NEAR Protocol Introduces Staking-Based AI Compute Credits

The NEAR Protocol has introduced a new way to access AI compute credits through staking. Instead of spending money every month, users can stake their NEAR tokens and receive monthly compute credits scaled to their stake size.

According to the official NEAR white paper, validators who run nodes and secure the network earn a target reward equal to roughly 4.5% of total token supply annually. An additional ~0.5% is allocated to a treasury that funds ongoing ecosystem development.

Inflation is capped at 5% per year, and as network usage grows, effective inflation can shrink. If fees burned exceed new tokens minted, the system can even become deflationary.

When users stake for AI access, they're not earning those validator rewards themselves. Instead, the staking rewards their position would normally generate are routed to NEAR AI as payment for the compute they're using.