NEAR Protocol launches staking-based AI fee payment feature, granting access to all 43 models on NEAR AI

Odaily News: NEAR Protocol announced that users can now pay for confidential inference and ongoing agent operation fees by staking NEAR, without needing to bind a credit card. Staked NEAR will be converted into monthly computing credits, with the credit amount growing as the staked amount increases. 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, can be accessed through this staking mechanism.