The AI bull case for NEAR: NEAR AI lab and user-owned AGI
Quote358 words
Bullish call$NEAR+24%since this piece, moved with the callHow it played out ↓Lays out NEAR's AI push: tens of millions of onboarded users, 2M daily actives and a NEAR AI R&D lab aiming for open-source, user-owned AGI. Argues AI should be open source and owned by communities.
Key claims
NEAR has onboarded tens of millions of users, 2M daily active
NEAR AI lab led by Alex Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin
✨ 🤖 The AI Bull Case for $NEAR 🤖 ✨
@NEARProtocol has already onboarded tens of millions of users to its network, 2 million of which are daily active users.
This creates a perfect base layer for the next stage of innovation:
Combining Web3 & AI. ⤵️
A few months ago, the @NEARFoundation announced massive investments in order to make NEAR the leading ecosystem for next-gen AI research and applications.
This encompasses core infrastructure investments, such as data collection, crowdsourcing, curation, and rewarding creators.
It also cover access to computing resources, innovative monetization methods, verifiability of training and inference for provenance, agentic infrastructure, and more.
Additionally, the @NEARFoundation started the NEAR AI R&D Lab, led by @AlexSkidanov and @ilblackdragon.
NEAR AI aims to address the core challenge of easily creating end-to-end Web3 applications from scratch.
They plan to hire a team of AI researchers and invest in cutting-edge research to achieve build the necessary infra and tooling.
They commit to keeping development open-source, offering software, datasets, and models to the broader community to support further product development.
It will also not be the only team working on this effort.
Rather, NEAR AI will join forces across both the AI & Web3 ecosystems, and collaborate with other teams, aligned with the open-source spirit that underlies @NEARProtocol.
The research end goal for NEAR AI is user-owned AGI.
WTF is AGI?
Artificial General Intelligence refers to AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a human-like level or even better.
Unlike narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks like image recognition or legal document reading, AGI would be capable of performing any intellectual task a human can do.
This includes reasoning, problem-solving, understanding complex concepts, and adapting to new situations autonomously.
AGI will revolutionize our interaction with computing, boosting global productivity and allowing people to focus on creativity, innovation, and new economic opportunities.
Crucially, this should serve and be owned by individuals and communities, not large companies or governments.
To benefit everyone, all AI and eventually AGI must be open source and user-owned.
$NEAR makes that possible.
Agree with the below take. ⤵️
QUOTING @dim_ss
Over the past year, I have spent a LOT of time exploring the liquid crypto x AI token space. Let's just say there aren't many that stand out. $NEAR (@NEARProtocol) does; Some thoughts below. Comment 'DM' below if you’d like the full thesis, and I’ll forward it to you.
Over the past year, I have spent a LOT of time exploring the liquid crypto x AI token space. Let's just say there aren't many that stand out. $NEAR (@NEARProtocol) does; Some thoughts below. Comment 'DM' below if you’d like the full thesis, and I’ll forward it to you.
How the call played out · since 20 Aug 2024
Prices as of 23 Oct 2026This piece takes a view on $NEAR, so that move is read against the call.
+24%
Moved with the call · over 2.2 years
- At publication
- $4.00
- Now
- $4.96
- vs BTC
- −9.7%
- After 1 month
- +6.5%
- After 3 months
- +50%
- After 1 year
- −40%
- High since
- +101% 07 Dec 2024
- Low since
- −76% 12 Feb 2026
Since then
Zero has written 37 more pieces on NEAR Protocol and NEAR AI and $NEAR since this one.
- Quantum and post-quantum map: PQ crypto assets by readinessOn NEAR
- I Built a Research Desk Staffed Entirely by AI Agents. It Works.Covers $NEAR
- New vs returning wallets across Ethereum, Solana, NEAR, Polygon and SuiCovers $NEAR
- NEAR DCML explained: confidential, verifiable and monetizable AI via TEEsCovers $NEAR
Daily closes in USD from DefiLlama and Yahoo Finance. Only a bullish or bearish thesis is read as a call; explainers, maps and mentions are context. Not financial advice.