Recent Developments of Grass
On April 2nd, BN announced the launch of the second round of nominators, and Grass is included in the Alpha open list!
It is reported that this event will last until April 10th. Different from the previous round, this round of candidates covers multiple tracks such as AI, DeFi, infrastructure, and RWA. Due to the support of Grass's large user group, it has also shown a unique green spot amidst the red situation recently, bucking the trend.
On April 2nd, Grass announced that it had crawled more than 57,000,000 GB of public network data in Q1. Since the Sion upgrade, the crawling volume has increased by 320 times.

Introduction to Grass
Grass is a data aggregation network that combines AI and the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) and is built on the Solana network. It allows people to make full use of the unused Internet or share idle Internet bandwidth, use the unused Internet bandwidth to collect information from the public network, and then use this information to train large language models (LLMs). At the same time, it establishes a transparent data market and provides passive incentives for all participants.
Founded in 2023, through two major components, the Grass node and the sovereign data aggregation, Grass converts unstructured network data into structured data sets. This network has more than 2 million users running nodes, processes more than 100TB of data every day, and has more than 2.5 million nodes in 190 countries around the world, crawling a large amount of data for AI models.

Composition of the Grass Architecture
The core technical architecture of the Grass network consists of multiple important parts, including Grass nodes, sovereign data Rollup, zero-knowledge proof, Web request proof generation, etc.:

Grass Nodes: These refer to the user devices with the Grass client installed, and they are also the core components of the Grass network. Each node has a unique identifier. Through browser extensions, desktop applications, Android mobile applications, etc., they provide the unused bandwidth of the Internet connection to obtain information from network servers and transfer it to the router.

Sovereign Data Rollup: This refers to the validator (responsible for issuing data collection instructions), the router (responsible for distributing Web requests), and the nodes (providing computing power and bandwidth). The ZK processor ensures that every network operation is transparently recorded, thus achieving comprehensive traceability of the AI training data.

The Grass Team
What makes Grass different from others is that the team has won the respect of users through emphasizing the community and adopting a fair and transparent approach. Most of the members remain anonymous, and the main body is the Andrena team, which was launched by Wynd Labs in June 2023. Only Andrej Radonjic, the co-founder of Wynd Network, has a public identity:
As one of the co-founders of Grass, Andrej Radonjic holds a master's degree in mathematics and statistics from York University and a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from McMaster University. His goal is to provide individuals with the opportunity to obtain incentives in the development of AI. As early as 2023, when he was running his own residential proxy service provider, he realized the deficiencies of traditional service platforms.

Financing of Grass
Since its establishment, Grass has experienced two relatively large fundraisings, and its valuation has reached nearly one billion US dollars:
In July 2023, Grass announced the completion of a $1 million Pre-seed round, led by No Limit Holdings!
In December 2023, Grass obtained a $3.5 million seed round, led by Polychain and Tribe Capital!
In September 2024, the Grass Network completed a fundraising with an undisclosed amount, led by Hack VC, and participated by Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Lattice, and Brevan Howard Digital, etc. This round made the valuation of Grass reach nearly one billion US dollars.

Summary of Grass
Although Grass has achieved remarkable results, and this event is approaching the deadline. It not only reflects the enthusiasm for the DePIN track but also marks a breakthrough of the Solana ecosystem in the field of decentralized physical infrastructure. Grass aims to establish a fair, open, and decentralized data layer, which stands in sharp contrast to centralized AI data providers. With its innovative architecture and focus on Web3, Grass has the potential to build a fair and open data layer for AI protocols and companies.