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NEAR was formed in 2017 by two of the most influential architects of modern AI chat bot computing. First they built a community managed Layer 1 blockchain that focused on making development easy and scaling transactions. Now NEAR has shifted their attention to building the largest AI learning model of all time. Here's how they're going to do it.
Whether it's expertise, mindshare, adoption, developer experience, AI infrastructure, institutional support, funding, or the mission of supporting user-owned AI, NEAR Protocol is becoming the go-to choice for those building at the intersection of AI and Web3.
What is the Near Protocol?
The first iteration of NEAR.ai was founded in 2017 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, engineers who played pivotal roles in modern AI development. They began to assemble a team of developers started work on the NEAR blockchain in 2018.
AI was placed on the back burner for the time being and the NEAR blockchain grew to be an L1 that gave developers an easy path for building dApps. The NEAR Foundation was founded in 2019 and by 2020 it was a completely community operated platform.
- Nightshade: NEAR developed a new sharding mechanism called Nightshade which allows their network to process many transactions in parallel.
- Human-readable account names: NEAR is known for it's user friendly account names instead of complicated wallet addresses.
- Developer tooling: Regularly updated APIs and SDKs designed to make developers lives as easy as possible when building.
Fast forward to 2023 and NEAR announced their renewed focus on AI with tools like the Assistant and Research Hub.
AI is reshaping the internet. But today it's controlled by a handful of companies.
Your data. Their profits.
The future must be user-owned.
What is $NEAR?
$NEAR is the native crypto token of the NEAR Protocol with several primary uses.
Transaction fees
- $NEAR is used to pay for transaction fees in dApps built on the blockchain, swapping tokens and executing other transactions.
Staking
- Users and network validators earn rewards for staking their $NEAR to maintain the blockchain.
Protocol governance
- Holders can vote on protocol upgrades, treasury uses and other important decisions.
Developer incentives
- $NEAR is used to incentivize developers and researchers to contribute to the growth of the NEAR protocol.
Loan collateral
- NEAR Protocol has built a thriving ecosystem over the last several year and many of the dApps accept $NEAR as collateral.
What is the NEAR AI Assistant?
NEAR AI Assistant is solving the problem that current AI tools face: they can process information and provide text responses but they do not have the capability to take any actions on behalf of the user.
Their AI Assistant is "user owned" with a focus on the individual user's wellbeing and guarantee of privacy. The entire stack of tooling is opensource and NEAR encourages developers to integrate the functionality into their own web3 dApps. A chatbot that enables you to interact with the growing NEAR ecosystem.
Some of it's capabilities include:
- Explaining what happened in a transaction when given a transaction hash
- Request and receive tokens from testnet faucets
- Mint and send NFTs
- Research NEAR documentation
The alpha version of NEAR AI Assistant is taking the first steps of executing actions on the user's behalf, such as preparing blockchain-based actions or shopping. It has user-specific memory and can act on the user's behalf in both Web2 and Web3 by connecting with other AI agents and services.
Illia Polosukhin, founder
What is the NEAR AI Research Hub?
NEAR AI Research Hub is the breeding grounds for a community built, decentralized AI lab that can out scale the biggest, most well funded centralized companies. It coordinates and incentivizes researchers to build new AI models on NEAR
NEAR's initial goal is create a decentralized 1.4T parameter model which is large enough to handle the next generation of AI demand. This is around 3.5x this size Meta's latest Llama AI model.
Near Protocol and the Near Foundation will provide all of the resources needed for builders whose ideas improve quality and speed of the training loop, data preparation and filtering.
This requires solving two problems: how to create the best 1.4T parameters model, and how to make it economically viable.
It must be monetizable once it's trained; it needs a well-orchestrated decentralized research approach that can compete with the big companies' labs; and it needs to be trainable over a physically distributed and/or slow network.
NEAR AI Launches Research Hub to Build the Next Frontier AI Model
What is the NEAR Tasks Marketplace?
NEAR Tasks is an AI marketplace that marked the beginning of Near's hyperfocus on crowdsourcing AI development. An early version of the more granular and user friendly research tools described above, NEAR Tasks enabled anyone to list and complete AI requests.
The marketplace connects AI builders to engineers who are monetizing their data analysis and labeling skills. This follow suit with another Near Protocol tool, NEAR Crowd, a service that allows people to earn $NEAR by completing small research tasks.
Implemented on the NEAR Protocol, NEAR Tasks utilizes on-chain tasker IDs, smart contracts for automated payments, and $NEAR transactions for global payments with minimal fees. This ensures accountability, motivates high-quality outcomes, and addresses the challenge of underpaid workers in the AI sector.
NEAR Tasks launches AI marketplace
What is the NEAR Agent Protocol?
The NEAR Agent Protocol is the mechanism for launching AI crypto agents who can interact with both trad tech platforms and web3 dApps. Although yet to be released, the standard will:
- Connect, act and transact with AI agents
- Bridge web2 and web3 services
- Authorize and settle payments
- Protect user data and identity
Conclusion
NEAR Protocol is pioneering the integration of AI with blockchain technology, emphasizing decentralization, user ownership, and open-source development. From the NEAR AI Assistant to the Research Hub and Agent Protocol, NEAR is not only advancing the capabilities of AI but also ensuring that these innovations remain accessible and beneficial to users worldwide
It sets a promising precedent for future AI blockchain builders.
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