Distributed hardware, centralised control
Decentralised compute sells a simple promise: no company owns the machines. The hardware lives up to that more often than the control does. This week we scored the 14 compute networks we track on one Freedom dimension, infrastructure decentralisation, which asks who runs the nodes, who owns the hardware, and whether anyone can join without permission. The scores run from 6 to 16 out of 20, and the gap is the story.
What shipped this week
io.net turned on Stripe and x402 payment support for Agent Cloud, so AI agents can provision and pay for GPU compute with no human in the loop. It expands the product while the core orchestration platform stays centralised. Our Crypto Talk, 24 June 2026
Phala was named a launch partner for the open-source GLM-5.2, running the model in a TEE inference stack on Intel TDX and NVIDIA H100 enclaves. It strengthens the confidential-compute offering without changing Phala’s early-stage infrastructure posture. Phala, 16 June 2026
Sahara AI deferred most of its 26 June token release after a 60% price crash and insider-sale accusations the team denies. Founder, team and advisor tokens move back six months and investor tokens three, a voluntary vesting extension covering the bulk of a 1.03 billion SAHARA tranche, about 10% of supply. CryptoRank, 24 June 2026
This week’s scorecard: who runs the compute
We scored the 14 compute networks we track on Infrastructure decentralisation, the Freedom dimension that asks who runs the nodes, who controls the hardware, and whether anyone can participate. A high score means no single entity has to stay up for the network to work. Scores are out of 20, grouped most decentralised to least. The band rates this single dimension, not each project’s overall Freedom grade.
Broadly distributed (14 to 16):
Flux, 16 : roughly 7,000 nodes across 67 countries, permissionless node operation.
Morpheus, 15 : permissionless compute marketplace, independent providers, multi-chain.
Nosana, 14 : permissionless GPU hosting, large registered base.
Golem, 14 : peer-to-peer network, anyone joins as provider or requestor.
Permissionless, with central vectors (9 to 12):
Akash, 12 : permissionless deployment, validators and providers tracked live.
Theta, 12 : BFT consensus with enterprise validators and roughly 10,000 edge nodes.
Flock, 11 : permissionless nodes and 262 validators for multi-party training.
Gensyn, 10 : permissionless testnet for decentralised training.
io.net, 10 : GPUs sourced from 138-plus countries, centralised core platform.
NuNet, 10 : permissionless device onboarding over an open-source libp2p mesh.
Aethir, 9 : large container footprint, closed-source orchestration layer.
Heurist, 9 : open-source miner software, permissionless registration.
Permissioned or early-stage (6 to 8):
Phala, 8 : TEE inference on Intel TDX, still an early-stage L2.
Render, 6 : roughly 15,670 registered operators, but the network is permissioned.
The hardware is spread out. The control stays concentrated.
The top and bottom of the table separate on one question: can anyone run the infrastructure without asking. Flux, Morpheus, Nosana, and Golem sit at 14 to 16 because node operation is open and the hardware base is distributed. Flux at 16 is the highest infrastructure score we record across the entire project set, compute or otherwise. Render and Phala sit at 6 to 8 because their networks are either explicitly permissioned or still early-stage, with limited operator autonomy.
The middle band is where the marketing and the architecture part ways. io.net and Aethir both report large geographic footprints, 138-plus and 94 countries respectively, and both land at 9 to 10. The hardware is distributed; the orchestration that decides what runs where is closed-source and operated by a single entity. A wide map isn’t the same as decentralised control, and the scorecard is built to tell them apart.
The other thing the table shows is how little moves. None of these infrastructure scores has shifted in our recent reviews. io.net’s overall Freedom score rose a point in mid-June, but on transparency, the epoch explorer now publishes burn data, not on infrastructure. A busy month of product launches and partnerships changed their capabilities. Control stayed where it was.
Biggest movers this week
7-day change as of 2026-06-28. A red week across the board: only three of the 39 DeAI tokens we track closed up. Ora led the gainers; agent tokens led the falls. The data layer was the exception, Grass and Ocean making up two of the only three tokens in the green.
Gainers:
Ora Protocol (ORA) +33.0%
Grass (GRASS) +23.0%
Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) +12.5%
Fallers:
OpenServ (SERV) -31.2%
Allora Network (ALLO) -23.2%
Warden Protocol (WARD) -20.1%
OriginTrail (TRAC) -19.8%
Theta Network (THETA) -18.0%
See all movers: ownyourmind.ai/projects/movers/
On the watchlist
Render’s permissioned bottleneck. Render sits at the bottom of the scorecard because the network decides who joins. Any move to permissionless node operation would be the single change that lifts the 6 out of 20. Nothing this cycle.
io.net’s closed core. Agent-paid GPU compute through x402 is a real product step, but the orchestration layer stays closed-source. Autonomous demand actually settling on the rail is the thing to watch, not the integration itself.
Phala’s early-stage exit. The GLM-5.2 partnership strengthens the confidential-compute story. The infrastructure score only moves when Phala progresses past its current L2 stage.
From the site
The companion to this scorecard: How compute networks accrue value. Infrastructure decentralisation is one axis; whether the token captures any of the value is the other.
Who actually earns running this hardware: the GPU provider income guide, across cash and token networks.
The OYM podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the major directories under “Own Your Mind”. The latest episode is How to Earn with RENDER.
Cheers,
Bobski
Own Your Mind. Independent research on decentralised AI. No sponsors.
ownyourmind.ai · @ownyourmindai · @0xbobski
Disclosure: OYM holds AKT, GLM, GRASS, MOR and RENDER.