The @getgrass_io team is on a steadfast mission to redefine internet incentive structures and become the backbone of the AI revolution. Most people may know Grass as a browser extension or app where users earn rewards for sharing unused internet bandwidth. But what is that bandwidth being used for? In this post, I’ll dive deep into what Grass is, how it works, and how you can get exposure ahead of their upcoming TGE. - - - - - - - - - - 1. Introduction The Grass Network is the underlying infrastructure powering AI models. By installing Grass, users can sell their unused internet bandwidth to AI companies, who then use it to scrape the web for data to train their resource-intensive models. The team strongly advocates for data security and privacy. As such, the Grass Network only scrapes public websites (e.g. Reddit, Twitter) and never personal data. With access to a massive scale of unused bandwidth, spanning over 2 million users, Grass has scraped public websites on an unprecedented scale. A few months ago, the network was used to open-source over 600 million Reddit posts and comments, leveling the playing field for developers by providing free data for AI training. - - - - - - - - - - 2. Tech Rundown Grass is building the first-ever Sovereign Data Rollup, streamlining data sourcing and transformation using the huge network of Grass Nodes. The tech side of things can get a bit complicated but let me break it down to the main parties involved: • Grass Nodes: Acts as the network’s gateway to the internet, using their unutilised internet to relay traffic / web requests • Router: Geographically distributed hubs that connects a group of Grass Nodes, responsible for managing both incoming data from the Grass Nodes and outgoing requests from the Validators • Validators: Initiates web requests and verifying web transactions • RPC Node: Routes webscraping requests to the Validator and return requests through encrypted tunnel - - - - - - - - - - 3. What's so special about Grass • One of the few companies capable of crawling the entire web with strong economies of scale. • Grass Socrates cleans and organizes raw data into a structured dataset for easy usability. • Ability to scrape new and real-time information via the Live Context Retrieval (LCR) engine. This last point is a key differentiator for Grass, as it allows AI models to access real-time, up-to-date data. In theory, this should help reduce hallucinations in AI models by providing a higher-quality data source. - - - - - - - - - - 4. How you can get exposure pre-TGE If you missed the early farming wave, there are still a couple of ways to gain exposure to the $GRASS token. a) Perpetuals $Grass can be traded on @aevoxyz (GRASS-USD perp) and is currently trading at $1.089. Note that since this is a perpetual, you do not own the underlying asset. Link: pro.whales.market/pre/Solana… b) Points Markets I’d recommend using a points marketplace like @WhalesMarket to easily acquire some Grass Points. Points are currently trading between $0.0005 - $0.001 each, meaning 1M points would cost around $50 - $100. However, with the claim window closing soon (end of September), this might not be the best method going forward. Link: pro.whales.market/points/Sol… c) Pre-market @WhalesMarket also has a pre-market for $GRASS which is trading at $0.815 currently and can be traded via the P2P function. Link: pro.whales.market/pre/Solana… d) GigaBuds NFT In their airdrop announcement, the team allocated 10% of the total supply (1B tokens) for the first airdrop, but 1% of the allocation has yet to be announced. My speculative guess is that this 1% will be awarded to @GigaBuds_ NFT holders as a loyalty bonus, similar to how other projects reward their native NFT holders. Link: magiceden.io/marketplace/gig… I’ve conducted a $GRASS scenario analysis based on key assumptions like the expected launch FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) and % airdrop allocation for GigaBuds holders. The launch FDV used, at $1B, is quite conservative given that premarket prices are currently already higher than that, and there was news that the last round of funding was conducted at a $1B evaluation. TLDR: At a $1B launch FDV, and assuming the 1% mystery allocation goes to NFT holders, buyers of the GigaBuds NFT today could potentially 2x their capital. Not including the fact that there may be additional utility for GigaBuds holder like other ecosystem airdrops, early access, merch, etc. Full scenario analysis below: - - - - - - - - - - 5. Closing Thoughts Grass is undeniably one of the more innovative infrastructure plays to emerge this cycle and they have significant unique selling points as it is one of the few companies capable of crawling the web to train AI models. The traction has been strong so far, largely due to the seamless onboarding process for everyday users and the straightforward narrative of “earning passive income by utilizing your unused bandwidth.” However, Grass may face challenges from centralized platforms blocking or limiting automated scrapers. For instance, Reddit has already announced plans to update its web standards to block automated data scraping. Additionally, security and data breaches remain an ongoing risk for a business model like Grass, so this will be something to monitor closely. Given that we’re just emerging from a summer market lull, it's uncertain how the launch of $GRASS will perform and whether NFT holders will be richly rewarded for their loyalty and early adoption. Disclosure: I hold a lot of GigaBuds NFT