Ethereum and DRC publish report mapping alternatives to concentrated AI

The Ethereum account on X announced a new research report, Alternatives to Concentrated AI, co-authored with Decentralization Research Center (DRC) Head of Research Samuel Vance-Law. It frames AI policy not as a choice between slowing innovation and accelerating at any cost, but as a question of who gets to build, access, and govern these systems.

The report draws on 36 interviews and maps nearly 30 alternatives to concentrated control across the AI stack, spanning chip manufacturing, training, and deployment layers. It includes case studies written by builders at OpenMined, the Ethereum Foundation, and Civic AI.

• Published by the DRC at thedrcenter.org
• Concludes that while chip manufacturing and frontier-scale training remain concentrated, working alternatives now exist at nearly every other layer
• Also available as a paper on SSRN by Vance-Law and Kyle Bligen