NEAR Introduces Staking for AI Payments

$NEAR AI, a platform for confidential AI computing and autonomous agents, has launched a new way to pay for AI computing by staking $NEAR tokens. Instead of paying for a subscription with a card, users can lock $NEAR and receive monthly compute credits based on the amount staked.

The tokens are not spent. They remain in the user’s stake and can be returned to the wallet after unstaking. Users can also change the amount of $NEAR locked depending on their AI usage.

The new system supports all 43 models available on $NEAR AI, including models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. It is designed for confidential inference and autonomous AI agents, without requiring a separate cloud account or payment provider to hold user credentials.

The launch is the first production use of $NEAR’s proposed “AI money” model. The idea is to connect AI usage directly with the blockchain asset that supports the network. While AI services are running, the staked $NEAR remains locked and is removed from circulation.

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