For years, proof-of-stake blockchains shared a singular economic model: users stake tokens to secure consensus, protect against slashing, and earn passive yield. But as the boundary between blockchain infrastructure and artificial intelligence dissolves, a new paradigm is taking shape. NEAR Protocol is no longer just a scalable layer-1; it is rapidly establishing NEAR as AI Money. With the rollout of staking for the NEAR AI Cloud, the network has introduced a direct economic loop where stakin...