The NEAR Foundation has taken a significant step towards integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with blockchain technology by offering substantial support to the NEAT Protocol, a specialized rollup solution for AI applications on the NEAR platform. As part of this initiative, the foundation has delegated 1 million $NEAR tokens to NEAT, with the intention of redistributing all token rewards to $NEAT stakers, promising an attractive annual percentage yield (APY) of 120-200%. This move is part of the NEAR Foundation’s broader effort to foster collaborations between AI and blockchain within its ecosystem and set a precedent for future projects.
NEAT Protocol is the first rollup scaling protocol to receive official backing from the NEAR Foundation. The funding aims to enhance NEAT’s infrastructure to support a wider range of use cases and attract a larger user base to its platform. NEAT is a rollup scaling solution built on the NEAR inscription standard, specifically designed to streamline AI and machine-learning applications on the blockchain. It addresses the high computational demands of these technologies through efficient data handling and reduced transaction costs.
NEAT revolutionizes the traditional rollup process by using off-chain indexer nodes for execution, while relying on NEAR’s Layer 1 (L1) for data availability. This eliminates the need for rollups to deploy smart contracts or run verification logic on L1, significantly reducing transaction costs and improving the overall efficiency of the system. This optimization makes NEAT an ideal platform for computationally intensive applications, such as AI and interactive gaming environments.
To further enhance the ecosystem, NEAT is developing an advanced indexer called the NEAR Catalog. This tool will provide flexible and cost-effective indexing and querying capabilities, facilitating seamless interactions and data retrieval across the NEAR platform. This development is crucial for projects that require robust, scalable solutions to integrate complex data sets and manage their operations effectively.
$NEAT tokens exist in two forms: NRC-20 and NEP-141, with a total circulation of 42 million tokens. These tokens play a central role in the NEAT ecosystem and offer multiple benefits to their holders. Stakers of $NEAT-NEP141 not only receive rewards from the staked $NEAR tokens but also earn a share of fees generated from various operations within the ecosystem. Additionally, once NEAT’s decentralized indexer network becomes operational, a portion of the indexing fees will be distributed among $NEAT-NEP141 stakers. This decentralized network will be the first of its kind, allowing any project to store data on the NEAR blockchain and deploy custom indexing logic on a decentralized set of indexer nodes. It also aims to ensure verifiable execution through the use of zero-knowledge proofs, enhancing the security and reliability of the processed data.
NEAT’s technology holds great promise for the field of artificial intelligence. With its robust indexing capabilities and the ability to integrate off-chain execution through zero-knowledge proofs, NEAT is paving the way for innovative AI-driven projects. For example, it allows for fully open-source AI-powered games where community involvement can directly influence the game’s narrative, with all interactions and histories securely recorded on the blockchain. This combination of blockchain’s transparency with off-chain computational efficiency makes AI more accessible and fosters the growth of an open and participatory network. As NEAT continues to evolve and expand its offerings, it is expected to have a profound impact on the AI and blockchain landscape, bringing decentralized and scalable AI applications closer to reality.
