Alchemy's ChatGPT plugin makes it easier to analyze blockchain with Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI's ChatGPT is making waves in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence tools, prompting Web3 companies to utilize the technology for blockchain research. On Wednesday, leading blockchain platform developer Alchemy announced the launch of its latest AlchemyAI project, a GPT-4 plugin for analyzing the blockchain.

"Our idea was to specifically develop and train a model using ChatGPT that is focused on Web3 development," Elan Halpern, product manager at Alchemy.

The plugin is a software add-on designed to integrate other applications into ChatGPT. The AlchemyAI plugin, Halpern explained, translates natural language input, such as "Show me the last block and the transactions in that block," into queries that are sent to the Alchemy API. It then returns the results in a user-friendly format.

"It's a real-time request to the blockchain, just like a developer would do using an API and writing a code-script," Halpern said. "It allows you to do it using natural language and normal sentences."

Other GPT-4 plugins for blockchain analysis include DeFiLlama, Sic and CheckTheChain. Solana Labs also released its own ChatGPT plugin in May.

While no public launch date has been given for the AlchemyAI package, Halpern said it includes a ChatGPT plugin and an AI helper tool called Chat Web3 that helps developers with the programming process.

"It's kind of like your Web3 expert partner," Halpern says, "which allows you to answer questions and get help debugging.

Alchemy, founded in 2017, is often described as Amazon Web Services (AWS) for blockchain. The software company builds applications for several networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

In February, Alchemy launched an open source platform for building decentralized applications called Create Web3 Dapp (or CW3D). Now the company is turning its attention to artificial intelligence to use the technology to better understand blockchain.

"What OpenAI, and the AI space in general, is doing is fundamentally improving the user experience," Halpern said. "Entering a question into this chat room and getting a result without having to go through a million links or referring to other places is a better experience than previous ones."

But while Halpern is positive about artificial intelligence, she does recognize its shortcomings - in particular, the fact that the default information closing date for ChatGPT is 2021, and that AI-enabled chatbots sometimes make up facts - a phenomenon known in the industry as "hallucinations."

"It's very important to check and double-check facts," she said. "It's a new technology and we're going to be very transparent about what we're training our models on so that people and especially developers can know where that information is coming from and what its limitations are."

"I think [artificial intelligence] will change everyone's life," Halpern added. "But we have to make sure we verify all the information they give us - including the information that Alchemy uses."