Market Metrics

Total Crypto Market Cap: up 1.3% to $2.716T
Total AI Sector Market Cap: flat at $39.3B

Top Movers (24 hours):

📈 Dynex (DNX): up 24.4% to $0.5604
📈 Arbius (AIUS): up 24% to $97.94
📈 EnqAI (ENQAI): up 22.2% to $0.04313

Weekend News

🟠 A storms’a brewin’…. AI narrative mindshare surpassed 30% of total narrative mindshare, nearly touching 36%. 😲

🟠 Arbius is teasing the deployment of a fine-tuned version of Llama3 400b, offering users the opportunity to share in the value generated from subscriptions and usage fees.

🟠 The Render Foundation is investing more in its ecosystem by offering more grants to creators for innovative 3D projects, encouraging them to submit their pitches.

Project Spotlight 🔦 

Key Takeaways

• NEAR Protocol has made a strategic pivot towards AI, aiming to build the infrastructure and ecosystem support needed to launch and grow AI projects on the platform.

• NEAR is focusing on "User-Owned AI," an approach where users have control over their data, AI models, and the benefits derived from these models.

• The NEAR Foundation is supporting AI projects through initiatives such as the NEAR.AI R&D Lab, staking delegation to NEAT (a rollup protocol for scaling AI applications), and various ecosystem grants programs.

• NEAR token's value could potentially benefit from both narrative-driven price appreciation (being seen as an "AI coin") and fundamentally-driven price appreciation (if the chain sees significant use due to AI projects).

• While grants and incentives can attract AI projects to build on NEAR, they may also create supply-side sell pressure if issued in NEAR tokens, making the net impact on token price dependent on the balance between increased demand and added selling pressure.

Since the hype around Ilia Poloshukins speaker appearance at Nvidia GTC in March, crypto natives have started to take notice, labeling NEAR Protocol as the AI chain, and bidding up the NEAR token in the process.

NEAR Protocol’s pivot to AI, met with impressive marketing, has most holders not even realizing what AI-enabling tech NEAR is developing under the hood. Apes simply just bid and conduct due diligence later (maybe). We have been asked several times… “Hey bro, I hear that NEAR is the AI play of the cycle but I don’t even know what is going on over there.”

Let’s take a look below the surface 👇

Prior to its focus on AI, NEAR Protocol was primarily known for its sharding technology and developer-friendly environment. NEAR Protocol has now made an impressively marketed pivot towards AI, building out the infrastructure and ecosystem development support required to launch and grow AI projects on NEAR. In Ilia’s latest blog post, Ilia labels the transition towards “User-Owned AI,” an approach to AI where users have control over their data, the AI models trained on that data, and the benefits derived from the use of those models.

One of the most notable recent developments is the creation of the NEAR.AI R&D Lab. Led by Illia Polosukhin and Alex Skidanov, the lab is working on an "AI Developer" to help build Web3 applications that can understand and execute user intentions. The AI Developer aims to make it easier for developers to create AI-powered applications on the NEAR blockchain by providing tools and frameworks for integrating AI capabilities into their projects.

To further support AI projects, NEAR has also provided resources to promising initiatives supporting the User-Owned AI vision. Recently, the NEAR Foundation announced a 1 million NEAR token staking delegation to NEAT, the first rollup scaling solution to receive official support from the Foundation. NEAT is a rollup protocol designed specifically for scaling AI and machine-learning applications on NEAR, aiming to enable scalable and cost-effective deployment of these applications.

To support the User-Owned AI vision, NEAR Protocol will also be investing in projects building these solutions through its various ecosystem grants programs:

1. Secure and transparent data collection and crowdsourcing tools

2. Mechanisms for curating high-quality data and rewarding contributors

3. Access to computational resources and novel monetization methods

4. Verifiability of AI model training and inference for trust and transparency

5. Agentic infrastructure for AI interaction with blockchains and decentralized systems

6. Interoperability with other blockchain networks and AI platforms

7. Comprehensive developer tools and support for building AI applications on NEAR

NEAR Token

Price: $7.32
Market Cap: $7.9 B
FDV: $8.6 B

Like all other Layer 1 blockchains, NEAR is the native token for the NEAR blockchain, being used for:

• paying transaction fees

• staking to secure the network

• main liquidity pairing for other tokens

• facilitating exchanges between users and applications.

As many know, the native token for a layer 1 typically only does well in two situations:

1. Narrative-driven price appreciation: When there is a strong narrative that the chain will see significant use in the future.

2. Fundamentally-driven price appreciation: When the chain is seeing significant use right now.

While NEAR is not yet at the stage of (2), the protocol’s foray into the AI sector has impacts that affect both (1) and supply side price impact for the NEAR token. Long-term, their initiatives could lead to (2) but this is too early to cover with confidence.

From a narrative-driven perspective, NEAR is positioning itself as a leader in the blockchain AI niche. Not only is it capturing the blockchain infrastructure and Layer 1 narratives, but it is now also seen as an “AI coin”, and with a market cap of around $8B, it has ample liquidity for large players to get exposure. NEAR could be well positioned as a first mover when the AI narrative takes off.

Fundamentally, NEAR has a long way to go before the chain sees adoption significant enough to drive serious demand for the NEAR token from users. However, as the NEAR Foundation continues to offer grants and incentives to AI projects, it could create a positive feedback loop for the narrative that the chain will see significant use in the future.

The story will be: more projects = more users = more demand for the token = price go up (all other thing equal). As we know, this is not always the case but that’s what the word on the street will be.

While grants are great for attracting new projects to build on a chain, there are in fact a double-edged sword. If issued in NEAR tokens, the projects will need to liquidate the tokens in order to cover operating costs, adding supply side sell pressure. Of course, if the projects can generate greater demand for NEAR from user activity than what they add is supply side sell pressure, then the net result will be positive for token price. This is yet to be seen.

Meme of the Day

Retail is back to trade meme stocks. Wait until they find out there’s a market that trades memes 24/7!