NEAR Protocol launches staking payment AI fee feature

NEAR Protocol announced that it has launched a staking payment feature for AI fees, allowing users to pay for confidential inference and continuous running agent fees by staking NEAR without the need for a credit card.

The staked NEAR will be converted into computing points calculated monthly, with the scale of points increasing with the amount staked. The funds themselves are not consumed and can be retrieved after unstaking. All 43 models on NEAR AI (including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, etc.) can be accessed through this staking mechanism.