What Is Dolphin (POD)? The Base AI Token That Jumped About 80% on 2 October

Dolphin (POD) is the token of Dolphin AI, a lab that fine-tunes open AI models and runs an inference network on idle GPUs, and it closed 2 October 2026 up 81.47% at $0.5635 on CoinMarketCap. POD lives on Base, and node operators earn it for serving Dolphin's models. The jump came on 350 times the volume of 1 October.

CoinMarketCap's 2 October bar reached $0.8236, a high 165.2% above the 1 October close of $0.3105, and the token finished 31.6% below that high. Volume hit $91.65 million against $262,063 on 1 October. DexScreener counted $7.13 million of liquidity across 30 pools at 04:30 UTC on 3 October, and the 2 October close was still 4.66% under the 26 July close.

What Is Dolphin (POD)?

Dolphin AI fine-tunes open models such as Meta's Llama and Alibaba's Qwen on datasets with the refusals filtered out. Its project summary calls the results uncensored, its own word for a model that "should not refuse any of the user's requests". The Dolphin AI token, POD, pays the people who run those models.

Dolphin's roadmap page says it built the default model for every Venice.ai user. It also claims more than five million monthly downloads on Hugging Face, and both figures are the project's own. Venice runs its own token, VVV, which Phemex lists as a USDT perpetual and our Venice Token (VVV) explainer covers.

The tokenomics docs name a shareholder-free Cayman Islands company, the Dolphin Foundation, as the body that acts for the protocol in the real world and call POD "Dolphin's sole value-accruing asset". That puts the project in the niche our guide to decentralized AI (DeAI) maps.

Why Is Dolphin Trending?

Dolphin is trending because its volume went from $262,063 on 1 October 2026 to $91,646,410 on 2 October, 349.7 times as much, on CoinMarketCap's daily bars. That bar closed at $0.563504, up 81.47% from $0.310518, and CoinGecko's price series shows a 79.28% gain to $0.559666.

The high came early. CoinGecko's highest print through that bar was $0.8269 at 06:46 UTC, 101 minutes after CoinMarketCap added POD to its site at 05:05 UTC. The token then closed 31.6% under CoinMarketCap's bar high of $0.823597. Dolphin's own docs and roadmap, read by 04:32 UTC on 3 October, name no event dated 2 October.

Set that volume beside the pools. DexScreener counted $7.13 million of liquidity across 30 POD pools at 04:30 UTC on 3 October, so the 2 October volume was 12.9 times all of it. The main Uniswap v4 POD/ETH pool read $6.51 million on DexScreener at 04:30 UTC but $4.34 million on GeckoTerminal a minute later. GeckoTerminal's trending list ranked that pool 16th of 20 at 04:37 UTC.

The jump only took POD back to a July level. Its 2 October close was 4.66% below the 26 July close of $0.591060, the highest close in CoinMarketCap's series from 14 July through 2 October, and CoinGecko puts the gap at 4.96%.

Method: we read CoinMarketCap's daily bars at 04:27 and 04:38 UTC on 3 October, and the settled bars matched to the last digit. CoinGecko prices come from the price column of its CSV export, read at 04:28 and 04:47 UTC with the same result.

How Does Dolphin Network Work?

Dolphin Network uses what the docs call a peer-to-pool design. API users buy credit through a smart contract, and each request goes to whichever node running the chosen model is free, so no session ties a buyer to one machine. That's DePIN applied to AI inference, and our explainer on what DePIN is and how it works covers the wider model.

The roadmap sets this against session-based rental markets such as Akash and says Dolphin's operators can join and leave at any time without penalty. Our NEAR vs Akash decentralized AI compute comparison explains how Akash prices GPU time.

Validators check the log-probabilities of other nodes' outputs against each model's fingerprint to flag an operator who swaps in a smaller model. Operators post staked POD as a slashable bond, and a validator's hot wallet can freeze that bond on a mismatch until a multisig reviews it. Bonding 13 weeks of earnings lifts rewards by up to 1.2x, with 1.3x the ceiling.

The token's demand side is a buyback rule. The docs say "100% of inference revenue is used to buy POD on the open market". Yet subscriptions "will be available soon", and the Foundation is onboarding banking providers "ahead of the inference API launch". Until that revenue arrives, node emissions come from the treasury through a 2-of-6 multisig. It held 950,000 POD at 04:32 UTC on 3 October against a one million cap in the docs.

Dolphin Tokenomics

Dolphin tokenomics start with 500,000,000 POD at 0xeD664536023d8E4b1640C394777D34aBAFF1dF8F on Base, the address Dolphin's docs link. It's a standard bridged token that only Base's bridge can mint or burn. Behind it is a POD contract on Ethereum, and all 500 million of those tokens were locked in the Base bridge at 04:30 UTC on 3 October.

That Ethereum contract has a mint function only its owner can call, and the owner is a 4-of-6 Safe multisig. So the 500 million cap holds only while four of those six signers decline to mint. Neither contract can pause transfers or blacklist a wallet. GoPlus flagged POD at 04:30 UTC for a mint function, a hidden owner and an owner that can change balances, and all three come from the bridge's power to mint and burn. Our guide to auditing a new contract for mint functionscovers the same checks.

