Under intense selling pressure, SAHARA rapidly plunged and wiped out nearly 50% of investors’ portfolios within minutes.

According to the latest market data, SAHARA is currently trading around 0.044 USD. Within a 24-hour period, the token faced a steep decline of nearly 50%. The circulating supply also remains significantly high, with approximately 2.5 billion SAHARA tokens still in circulation.

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What Caused This Crash?

Shortly after the sudden drop, the Sahara team posted a tweet, stating the following:

Today, we are aware of the unusual volatility in the markets and are actively monitoring the situation in real time. Our team has initiated an internal review of today’s market activity to better understand the factors behind this volatility. At this time, there are no security risks or product-level issues within Sahara. Our core principles, long-term vision, and strategic roadmap remain unchanged. We will provide further updates as more information becomes available.

As understood from the shared statement, the team is currently investigating the cause of the decline.

We are aware of the unusual market volatility today and are actively monitoring the situation in real time.

Our team has initiated an internal investigation of today’s market activity to better understand the drivers behind the fluctuations. At this moment, there are no security…

— Sahara AI | SaharaAI.com (@SaharaLabsAI) November 29, 2025

Current Market Data

For the latest crypto news updates, click here.

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As part of the investment, Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who recently took an active role in YZi Labs following its rebranding from Binance Labs, has joined Vana as an advisor, YZi Labs announced on Monday.

“This is a strategic investment closed in January 2025,” said Vana co-founder Anna Kazlauskas in a statement to The Block. “YZi Labs is the sole investor. There are no other investors in this round.”

Kazlauskas declined to provide details on the structure of the funding round or the post-investment valuation.

The investment comes shortly after Vana launched its mainnet and token in December 2024. Currently, the VANA token is trading at around $6.25, marking an 82% decline since its launch, according to The Block’s VANA price page. VANA has a market capitalization of approximately $192 million, with a fully diluted valuation of $747 million.

Beyond YZi Labs, Vana‘s previous high-profile investors include Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Polychain Capital, having previously raised $25 million in funding rounds.

What is Vana?

Vana is a San Francisco-based crypto-AI startup founded in 2021 by Anna Kazlauskas and Arthur “Art” Abal. The two met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a shared goal of accelerating AI while enabling broader user participation in new digital economies.

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Focusing on data ownership, Vana’s Layer 1 blockchain allows users to pool their data into “Data DAOs,” earn rewards, and retain ownership of AI models built from their contributions.

“Data DAOs are central to the Vana protocol’s vision of user-owned AI,” said Kazlauskas. “These entities put groups of users in direct control of their data, aggregating data around specific use cases that can then be monetized to organizations for AI model training.”

With this new funding, Vana plans to expand its DataDAO ecosystem, help launch data tokens for over 16 DataDAOs, attract more data contributors, onboard additional DataDAOs, and extend data financialization beyond crypto into industries such as finance, social media, healthcare, and mobility.

YZi Labs’ AI Focus

This marks YZi Labs‘ first AI investment since its rebranding last month. Before the rebrand, the firm had backed several crypto-AI projects, including Sahara AI and MyShell.

A YZi Labs spokesperson told The Block that the firm’s focus has now expanded beyond Web3 to include AI and biotech. While continuing to explore opportunities at the intersection of these fields, YZi Labs is also open to investing in standalone AI and biotech projects to “capture the full spectrum of innovation.”

Meanwhile, Vana is just one of several projects CZ is actively involved with. According to the spokesperson, CZ is advising multiple YZi Labs portfolio companies and remains open to collaborating with early-stage founders.

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What is Sahara AI for?

• Sahara AI aims to bring AI solutions to a broader audience and secure these solutions in a decentralized environment.
• While traditional AI solutions are often monopolized by large tech companies, Sahara AI aims to democratize this technology.
• The platform allows users to train their own AI models, sell or rent these models. Additionally, it protects data privacy, ensuring users’ data is kept secure.

How Does Sahara AI Work?

Sahara AI operates on a structure working in four fundamental layers. These layers are designed to ensure the security, functionality, and scalability of the platform.

