Grass Network: How to Profit from Sharing Internet Resources?

Grass focuses on data in the intersection of Cryptocurrency and AI, and unlike traditional participants in closed-source, centralized AI, it serves as the original source of Decentralization for AI data.

Author: Ebunker

The positioning and use cases of Grass

Grass is a project deployed on Solana on-chain, combining AI, Depin, and Solana technologies, positioning itself as the Data Layer for AI. It is a Decentralization network crawling platform designed to help companies and non-profit organizations train artificial intelligence (AI) by utilizing unused internet bandwidth. It achieves network crawling through a browser extension application, utilizing individuals’ unused internet bandwidth, and rewarding users with Grass Points. By enabling users to share unused internet bandwidth resources, Grass aims to redefine the internet incentive structure, allowing users to benefit directly from the network and ensuring that the value of the internet is in the hands of the users. Currently, the network has over 2 million users running Nodes, capturing a large amount of data for AI models.

Technical Architecture

Grass Sovereign Data Rollup is a network built by Grass specifically on Solana, which enables protocols to handle all transactions from data sources to processing, verification, and building data sets. The network is built around validators (issuing data collection instructions), routers (managing web request distribution), and Grass Node nodes (used by users to contribute their idle network resources). The specific architecture is as follows:

Validator: Receive, validate, and batch route web transactions for the router. Then, generate a ZK proof to check the on-chain session data. The on-chain proof can be referenced in the dataset to verify the data source and track its lineage throughout the entire lifecycle. The validator set will transition from the initial single validator’s centralized framework to a validator committee of Decentralization.

Router: Connects the Grass Node to the validator. The router ensures the traceability of the Node network and relays bandwidth. Grass is incentivized to operate based on the proportion of total validation bandwidth provided through the relay. The router is responsible for reporting the following metrics to the validators in the network: the size of each incoming and outgoing request (in bytes); the latency of each Node and the latency of the validator; the network status of each connected Node.

Grass Node Node: Use unused bandwidth and Relay traffic of users so that the network can fetch public web data (not personal data of users). Running a Node is free, and the person running the Node (Node operator) is rewarded with compensation through the data transmitted via their Relay.

Zk Processor ZK Processor: batch processing the validity proof of session data for all web requests and submitting the proof to the L1 blockchain. This operation will permanently record every fetch behavior performed on the network. It also lays the foundation for a comprehensive understanding of the source of AI training data.

Grass Data Ledger: This is the link between the captured data and the L1 settlement layer. The ledger is an immutable data structure that hosts the complete dataset and links the data to its corresponding on-chain proof, serving as a data repository to ensure the source of the data.

Edge Embedding Models: This is the process of transforming unstructured web data into structured models. This includes all necessary preprocessing steps to ensure that the collected raw data is cleaned, normalized, and structured to meet the requirements of AI models.

Technical Features

In the above architecture, the Grass network is between the client and the web server. The client sends web requests, which are sent through validators and finally routed through the Grass Node. Regardless of which website the client requests, its server will respond to the web request, allowing its data to be crawled and sent back to the line. Then, it will be cleaned, processed, and prepared for training the next generation of AI models.

This process requires an understanding of two main additional features: Grass data ledger and ZK processor.

The Grass data ledger is the ultimate storage place for all data. It is the permanent ledger of each dataset captured by Grass, embedded with Metadata, recording its original lineage from the moment of origin. The Metadata proof of each dataset will be stored on Solana’s Settlement layer, and the Settlement data itself will also be provided through the ledger.

The purpose of the ZK processor is to help record the source of the data set captured on the Grass network. The process is as follows: When a Node (i.e., a user who has installed the Grass extension) on the network sends a web request to a given website, it returns an encryption response that includes all the data requested by the Node. This is the moment when the data set is born, the moment when the origin needs to be recorded, and the moment when Metadata is recorded. It includes many fields, such as session Secret Key, the URL of the captured website, the IP Address of the target website, the transaction Timestamp, and, of course, the data itself. Thanks to this necessary information and the clear data set from the website source, AI models can be trained correctly and faithfully.

The ZK processor can prevent the data that needs to be settled on-chain from being seen by Solana validators. In addition, a large number of web requests to be executed on Grass in the future will exceed the throughput that L1 can handle. Grass will soon expand to the level of executing tens of millions of web requests per minute, and the metadata of each request needs to be settled on-chain. Without the ZK processor proving and batching first, it is not possible to submit these transactions to L1. Therefore, Rollup is the only possible way to achieve the planned goals.

