The Intersection of AI and Blockchain: NEAR Foundation’s Ambitious Endeavor with NEAT Protocol Holds Potential to Revolutionize Technology

The NEAR Foundation has taken a significant step towards integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with blockchain technology by providing support for NEAT Protocol, a specialized rollup solution for AI applications on the NEAR platform. The foundation has delegated 1 million $NEAR tokens to NEAT, with the aim of redistributing all token rewards from this delegation to $NEAT stakers, offering an attractive annual percentage yield (APY) of 120-200%. This move is part of the NEAR Foundation’s broader efforts to foster collaborations between AI and blockchain within its ecosystem.
NEAT Protocol is the first rollup scaling protocol to receive official backing from the NEAR Foundation. The funding will be used to enhance NEAT’s infrastructure, enabling it to support a wider range of use cases and attract more users to its platform. NEAT is specifically designed to streamline AI and machine learning applications on the blockchain by efficiently handling data and reducing transaction costs. Unlike traditional rollup processes, NEAT utilizes 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, resulting in lower transaction costs and improved efficiency.
The NEAR Catalog, powered by NEAT, is also working on developing an advanced indexer to enhance the ecosystem further. This tool will provide flexible and cost-effective indexing and querying capabilities, facilitating seamless interactions and data retrieval across the NEAR platform. It is especially beneficial for projects that require robust and scalable solutions to manage complex data sets.
$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, offering multiple benefits to holders. Stakers of $NEAT-NEP141 not only receive rewards from staked $NEAR tokens but also receive 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 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 will also enhance the security and reliability of the processed data through the use of zero-knowledge proofs.
NEAT’s technology holds great promise in the field of artificial intelligence. Its robust indexing capabilities and ability to integrate off-chain execution through zero-knowledge proofs open doors for innovative AI-driven projects. For example, fully open-source AI-powered games can be developed, where community involvement directly influences the game’s narrative, with all interactions and histories securely recorded on the blockchain. This combination of blockchain transparency and off-chain computational efficiency will make AI more accessible, contributing to the growth of an open and participatory network. As NEAT continues to evolve and expand, its impact on the AI and blockchain landscape is expected to be significant, representing a substantial advancement in decentralized and scalable AI applications.