BlockBeats News, July 31st, NEAR Protocol announced that it has launched a Staking Pay feature for AI gas fees, allowing users to pay for private inference and on-going agent fees by staking NEAR without the need to bind a credit card.

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 The funds themselves are not consumed and can be withdrawn after unstaking.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