In addition to recording the source website of the data set, Metadata also indicates through which Node on the network it is routed. This means that whenever a Node fetches the network, it can be rewarded for its contributions without revealing any identity information. This allows Grass to reward Nodes proportionally, and Nodes that fetch more valuable data will receive more incentives. This mechanism will significantly increase rewards in the world’s most popular areas, ultimately encouraging people in these areas to register and increase network capacity. The larger the network scale, the larger the capacity Grass can fetch and the larger the stored network data repository. The more data there is, the more Grass can provide for AI labs in need of training data, thereby incentivizing the network to continue to rise.

Grass Node Operation and Security Mechanism

Running a Grass Node is free and serves as a gateway to the internet for the network. Node operators (i.e., application users) are rewarded for the traffic through their NodeRelays and receive network traffic based on their reputation score and geographic demand.

Grass Node has two main uses: to pass the traffic initiated by the client and directed by the validator (i.e. web requests); and to return the encrypted web server response to the specified router.

The supported systems of the Node are as shown in the figure above, and the process of running the Node is also simple: create an account, download the Grass desktop application, and connect to the network.

After the connection, the Node will automatically register on the network. The operator is responsible for maintaining the normal operation time of the network, so that the Node can forward network requests to public network servers. Every request sent to the Grass Node is an encryption data packet. The data packet only provides direction to the Node at the destination of each data packet. Network requests are authenticated by Digital Signatures from all parties involved. These signatures will verify the legitimacy of the request and determine whether it should be forwarded to the target network server (i.e., public website). This encryption process prevents data tampering and ensures that validators can accurately measure the reputation of each Node.

Node reputation score mainly includes the following points:

• Integrity: Evaluate whether the data is complete and assess whether the dataset contains all the necessary data points required for the expected use cases.
• Consistency: Check the consistency of data from different datasets or data that changes over time within the same dataset.
• Timeliness: Measure whether the data is up-to-date when needed.
• Availability: Evaluate the data availability of each Node.

In terms of security mechanisms, the Grass network does not use user Nodes (i.e., computers) or view any actions performed by users on their computers. It simply routes internet traffic through the users’ IP Address, completely unrelated to users’ activities. This means that Grass has zero access to users’ personal data, and the data captured is 100% from public network data.

In addition, Grass uses bandwidth encryption to ensure that all users are protected when sharing internet connections. Grass also cooperates with leading network security compliance audit company AppEsteem, which monitors Grass products 24 hours a day for vulnerabilities, leaks, backdoors, and malware to ensure user security. AppEsteem certification enjoys a high reputation in the network security industry, and obtaining this certification means that Grass products are also included in the Allowlist of top anti-malware applications, including Avast, Microsoft Defender, McAfee, AVG, etc.

Functionality of Grass token

holders of Grass token can participate in the Grass network in the following ways:

• Transactions and Repurchases: After Decentralization, Grass will be used to support network crawling transactions, dataset purchases, and LCR (Live Context Retrieval) usage.
• stake and rewards: stake Grass to the router to promote network traffic and receive rewards for contributing to network security.
• Network Governance: Participate in the development of the Grass network, including proposing and voting to support network improvements, coordinating with which organizations to collaborate, and determining incentive mechanisms for all stakeholders.

According to the Dune website, currently, the stake Annual Percentage Rate of Grass is around 45%, with about 33% of grass tokens participating in the stake, and the stake amount exceeds 26 million.

Router stake and earnings

Routers act as decentralized hubs, connecting all network nodes and managing the inbound and outbound web requests of validators. Routers operate with incentives, rewarding with a proportionate amount to the staked amount delegated to each router. All traffic relayed through the router is encrypted and metered to ensure security and performance.

Currently, the stake amount of each Router is shown in the above figure. Users can stake Grass to represent Router and earn profits, with different commissions for each Router.

Currently, DBunker’s Grass stake is about 1.43 million, with a minimum stake period of 7 days and a commission of 10%. (Data source STAKE can be connected to Wallet, stake Grass, and obtain Router stake income.

Summary

Grass is committed to building a fair and open Decentralization Data Layer, aiming to solve the ethical issues and data quality problems of current Internet data extraction, and opposing the data monopoly phenomenon controlled by a few large companies. In terms of technical architecture and features, Grass introduces a Metadata mechanism that records the source of all data sets by building a data Rollup. The ZK proofs of these data are stored on the L1 settlement layer, while the Metadata itself will eventually be bound to its underlying data sets, as these data sets themselves are stored on Grass’s data ledger. Therefore, ZK proofs lay the foundation for improving transparency and providing rewards proportional to the work performed by Nodes, which is also an important factor in incentivizing the expansion of the Grass network.

Grass focuses on the intersection of Crypto Assets and AI data, unlike traditional participants in closed-source, centralized AI, it is the original source of Decentralization for AI data. As an important participant in the web3 wave, Grass uses Decentralization technology to build a fair and open Data Layer for AI companies and protocol, with market demand as the entry point, and promising prospects.