NEAR Introduces Staking for AI Inference and Agent Hosting

NEAR Protocol has introduced a new payment system called Staking for NEAR AI. This system allows users to pay for confidential AI inference and always-on agents by staking NEAR tokens instead of using a credit card.

Announced on July 30, 2026, the system converts staked NEAR into monthly compute credits, which are sized to the amount staked. The capital is never spent; it stays staked until the user chooses to unstake it.

The system covers all 43 models available on NEAR AI, including those from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.