Grass

What is Grass?

Grass (GRASS) is a Solana-based DePIN protocol that turns idle home internet bandwidth into a marketplace product for AI companies. The project is built by Wynd Network and went live to the public in late 2023 with a browser extension. Users install the Grass node, leave it running in the background, and the network routes web scraping traffic through their residential IP. The bandwidth and the resulting public web data are then sold to AI labs that need clean training data for large language models.

The pitch sits in the AI-data-layer corner of DePIN: instead of paying scraping vendors or fighting Cloudflare bot blocks from a datacenter IP, AI companies route through a residential mesh and get clean access to public pages. GRASS is the SPL token that pays operators, settles network usage, and (after the staking rollout) governs how the data layer evolves. The token launched via airdrop in May 2024 to the people who had been farming "Grass points" for months on the extension.

GRASS price today

GRASS trades on Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Gate, MEXC, Kraken, and on Solana DEXes like Jupiter and Raydium. The deepest pairs are GRASS/USDT, GRASS/USDC, and GRASS/USD on the centralized side. Live data on this page comes from a multi-venue feed and refreshes every 60 seconds. The reference quote is volume-weighted across the most liquid order books. The all-time high sits near $3.89, set in November 2024 during the AI-DePIN narrative cycle that also lifted Bittensor and io.net.

What actually moves GRASS on a given day:

• AI training data demand. GRASS is one of the few liquid tokens directly exposed to the "AI needs more data" thesis. Headlines about LLM data exhaustion or new lab funding rounds tend to bleed into GRASS price action within hours.
• Node operator count. The number of active Grass nodes is the supply side of the marketplace. Wynd publishes node growth periodically, and meaningful jumps (especially after mobile or multi-IP rollouts) usually feed positive flow.
• Token unlocks. Like most 2024 airdrop tokens, GRASS has a vesting schedule for team, investors, and ecosystem allocations. Unlock cliffs are tracked publicly on Token Unlocks and CryptoRank, and large unlocks have historically pressured the price for a few weeks.
• Solana ecosystem flow. As an SPL token, GRASS liquidity sits alongside SOL, JUP, JTO, and other Solana-native assets. SOL strength and Solana DEX volume feed back into GRASS volume and depth.
• AI-DePIN basket sentiment. Bittensor (TAO), Render (RENDER), Akash (AKT), io.net (IO), and Grass tend to trade as a correlated basket. A move in TAO or RENDER on AI news usually drags GRASS with it.

The numbers in the price card above are live. For multi-year scenarios, see our Grass price forecast. For a side-by-side with the original DePIN bandwidth/coverage play, Helium covers the wireless angle while Grass covers the residential web-data angle.

How the Grass network works: nodes, residential IPs, and data rewards

The simplest way to understand Grass is to follow a request. An AI company needs to scrape a few million public web pages, but doing it from one datacenter IP gets blocked within seconds. So the company sends the request through Grass. The network routes that request through one of millions of Grass nodes, which is just a browser extension or app running on a real residential connection. The target site sees an ordinary home IP, returns the page, and the data is collected, structured, and delivered back to the buyer.

• Node deployment. Operators install the Grass extension (Chrome, Brave, Firefox via the Iron Browser, plus desktop and Android apps). The node runs in the background and consumes a small slice of upload bandwidth. There is no hardware to buy and no port forwarding.
• Bandwidth marketplace. Wynd Network (the company building Grass) sells access to the residential mesh to AI labs, scraping firms, and data providers. The customer side is B2B and contractual rather than crypto-native.
• Reward accrual. Operators accrue points, and points convert into GRASS based on epoch payouts. After the mainnet rollout, rewards include both data-relay activity and (for the upgraded sovereign-data tier) actual data validation work.
• Sovereign data layer. Grass is rolling out a layer that does more than relay traffic — it processes, structures, and validates the scraped data on-chain so AI buyers get a verifiable dataset rather than a raw HTML dump. This is where the longer-term token utility sits.

The structure is closer to a web-scraping Cloudflare than a wireless network. There is no hotspot, no radio, no coverage map. The asset is residential reach and clean data, both of which AI labs are willing to pay for in cash today, not just in token.

GRASS tokenomics: supply, airdrop, and unlocks

GRASS has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. The genesis distribution skewed heavily toward the community, with the original airdrop in May 2024 sending tokens to roughly 2 million addresses that had been running the node since 2023. Subsequent airdrop seasons have continued to top up active operators.

• Community and ecosystem. The largest single bucket. Includes the genesis airdrop, follow-on operator rewards, and ongoing emissions to incentivize node deployment and data work.
• Investors. Wynd Network raised funding from Polychain, Tribe Capital, No Limit Holdings, and others. Investor tokens are subject to a multi-year vest with cliff and linear unlock.
• Team and core contributors. Standard multi-year vest with one-year cliff. Tracked on Token Unlocks and similar dashboards.
• Foundation and treasury. Reserved for partnerships, grants, exchange liquidity, and long-term protocol development.

Unlock cadence matters more for GRASS than the headline supply number. The October 2025 cliff is the one most traders watch closely, since it brings the first large investor and team tranche into circulating supply. Reading the unlock calendar and sizing positions around it has been the difference between holding and getting wicked out for most GRASS traders since launch.

Grass vs other AI-DePIN: where it actually fits

AI-DePIN is a crowded basket, and the tokens are not interchangeable. Grass sits in the data and bandwidth corner. Bittensor and io.net sit in the compute and inference corner. Render and Akash sit in the GPU compute corner. Helium sits in the wireless coverage corner. Anyone building a DePIN allocation should know which slot each token fills, because the demand drivers are different.

