Akash Network has seen rapid expansion over the past year, establishing itself as a leading decentralized cloud compute marketplace. With over 1,000 GPUs now on-chain and a utilization rate of around 70%, the network is demonstrating strong demand for its permissionless compute services. Founder Greg Osuri recently shared insights on how Akash plans to scale further while ensuring sustainable growth for both providers and users.
A key takeaway from Osuri’s update is that user fees have been increasing in correlation with GPU supply. This signals a well-balanced market, where growth in infrastructure is matched by rising demand. However, the challenge now is to scale GPU supply while maintaining competitive pricing, improving utilization rates, and optimizing fee structures to keep Akash attractive for providers and developers.
Incentives and Scaling GPU Supply
One of the most significant discussions revolves around provider incentives. Properly structured incentives can accelerate adoption, while poorly designed ones could harm network stability. Through various provider incentive pilots (PIPs), Akash has gathered data on effective models to encourage participation.
Greg outlined several strategies being explored:
Utilization Guarantee Incentives: Instead of simply subsidizing providers, Akash aims to ensure high utilization rates by offering early tenant discounts. The goal is to stabilize provider revenue while keeping prices competitive.
Smart Financing for AI Companies: Many AI-focused firms prefer to own their hardware for better price-performance and privacy but lack upfront capital. Akash is working on financial structures that would allow AI companies to contribute GPU clusters to the network in exchange for long-term incentives.
Provider Console 1.0: A new interface is being introduced to reduce friction for providers looking to onboard GPUs onto Akash, streamlining the process of leasing supply.
Expanding to Edge Data Centers: Akash is targeting a vast market of small and medium-scale data centers that could benefit from additional revenue streams by contributing compute power to the network.
Service Economy Expansion: While Akash’s primary focus has been on resource leasing, the next phase includes higher-value services such as AI inference, vector database hosting, and agent launchpads. These additional services could significantly increase the per-GPU fees on the network.
The combination of these efforts positions Akash to expand its GPU availability while keeping utilization rates high.
Tokenomics Adjustments and Inflation Reduction
In addition to infrastructure growth, another pressing topic in the Akash community is tokenomics. The network currently operates with a 13% annual inflation rate, which has been a point of debate among stakeholders. While Akash’s tokenomics are strong—fully unlocked supply, no VC or team vesting, and real revenue accrual—the high inflation rate has raised concerns about sustainability.
Greg recently suggested that a proposal to reduce AKT inflation could be introduced soon. A lower inflation rate could:
Align Akash with industry standards, making it more competitive in the broader crypto market.
Reduce unnecessary security costs and ensure more efficient capital allocation.
Improve the token’s value retention and long-term economic stability.
While no formal proposal has been submitted yet, discussions within the community indicate strong interest in a reduction to around 5-7%. If such a change is implemented, it could mark a significant shift in Akash’s long-term economic strategy.
Looking Ahead
Akash’s roadmap continues to focus on scaling infrastructure while refining economic incentives. The network has already made significant strides in decentralized compute, and the next phase will be about optimizing performance, ensuring sustainability, and expanding market reach.
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