Although the Render Foundation is all hands preparing for the first native Render Network event — RenderCon, April 15th (get tickets here) — the team still managed to have an action-packed ETH Denver.
It was apparent throughout ETH Denver that the center of gravity in the crypto universe is real world applications of decentralized AI and on-chain AI agents. Due to this, the Render Network was invited to a number of events exploring the future of blockchain, AI, and decentralized compute. Here’s a recap of everything that happened with Render at ETH Denver.
DeAI Day: Dawn of the Agents
The Render Network co-hosted DeAI Day: Dawn of the Agents at the iconic Meow Wolf immersive gallery space in Denver with leaders in the field of decentralized AI, including MorpheusAI and VeniceAI.
On the “Switching on AI Agents” panel, Render’s Trevor Harries-Jones joined Kyle Chamoto at Aethircloud , Ryan Condron at Morpheus AI, JW at Heurist AI, and Doug Keeney at Wire Network to explore the convergence of DePIN, decentralized AI protocols, and the rise of on-chain AI Agents.
On the panel, Trevor discussed how advancements like DeepSeek are proving that distributed GPUs can handle AI workloads with significantly less power, making the market more accessible for decentralized AI development and the deployment for on-chain Agent applications. The conversation explored real-world use cases and how the team is building infrastructure for parallel inference processing, allowing AI agents to enhance workflows for AI developers and next generation media creators.
“The opportunities that open up with more abundance, unless we’re altruistic agents, the nirvana is agents helping us develop the Star Trek holodeck and us doing real-world experiences. More Holodeck, less Skynet.”
— Trevor Harries-Jones, The Render Network
Trevor concluded with an optimistic view on the acceleration of decentralized AI development, discussing how it can catalyze new forms of immersive media and simulation that were previously the realm of Sci Fi.
ETH Denver Mainstage Panel w/Render’s Paul Roales
At “Bitcoin for AI: The Poster Children Catalyzing Decentralized Intelligence,” Render Network AI scout, Paul Roales discussed how decentralized compute is an important primitive for the AI economy at large, powering the rise of on-chain agents and the scaling of consumer AI applications.
On the panel with representatives from BitTensor, SapienAI, and KlusterAI, Paul broke down the opportunity in consumer GPUs, explaining how they are becoming more powerful, making decentralized AI more accessible while reducing dependence on centralized hyperscalers.
The power of consumer GPUs, which is the core of the Render Network, is increasing every day. Week by week, we get more powerful image generation models and language models that fit on a 4090 — something we see a lot on the Render Network. These models will be state-of-the-art, and we’ll be able to run them both for image and language generation on the Render Network. It’s exciting to see decentralization bring this level of accessibility to AI.”
— Paul Roales, Render Network AI Scout at ETH Denver
The panel then looked forward to how the rise of DePIN built on high performance consumer GPU compute can accelerate the development of decentralized AI applications like on-chain AI Agent tools.
Turning Hype into Real-World Wins in DeAI
During ETH Denver, Render joined AI protocols like Eliza Os and DePIN applications like GEODNET at IoTeX’s ‘DePIN ❤️ AI’ event to discuss commercial applications of decentralized AI and DePIN.
Render joined a panel “Turning Hype into Real-World Wins” alongside leaders at Aethir, and Alterscope to break down how decentralized infrastructure is driving real-world AI, gaming, and finance innovation.
On the panel, Render’s Phil Gara discussed how the network is bridging the gap between 3D rendering and AI workflows, enabling new forms of 3D creation from Virtual Production to fully immersive 16K experiences. He shared that Render Network has already been leveraged in blockbuster Hollywood productions, on The Las Vegas Sphere, and leading the way in web3 3D productions, powering the rise of the NFT economy.
Phil went on to describe how the future of content creation is AI-assisted, and Render Network is leading the charge by integrating AI tools like Dream Machine, Flux, and Stable Diffusion to bridge 3D rendering and AI image generation workflows. He also discussed how AI agents can improve rendering workflows, enabling new forms of stylistic experimentation and bringing unprecedented scale to 3D asset generation.
“We’re starting to move to where you have a pipeline of traditional 3D rendering and AI tools integrated in the same creative workflow. We’ve brought on a lot of AI image generators to the Render Network — Dream Machine, Flux, Stable Diffusion — increasingly, we think the creative workflow of the future is a combination of 3D rendering and AI, bringing them together.”
— Phil Gara, The Render Network
Beyond AI-assisted tools, Phil concluded by discussing how Render Network is putting control back into the hands of artists with the goal of developing artist-owned fine tuned AI models that allow creators to train and monetize their own AI models on the Render Network. He described how by leveraging decentralized infrastructure and on-chain attribution, artists can own and and monetize their own AI models for the first time.
X Spaces on ETH Denver Agentic AI & DeAI
The conversation about DeAI and DePIN at ETH Denver spilled over to this week’s X Space, with Tristan Relly, Head of Ops at Render Foundation and Render AI Scout, Danny Newman both discussing their takeaways from attending ETH Denver in-person. Both Tristan and Danny described how the development of AI agents is accelerating, transitioning from concepts to real-world applications at unprecedented speed.
“It’ll look so quaint what we are talking about this year, next year, because it is going to be so advanced and so fully fledged — what and how our personal work agents are accomplishing…It was refreshing to see many focused on bringing humanity to this.”
-Render AI Scout Danny Newman on a growing Agent economy
During the Space, Tristan highlighted how decentralization is becoming a critical factor to ensure that AI models remain open, accessible, and interoperable with a view towards commercial AI agent development.
“People are going to start setting up their own AI agents… enhanced by smaller, open-source models.”
— Tristan Relly, The Render Network Foundation
Tristan went on to discuss how at ETH Denver an emerging focus in conversations about the AI Agent economy was interoperability, and the need for AI agents to have shared universal protocols to work together. He concluded by describing how blockchain can offer tools for on-chain data provenance and monetization, enabling decentralized AI development to solve the “garbage in, garbage out” problem in AI model development.
“Blockchain can help with data quality input… You have real clarity about what your datasets are.”
— Tristan Relly, The Render Network Foundation
Phil added that DePINs are emerging as a fundamental enabler for AI innovation with token incentives enabling new forms of coordination in compute power and data crowdsourcing for user owned AI systems.
“DePIN gives people the power to actively shape AI’s future, not just be passive users of centralized systems.”
Throughout ETH Denver, in the Render Network Telegram channel, Founder, Jules Urbach complimented in-person conversations with in-depth technical discussions about the potential for next generation world models to be developed on decentralized compute infrastructure.
He added that with the rate of change in the field of AI accelerating and applications emerging at unprecedented speed, a core strategic goal is to retain agility and flexibility through integrations and interoperability.
What’s Next? Find Out at RenderCon 2025
While ETH Denver catalyzed a conversation about the future of DeAI, immersive media, and the creator economy, you can expect deeper discussions and in-depth talks at RenderCon, where Jules Urbach and industry leaders will explore the future of 3D, AI and GPU computing.
Featured speakers include:
- Ariel Emanuel — CEO & Founder of Endeavor, TKO Group
- Richard Kerris — VP & GM Media & Entertainment at NVIDIA
- Rod Roddenberry — Executive Producer, Star Trek & Films (Paramount+)
- Emad Mostaque — Founder of Intelligent Internet & Stability AI
Buy your ticket now: renderfoundation.com/rendercon
Solana AI Summit
The conversation will also continue this week with Render Network’s Paul Roales joining a distinguished panel at the Solana AI Summit — discussing decentralized AI with leaders from Prime Intellect and Hyberbolic.
