What is NEAR AI Assistant and Research Hub?

NEAR was formed in 2017 by some of the most influential architects of modern AI chat bot computing. Since then they have become well known in crypto circles for launching their own AI-centric blockchain. They envision a world where every person has their own AI assistant that acts as their primary way for interacting onchain.

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https://near.org/ai

https://near.ai/

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https://www.aiagenttoolkit.xyz/

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What is the Near Protocol?

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Near Protocol is one of the few crypto projects that were already focused on AI before pivoting to the blockchain. Instead of adopting an existing L1, they built one themselves.

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NEAR AI Alpha launched in November, 2024 alongside a waitlist of 46k early sign ups.

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AI is reshaping the internet.
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But today it's controlled by a handful of companies.

Your data. Their profits.

The future must be user-owned.

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What is NEAR AI?

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NEAR AI is the framework upon which their suite of AI tools is built on. It is complementary to the NEAR blockchain.

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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.

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What is the NEAR AI Assistant?

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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.

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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.

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Some of it's capabilities include:

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• 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

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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

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What is the NEAR AI Research Hub?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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What is the NEAR Tasks Marketplace?

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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.

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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.

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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

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What is the NEAR Agent Protocol?

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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:

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• Connect, act and transact with AI agents

• Bridge web2 and web3 services

• Authorize and settle payments

• Protect user data and identity

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Conclusion

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