A flywheel in AI refers to a self-reinforcing loop where data from usage fuels model improvement, creating compounding value. Without it, models like Rafiki rely on static training data and quickly become outdated. With it, the cycle drives sustainable development by generating proprietary datasets that competitors can't replicate, forming "moats" like lower inference costs (via optimized training) and adaptive performance.
NVIDIA's Jensen Huang emphasizes this in enterprise contexts: feedback from deployed AI (e.g., real-time queries) refines models, reducing reliance on expensive public data and enabling custom edges, as seen in their CUDA ecosystem where hardware-software loops accelerate innovation.
For Rafiki in the LEO blockchain ecosystem, the flywheel is live and exponential. Per LeoFinance's Nov 19 post, Rafiki 1.0 trains on full INLEO/Hive data—100% of Threads, blogs, upvotes, follows, and JSONs—while fine-tuning in real-time from onchain interactions. User questions on Threads provide contextual clues, scraped links, and even image analysis inputs, directly improving responses. This incorporates blockchain's growing data volume (e.g., SIRP rewards, LeoDex trades), making Rafiki more Hive-aware, personalized (future For You feeds), and moat-protected against generic LLMs. As interactions scale, it layers in agentic features like AI search/analytics, turning LEO's social/DeFi data into a defensible advantage—much like how LeoStrategy's volatility flywheel buys more LEO for perpetual expansion (per Aug/Sept posts). Result: Cheaper, context-rich AI that evolves with the network, not against it.