NEAR Protocol Launches Staking-Based AI Fee Payment Feature, Unlocking All 43 Models on NEAR AI

Odaily Planet Daily News: NEAR Protocol announced that users can now pay for confidential inference and persistent agent operating fees by staking NEAR, with no credit card required. Staked NEAR is converted into monthly compute credits, which scale with the amount staked. The funds themselves are not consumed and can be retrieved after unstaking. All 43 models on NEAR AI, including those from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others, are accessible through this staking mechanism.