Layer 1: Application Layer

• Secure Vaults: This layer provides decentralized storage solutions for AI assets. It uses advanced encryption methods to protect data privacy and integrity, ensuring users’ data is secured.
• Decentralized AI Marketplace: Sahara AI promotes fair pricing and innovation for the production, buying, selling, and access to valuable data sets, models, and AI tools.
• No-Code Toolkit: It includes tools that allow users to create and deploy personalized AI models. This is achieved using decentralized PEFT (Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning) methods.
• Sahara ID: A reputation system that manages user profiles, access control, and contribution records. Sahara ID ensures trust and accountability on the platform.

Layer 2: Transaction Layer

• Proof of Stake: In this layer, the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is used. PoS provides high fault tolerance and enables the network to reach correct consensus even in the presence of malicious nodes.
• Sahara AI-Native Precompile: Precompilations are designed to optimize and enhance AI operations directly in the blockchain environment, making AI processes faster and more efficient.

Layer 3: Data Layer

• On-Chain Data: Immutable records of user transactions and attributes are kept. These records make reputation management secure and transparent.
• Off-Chain Data: It provides decentralized storage solutions for large datasets. Security is ensured through integrity mechanisms such as Merkle trees and zero-knowledge proofs.
• Mechanisms: Techniques used to verify data integrity, prevent duplication, and ensure security. These mechanisms also ensure that data remains continuously accessible.

Layer 4: Execution Layer

• Abstraction of Vaults: Provides storage and management spaces for AI. These spaces can be directly accessed, used for model training, or utilized in knowledge-supported production processes.
• Abstraction of AI Models: Supports various models, from traditional machine learning (ML) models to large language models (LLM) and multimodal generative models.
• Abstraction of AI Agents: Autonomous models that use advanced algorithms, continuously learn, use tools, and provide personality alignment.
• AI Computation Protocols: Supports various paradigms for AI training, inference, and service delivery. These protocols enable efficient, collaborative, and high-performance model arrangements.
• Agent Framework Protocols: Manages the interactions and coordination of AI models within the Sahara AI Execution Layer.

Supporters and Investors

Sahara AI is supported by 19 leading investor companies in the industry. These investors include prominent firms such as Binance Labs, Pantera, Polychain Capital, Sequoia, Matrix Partners, Samsung Next, and DAO5.

Additionally, Sahara AI has attracted the interest of angel investors recognized in the AI and technology fields. Names like Rohan Taori (Anthropic, Stanford Alpaca), Elvis Zhang (Founding Team, Midjourney), and Vipul Prakash (CEO, Together AI) add value to the project and provide strategic guidance.

Roadmap

2024 – Q3

• Sahara AI Marketplace: Launching the first phase to enable community collaboration on high-value knowledge bases.

2024 – Q4

• Sahara Chain Testnet: Introducing the test network for developers to verify the core features of Sahara Chain.

2025 – Q1

• Sahara Chain Mainnet: Full launch of the operational blockchain platform supporting decentralized AI applications.

2025 – Q2

• Sahara Agent: Deployment of personal AI models using personal user data and domain models.

Sahara AI (SAHARA) Tokenomics

• Ecosystem Development: 37.43%
• Community Incentives: 20.00%
• Investors: 19.75%
• Core Contributors: 15.00%
• Knowledge Sharing: 5.00%
• Buildpad IDO: 1.42%
• Liquidity Provision: 1.00%
• OKX Campaign: 0.40%

Sahara AI (SAHARA) Vesting (TGE Unlock Percentages)

• Community Incentives: 25.00%
• Ecosystem Development: 25.00%
• Liquidity Provision: 100.00%
• OKX Campaign: 100.00%
• Knowledge Sharing: 42.00%
• Core Contributors: 0.00%
• Investors: 0.00%
• Buildpad IDO: 100.00%

Project Team

Sahara AI is led by an experienced team specializing in AI and blockchain. The team members include:

Sean Ren – Co-Founder and CEO
Tyler Zhou – Co-Founder and COO
Aaron Scales – Product
Lara Avedissian – Ecosystem
Jane Shin – Marketing
Katerina Lelikova – Operations

and four others.

Official Links

• Sahara AI (SAHARA) Website
• Sahara AI (SAHARA) X (Twitter)
• Sahara AI (SAHARA) Litepaper

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