• Grass (GRASS). Residential bandwidth and AI training data. Sells access to a mesh of home IPs plus structured public web data. Direct exposure to the "LLMs need more data" thesis.
• Bittensor (TAO). Decentralized machine learning subnets. Pays miners for running models that score well on subnet-specific tasks. Closer to a decentralized model marketplace than a data layer.
• Render (RENDER). GPU rendering and increasingly AI inference. Originally built for 3D rendering jobs, now expanding into AI workloads on the same distributed GPU pool.
• Akash (AKT). Open-source cloud compute. Spot pricing for CPU and GPU rentals. Closer to a decentralized AWS than a data layer.
• Helium (HNT). Wireless coverage (LoRaWAN IoT and 5G CBRS). Earns by deploying physical radios. Different demand stack from Grass entirely.
• DoubleZero. High-performance fiber backbone for blockchain validators. Infrastructure for crypto, not for AI directly.

The honest framing is that Grass is the cleanest pick if the bet is specifically on AI training data scarcity. If the bet is on AI compute or inference, TAO, RENDER, AKT, or IO are better fits. A diversified DePIN allocation usually holds two or three of these for that reason.

Wynd Network and the sovereign data layer

Wynd Network is the team building Grass, founded by Andrej Radonjic. The company sits in New York and treats Grass as a B2B data product first and a crypto network second. That ordering matters for the token thesis. The customers paying for residential bandwidth and structured web data are AI labs and data vendors with real procurement budgets, not on-chain users paying gas.

What the sovereign data layer adds on top of plain bandwidth:

• On-chain data provenance. Scraped pages are hashed and indexed so buyers can verify what they got and when. This is a real differentiator versus traditional scraping vendors, who just hand over a CSV.
• Validation work for nodes. Beyond relaying traffic, upgraded nodes can structure and validate the data they helped retrieve, which is where the token-rewarded labor expands beyond passive bandwidth.
• Dataset products. Wynd has signaled it will package and sell named datasets (curated by domain) on top of the raw scraping mesh, which moves the revenue line up the value chain.
• Compliance angle. Residential scraping has a legal and reputational surface area. Sovereign provenance gives both buyers and node operators a cleaner audit trail for what data was collected, from which IP, and under what consent.

The straightforward read is that Wynd is trying to turn Grass from a web-scraping proxy network into the data layer for AI training, with the token as the coordination and incentive primitive. That is a much bigger market if it works. It is also a longer execution window, and the next 12 to 24 months of product delivery matter more for GRASS than any single market move.

How to buy Grass (GRASS)

Buying GRASS looks like buying any other Solana SPL token. Most buyers go through five steps. The one Grass-specific note is that the easiest way to also start earning the token is to install the node alongside whatever amount you buy on an exchange.

1. Pick an exchange. Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Kraken, Gate, and MEXC all list GRASS with reasonable depth. Compare withdrawal fees, especially the Solana network fee, and confirm that withdrawals route to the Solana SPL version (the only canonical version). Our exchange ratings compare the leading options on fees, security, and listing breadth.
2. Pass identity verification. KYC on regulated platforms usually clears in under 10 minutes with a government ID and a selfie.
3. Fund the account. Bank transfers (ACH, SEPA) are cheapest at 1 to 3 business days. Cards are instant but cost 2 to 4%. Stablecoin deposits (USDC, USDT) settle in minutes and are the most common path for Solana traders.
4. Place the order. A market order fills at the live spot price. A limit order sets the maximum price you are willing to pay, which matters around scheduled unlock dates when GRASS depth thins.
5. Move GRASS into self-custody. Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare all support GRASS as an SPL token. For larger holdings, pair a Ledger with the Solana app for hardware-backed custody. Always send a small test transaction first.

If the bet is on Grass long-term, install the node on at least one device alongside the exchange position. Operating the network gives a much better feel for how the product evolves than chart-watching alone, and the rewards (while modest at the individual level) accumulate over time.

Risks of holding Grass

The structural risks for GRASS are different from a layer-1 or a pure compute DePIN. Concentration in AI lab demand sits at the top of the list, with token unlocks, scraping legality, and Solana network risk right behind it. Anyone modelling GRASS long-term has to sit with these together rather than pick one.

• AI demand concentration. GRASS revenue is tied to a small number of AI buyers paying for residential bandwidth and structured data. If two or three large customers reduce spend or build internal scraping, network revenue compresses fast.
• Token unlocks. Investor and team unlocks across 2025 to 2027 add meaningful sell pressure. Reading the unlock calendar before any sizeable position is non-negotiable for GRASS.
• Scraping legality and platform pushback. Residential scraping sits in a contested legal space. Major platforms (Cloudflare, Reddit, X) actively fight bot traffic, and any high-profile lawsuit or platform crackdown could pressure both the operating model and sentiment.
• Sybil and quality risk on the node side. A residential mesh is only valuable if the IPs are real and clean. Sybil farms, VPS abuse, or compromised nodes can degrade the data product, and reward design has to keep pace with that.
• Solana network risk. As an SPL token, GRASS inherits any Solana outage, regulatory action against SOL, or technical incident on the chain.
• Drawdown. GRASS fell roughly 80% from its November 2024 peak before stabilising. Position sizing should assume a similar range is possible in any future cycle.

This page is information, not financial advice. Talk to a licensed advisor before allocating real capital.