What is Grass (GRASS)?

By CMC AI
05 February 2026 01:50PM (UTC+0)
TLDR

Grass (GRASS) is a decentralized network, or DePIN project, that enables users to monetize their unused internet bandwidth to power a global data collection service for artificial intelligence (AI).

  1. User-Powered Data Network – Individuals run simple software to share idle bandwidth, which the network uses to scrape and structure public web data for AI training.

  2. Blockchain-Verified Provenance – It uses a "Sovereign Data Rollup" with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to create a permanent, verifiable record of all data collected, ensuring transparency.

  3. Incentivized Participation – Contributors earn Grass Points for their uptime and bandwidth usage, which can later be converted into GRASS tokens as rewards.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

Grass aims to create a fairer internet where individuals can benefit from their own unused resources. Large AI companies need massive amounts of public web data for training models but face technical and scale limitations. Grass solves this by creating a decentralized network where millions of users contribute their spare bandwidth. This provides AI labs with unprecedented data access while compensating users directly, putting control and value back in their hands (General Grass FAQ | Grass).

2. Technology & Architecture

The project is building the first "Sovereign Data Rollup," a specialized blockchain architecture for data. Users run lightweight Grass Nodes. Routers manage these nodes, and Validators batch and verify the web data they collect. Critical innovations include a ZK Processor, which generates cryptographic proofs of the data's origin and integrity, and a Data Ledger that immutably links this proof to the actual datasets on a base layer-1 blockchain. This entire stack is designed to provide verifiable provenance for AI training data (Overview | Grass).

3. Tokenomics & Rewards

User contributions are tracked via a two-tier system. Grass Points are non-tokenized credits earned for keeping your node online (Uptime Points) and for the amount of bandwidth actually used by the network (Network Points). These points are a key factor in determining distributions of GRASS Tokens, which are awarded via periodic airdrops. The tokens represent ownership in the network and reward users for powering its core infrastructure (General Grass FAQ | Grass).

Conclusion

Grass fundamentally reimagines internet infrastructure as a user-owned utility, turning idle bandwidth into a valuable resource for the AI era. Can its decentralized model scale to become the primary, trusted source of training data for next-generation AI?

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.