One quick look at the digital landscape in 2025 and one can see that artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, powering everything from content generators to health diagnostics (all while growing at a blistering pace). In fact, the market is currently valued at $400 billion and is projected to multiply fivefold by 2030.
Moreover, an estimated 97 million people are currently estimated to be working in this space, with businesses embracing the technology in droves (as highlighted by the fact that over 80% of companies are making it a top strategic priority). Yet alongside this boom has come a profound crisis of trust with surveys indicating that 61% of people worldwide are wary of AI systems, especially when it comes to privacy.
High-profile incidents have justified these fears as in 2024 alone, AI-related failures and breaches surged by 56%, with 233 major incidents being reported during this period. From chatbots confidently producing false “hallucinated” facts to algorithms showing biased or inexplicable decisions, the technology’s rapid deployment has outpaced the ability to verify its integrity.
Introducing a trust framework for real data
Against the aforementioned backdrop, the concept of “Proof-of-Sensing” (PoSe) has not only emerged rapidly but also gained major mainstream traction, proposing to fill AI’s trust blind spot. Just as blockchain technology introduced a “don’t trust, verify” ethos for financial transactions, PoSe has extended that same principle to include the data that fuels AI.
To elaborate, this validation protocol ensures that data collected from people and devices is verified as real, source-traceable, and user-consented before an AI ever learns from it. In practice, PoSe works by cryptographically authenticating data at the moment of collection.
For example, data from a wearable sensor can be instantly encrypted and stamped with proof of its origin on a blockchain ledger with specialized secure hardware being used to achieve this. In fact, PoSe-enabled chips are now embedding tamper-resistant memory and encryption directly into IoT devices.
The result is that every heartbeat, step, or environmental reading from a device comes with an unforgeable certificate of authenticity. Only genuine, unaltered data is admitted, creating a source of truth that AI models can rely on.
Equally important, Proof-of-Sensing puts user consent and ownership at the core of data collection. Instead of AI systems scraping the open internet for data of dubious provenance, PoSe frameworks link each data point to its provider via smart contracts or data NFTs under the user’s control.
In essence, no piece of data enters the training pipeline without the user’s permission, and individuals retain transparent ownership over how their information is used. The implications of such a setup stand to be far reaching as a robust “trust layer” can eliminate any sort of reliance on black-box datasets.
One of the early pioneers putting Proof-of-Sensing into practice is Vyvo, a Singapore-based project standing at the intersection of wearable technology, blockchain, and AI. Since its launch in late 2022, Vyvo has built a community of over 100,000 users around the idea that personal data (especially biometric and health data) should be owned by individuals and used with their consent for the greater good.
At the heart of this ecosystem is Vyvo’s hybrid consensus model that combines traditional Proof-of-Stake (PoS) with its new PoSe framework. Users wear smart devices (like health tracking watches and the recently introduced BioSense™ ring) that measure vitals and lifestyle metricsm, with each data point being validated through the device’s secure hardware.
Furthermore, participants can earn Vyvo’s native cryptocurrency ($VSC) as a reward for contributing authentic data, which can later be used for various services in the ecosystem — essentially creating a transparent marketplace for trusted health data.
Over the past year, Vyvo made significant moves to advance its PoSe vision as in March 2024, a partnership with Infineon Technologies was announced to reinforce the former’s hardware backbone. Similarly, late last year Vyvo unveiled VAI OS, an AI-driven platform built atop its native blockchain.
Dubbed as a “Life CoPilot” by the company, VAI OS lets users plug in various data streams (from fitness trackers to emails) and uses AI to provide helpful analyses, all while keeping that data under the user’s ownership and control. Vyvo is also currently gearing up for its token launch that will see VAI tokens issued to the public to expand its vision of a blockchain-based smart economy.
We’re moving beyond health data.
Context. Emotion. Behavior.
These signals reflect your life and they’re owned by you.🎥 I break it down here: https://t.co/X1368NN9fu#AI #DataFi #ContextMatters
— Mariana Krym (@MarianaKrym) May 20, 2025
An interesting digital future awaits humanity
Subtly yet decisively, Proof-of-Sensing seems to be reframing the conversation about “ethical AI”. Rather than only focusing on AI’s algorithms and outputs, it has shifted attention to the foundation, i.e. the integrity of the data that AI is built on. The framework championed by Vyvo and others has shown that AI can be both innovative and ethical if its fuel is handled in a transparent, consensual way. In fact, by doing so, it is offering a path to rebuild trust in an AI-infused world.
Featured image credit: Freepik
