Review of 130 Crypto AI Projects Estimates $8.7 Million in Model Payments

An analysis covering 130 crypto-linked AI projects estimated $8.7 million in identifiable model payments over 30 days, with about 83% concentrated at Venice despite activity across many providers.

The estimate covers Sept. 13 to Oct. 12, 2026, using data read Oct. 13–15. It excludes OpenRouter’s own business. Venice accounted for about $7.2 million of the total, leaving roughly $1.5 million across the other projects reviewed.

Venice buys and burns $5 worth of its token for every $100 of API credits sold. About $359,800 in credit-related burns during the period implies approximately $7.2 million in credit sales. That figure is inferred from the burn program rather than a direct count of customer payments.

The broader tally draws on onchain receipts, token burns, settlements and public settlement files. Payments to suppliers using OpenRouter were estimated by multiplying their daily token volumes by effective prices. The calculation counts overlapping reseller and upstream payments once and excludes figures based only on project operators’ claims. Some offchain revenue may be missing because card receipts are not directly visible; the amount is unknown.

Token volume alone gave a different picture of demand. Identifiable receipts ranged from less than $0.003 to about $2.30 per million tokens across projects. Free allowances, cached requests, discounts and network subsidies can all widen the gap between usage and payments.

Payments through x402, which allows software agents to pay for individual requests, were small within the tracked inference activity. The tracked set of x402 inference gateways billed by token received about $3,800 over the 30 days. At Venice, about $3,100 of estimated credit sales came through x402, less than 0.05% of its $7.2 million total.

Venice users also consumed about $371,000 in DIEM credits against an estimated 30-day credit ceiling of $834,000 from staked DIEM, a utilization rate of roughly 44%. DIEM consumption was excluded from the $8.7 million payment estimate.