The seed round paid $886,000 for 117.6 million tokens on 20 June 2024, about $0.007534 each, and all of it has been unlocked since 20 June 2025. The 2 October close was 74.8 times that price.

The team's 125 million POD vests slowly. Two Sablier streams started on 20 September 2026, one of 85 million xPOD and a 37.5 million POD reserve. Neither releases anything before a 1% cliff on 1 May 2028, and both then vest in a straight line to 1 May 2038. The xPOD token is the staked form of POD, and ten 250,000 xPOD streams make up the other 2.5 million.

CoinMarketCap counted 83,616,564.85 POD in circulation at 04:38 UTC on 3 October, a $47.12 million market cap at the 2 October close against $281.75 million fully diluted. That count lands within about 7,200 tokens of the total minus the staking vault and the treasury Safe, so it appears to treat the locked 37.5 million POD reserve as circulating.

Three contracts held 90.92% of supply in an on-chain read at 04:29 UTC on 3 October. The staking vault had 51.26%, the 4-of-7 treasury Safe 32.02% and Sablier's lockup 7.64%. Blockscout's holder table at 04:28 UTC still credited 37.5 million POD to the 3-of-4 Safe that funded the reserve stream on 20 September. The chain shows that Safe empty, which is how Blockscout's top four reach 98.42%. Blockscout counted 4,440 holders at 04:28 UTC and GoPlus 6,576 at 04:30 UTC. The staking vault is an upgradeable proxy, and we didn't determine who can upgrade it.

Which POD Contract Is the Real One?

The real POD is the Base address above. A DexScreener search for "dolphin pod" at 04:37 UTC on 3 October returned 11 other tokens named Dolphin with the POD ticker across Ethereum, Base and Solana. Each of the five Ethereum copies showed $22.7 million to $69.8 million of liquidity. A Blockscout search for Dolphin crypto tokens on Base at 04:42 UTC returned 49 more matches on its first page, the old DPHN contract among them. Match the address, never the name or the liquidity badge.

How to Buy Dolphin Safely

Phemex lists no POD market, spot or futures. On-chain, POD trades on decentralized exchanges on Base. Copy the contract from Dolphin's tokenomics page, which links its explorer entry, and confirm that CoinMarketCap shows the same address.

The deepest pool is the Uniswap v4 POD/ETH pool that opened on 2 March 2026, and it takes a 1% fee on every swap. It held $4.34 million on GeckoTerminal at 04:31 UTC on 3 October, so size your order to that and set a slippage limit. Our page on how slippage works in crypto shows what a moving quote costs you.

If you stake POD, you face a three-month cooldown plus a one-week window to withdraw.

What Are the Risks of Dolphin?

A 4-of-6 multisig can mint more POD

New POD minted on Ethereum could reach Base through the bridge, and no code caps supply at 500 million.

The treasury is almost twice the float

The treasury Safe held 160.1 million POD at 04:29 UTC on 3 October, 1.9 times CoinMarketCap's circulating count. The docs cap treasury sales at 10% of total supply, or 50 million POD, with a minimum one-year cliff.

Emissions can run ahead of revenue

The docs say the network can "initially operate at a net loss" to grow its node count, so POD reaches operators before any buyback spends a dollar.

Half the supply is in a vault with a three-month exit

Of the staking vault's 256.25 million xPOD at 04:32 UTC on 3 October, 87.72 million were in Sablier's lockup contract, most of it the team's streams. Anyone leaving the vault waits three months plus a week.

A price history that mixes two tokens

CoinGecko's Dolphin series carries the old DPHN token until 10 March 2026, so its all-time low of $0.0000723 that day belongs to DPHN and any multiple measured from it is wrong.

Is Dolphin a Good Investment?

POD is a bet that Dolphin's model reputation turns into paid inference, and on the dated data that conversion hasn't begun. For the case to firm up, Dolphin would need to launch the paid API and publish what the buyback spends against emissions.

It suits someone who runs GPUs and wants bonded POD for the reward boost, or a Dolphin user after the daily free inference allowance the docs promise stakers. It doesn't suit a buyer chasing the 2 October chart, since that bar's high printed within seven hours of the open and the main pool takes 1% of every swap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is POD the same token as the old DPHN?

POD replaced it. CoinGecko's notice on its Dolphin page says DPHN was rebranded to POD and migrated to the new contract. The old 1 billion-supply DPHN contract on Base still showed 593 holders on Blockscout at 04:42 UTC on 3 October.

Is Dolphin listed on Phemex for spot or futures trading?

Phemex's product list for 3 October has no POD market of either kind. It lists VVV, the Venice.ai token, on spot and as a perpetual that returned to the board on 11 September 2026.

Who is behind Dolphin AI and the POD token?

The Dolphin Foundation acts for the protocol, and its 4-of-7 treasury Safe has six team members and the Foundation itself as signers. The docs name no individuals, so this page names none either.

What hardware does a Dolphin Network node need?

Dolphin's node guide says the full model needs 70 GB of video memory, such as four RTX 3090 or 4090 cards or one 80 GB H100. That's more than one gaming PC holds, though the project pitches idle gaming cards.

Final Thoughts

The 2 October spike priced Dolphin's reputation as a model maker, and POD's own economics start only when the inference API does. Until that launch, the token leans on a mint key held by four of six signers and a treasury worth nearly two floats.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.