What Is Grass.io and How to Earn Points for a Potential Airdrop

How to Earn Grass Points

You can earn Grass points by downloading and running Grass as an extension of your web browser while you browse the internet. Based on information from the protocol, Grass may potentially distribute rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies, gift cards, and Paypal. 

Key Takeaways 

• Grass enables you to generate passive income by leveraging your unused bandwidth without compromising your privacy. Verified companies can utilize your idle bandwidth securely, without accessing any of your personal information.

• In 2023, Grass raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Polychain Capital, Tribe Capital and other notable investors. 

• Grass grants users Grass points as they serve as node operators by providing data via internet bandwidth.

With the global big data market set to triple by 2027, growth in demand for AI products continues to grow exponentially, and the cost to obtain data to train AI models continues to rise in tandem. Grass presents an opportunity for node operators to passively earn with an extension that operates in the background. 

In December 2023, Grass announced the successful completion of a $3.5 million seed round led by Polychain Capital and Tribe Capital. Other participating investors include Bitscale, Big Brain, Advisors Anonymous, Typhon V, Mozaik and angel investors such as Sami Kassab, Stephy Dunbar and Kunal Goel. This brings Grass’s total funding to $4.5 million after a pre-seed round led by No Limit Holdings. 

While a Grass token has not been announced, information from the protocol suggests that there will be rewards from Grass, This may take the form of “cryptocurrencies, gift cards, and PayPal.”

How Does Grass Work?

Grass is a network that lets people sell the internet bandwidth they are not using. It operates as a decentralized network for web scraping, aiming to transform public web data into AI datasets for builders use. This is achieved by leveraging idle internet connections of node operators to collect raw data, which is then processed for AI training purposes. Grass employs its in-house AI development tool developed by Wynd Labs, Socrates, to extract unstructured data and convert it into a readable format. Think of Grass as an AI data repository, furnishing data to various AI platforms seeking training for their specific models.

Furthermore, Grass serves as a data layer for AI, by prioritizing transparency and trust by implementing data recording each time data is scraped by Grass nodes. To handle large-scale scraping operations effectively, Grass is developed as a Layer 2 solution on top of Solana, utilizing it as a settlement layer through a sovereign rollup mechanism.

Moreover, Grass incorporates a ZK processor, enabling builders to verify that AI models are trained correctly, along with a Data Ledger designed to host an extensive data repository. 

The ZK processor plays a key role in tracing the origins of the datasets collected from Grass, it pinpoints the exact moment when a dataset comes into existence. This process typically begins with the user of the Grass extension making a web request on the website where the response contains encrypted data and marks the dataset’s origin. Employing zero knowledge proofs to bundle data, allows for a high volume of web requests while ensuring that the AI training data remains intact and verifiable, reinforcing the accuracy and integrity of AI Models.

The Data Ledger on the other hand is the primary storage location for all datasets scraped from Grass. It acts as a permanent record, containing embedded metadata that document each dataset from the point of origin. This repository strategically scrapes data curated for LLM training purposes and is strategically positioned to combat data poisoning, support open-source AI endeavours, and enhance user understanding of AI models.

Grass utilizes a simple browser extension to take advantage of a user’s idle internet connection to scrape data. The extension prioritizes user privacy by abstaining from any collection or sharing of identifiable user data with third parties. No personal data, including browsing history, search terms, emails, or files, is tracked or stored by Grass or Wynd Labs. Instead, the extension anonymously utilizes a portion of your bandwidth resources when installed and enabled. Its functionality is strictly limited to channelling bandwidth without accessing any sensitive data.

Wynd Network also goes beyond internal security measures by engaging independent cybersecurity firms to conduct frequent and thorough audits of the Grass software. These external security reviews are extensive, aiming to identify and address vulnerabilities effectively, thus enhancing defence mechanisms against potential threats. 

Founder, Andrej Radonjic, has revealed himself along with 5 other employees on Linkedin, and they collectively share similar backgrounds in Software Engineering and building DeFi protocols. With his prior experiences in his previous venture in 1on1proxy, a provider of static residential proxies Andrej also completed his Bachelor of Engineering at McMaster University while his team have backgrounds in universities residing majority from the Asian regions like the Philippines and Bangladesh. According to Crunchbase, Andrej Radonjic had also made pre-seed investments in Rug.ai earlier in March 2024. 

During a presentation at ETH Denver last month, founder Andrej Radonjic shared that Grass has been downloaded in 190 countries, and it collects over 1 TB of data daily. Despite Grass's massive growth in recent months, it's still behind another app, Honeygain, which has about 12 million users. 

Grass Points Valuation

As of the time of writing, the average bids and ask per grass point costs $0.00266 and $0.00258 respectively, these are the points market found on Whales Market. Whales Market is a popular decentralized OTC decentralized exchange for trading Airdrop Allocations, Points and Tokens. Although this platform is a speculative tool for traders to predict prices of pre-launched tokens/points, instances like Ether.fi, Zeus Network, and Ethena Shards nearly matched the actual prices upon launch.

How to Earn Grass Points

Anyone can also earn Grass points as the project is now its incentivized beta phase.

Step 1: Download Grass

Visit https://www.getgrass.io/ and Download Grass.

Add Grass to Chrome.

There will be a popup which allows you to add Grass as an extension. Click on Add extension.

Do note that this extension can read and change all data on all websites. 

Click on Add extension and Grass will be added to your Chrome extensions. Check that Grass has been added as a Chrome extension in your extensions tab. 

Step 2: Register at Grass.io

Click on the Grass icon to log in, reset your password or register with your email.

Click on Register with Email and sign up with your email, username, and password, agree to the terms and conditions before proving you are not a robot with the captcha. Note that you will need a referral code to sign up for Grass – you can look for referral codes on Twitter (X).

Note that there is no need to connect your cryptocurrency wallet to Grass.

Step 3: Earn Points on Grass

You will be brought to the main Dashboard for Grass. 

Click on Connect and your device will be connected to the internet you are currently using. 

You are now officially a node operator for Grass and will earn Grass points as long as you have a connection with the internet.

Earn More Points Through Referrals

In addition to the Grass Points you earn directly, you can enhance your earnings by referring other users to Grass. Simply utilize your personalized referral code or link to enroll new users, and you'll receive a perpetual 20% bonus based on all the Grass Points generated by their accounts. Your referral rewards persist as long as the user accounts you referred remain active on Grass. As their points accumulate, your bonus points also increase automatically. By consistently referring to even a small group of users, you can significantly boost your Grass Points earnings over time through this compounding effect.

Conclusion

Grass is a decentralized Layer 2 network built on top of Solana which accesses the public web to scrape data in order to train AI models. By scraping and processing raw data from the public web provided by node operators, Grass cleans and converts the raw data into structured datasets used for AI training. With the introduction of Grass points, the protocol aims to incentivize users to provide access to the public web by running nodes using Chrome extensions.