What Is Citrate?
Citrate is an AI-native Layer 1 blockchain designed from the ground up to integrate machine learning inference directly into its consensus and execution layers. Unlike retrofitted AI add-ons bolted onto existing chains, Citrate treats model execution as a first-class primitive ... as fundamental as token transfers or smart contract calls.
How Citrate Differs from Other Chains
Traditional blockchains were designed for financial transactions and later extended to general-purpose computation. We took a different approach with Citrate ... it starts with the assumption that the most valuable on-chain computation is inference, and optimizes every layer of the stack for that workload.
GhostDAG Consensus
Citrate uses GhostDAG (Greedy Heaviest Observed Sub-Tree Directed Acyclic Graph) consensus rather than a simple longest-chain rule. GhostDAG allows multiple blocks to be produced in parallel without orphaning, dramatically increasing throughput while maintaining security guarantees. This parallel block structure is essential for handling the bursty, high-latency nature of inference workloads ... model execution can take hundreds of milliseconds, and the network cannot afford to serialize those operations into sequential blocks.
Lattice Virtual Machine (LVM)
Instead of running all computation through a single EVM-style execution environment, Citrate introduces the Lattice Virtual Machine. The LVM separates deterministic smart contract logic from non-deterministic model inference, routing each to the appropriate execution context. Smart contracts execute in a standard EVM-compatible runtime, while inference requests are dispatched to a federated network of model providers through the Mentorship Protocol.
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Citrate's Model Context Protocol defines how on-chain contracts interact with off-chain AI models. MCP standardizes the interface for requesting inference, validating results, and compensating model providers ... creating a trustless marketplace for machine intelligence that any smart contract can invoke.
The SALT Token
SALT is the native utility token of the Citrate network. It serves multiple roles:
- Gas fees ... SALT pays for transaction execution, including inference requests
- Staking ... Validators and model providers stake SALT to participate in consensus and the inference marketplace
- Governance ... SALT holders vote on protocol upgrades, model registry policies, and treasury allocation
- Inference payments ... Smart contracts pay model providers in SALT for inference results
Who Is Citrate For?
Citrate is built for several overlapping communities:
- Developers who want to build smart contracts that call AI models without relying on centralized API providers
- Model creators who want to monetize their models in a decentralized, censorship-resistant marketplace
- Investors and token holders who want exposure to the convergence of blockchain infrastructure and artificial intelligence
- Community members and governors who want to participate in shaping how AI infrastructure is owned and operated
The Cnidarian Foundation
Citrate is developed and maintained by the Cnidarian Foundation, a research organization focused on AI-native distributed systems. The project's technical architecture, economic design, and governance philosophy are documented across nine Gradient Papers, which collectively describe the full system from foundational principles through constitutional governance.
Next Steps
Ready to start building? We recommend heading to the Quickstart guide to deploy your first contract on the Citrate testnet.