in a landscape that often veers towards the overly technical or the overly hyped.
What’s clear is that Onicai wants its users involved from the outset. Rather than dropping a polished, static protocol and calling it done, the team seems to be staging a participatory rollout. The blurred line between user and creator is where a lot of next-gen digital products are heading, and funnAI’s early signals are aligned with that shift.
Of course, the proof will be in what actually launches. It’s easy to talk about value creation, decentralisation, and participation – far harder to design systems that make those things tangible. But the tone of the update, the invitation for ideas, and the framing of mAIners as something to “join” rather than consume, all point to a model that relies on its community for energy and direction.
Onicai’s challenge now is to channel that energy into something structured enough to grow, but loose enough to keep the creative side intact. If they pull that off, funnAI might become a rare example of decentralised AI that doesn’t take itself too seriously – and maybe that’s exactly what the space needs.
