500% Growth After Airdrop: Is Grass the Next Big Thing on Solana?

Grass is a new project built on the Solana (SOL) blockchain. The protocol offers passive income to users for web scraping. Despite a good start after the airdrop and a high APY for staking, the project has encountered difficulties.

In this article, we will explore what prospects the project has and what analysts say about Grass price prediction.

Is Grass a Hidden Gem or a Doomed Crypto Experiment?

In simple terms, Grass is a project that combines elements of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Grass allows users to install its app in the browser to collect the so-called unused internet bandwidth (the project uses the term “unused internet” for short). This data is then used to train AI, and users receive points.

On the project website, this method is called “Earn a stake in AI.” Grass offers customers the opportunity to buy encrypted unused internet to train artificial intelligence for their purposes and requests.

Three main groups participate in collecting unused internet: nodes (users who launched Grass), routers (nodes that control the node and send them a request), and validators (control nodes and routers, encrypt data, and verify it for the client).

As of Dec. 29, the Grass app for Google Chrome has been installed by two million users.

This is 2 million nodes only through this browser. At the moment, the application is only available for computers. The Grass website says that in Q1 2025, it will be possible to install it on iOS.

According to CoinGecko, Grass entered the top 15 DePIN coins by market capitalization with 14th place ($597.2 million). This is generally a good achievement for such a young project. Moreover, there are already major players in this sector, such as Render (RENDER), Helium (HNT), Akash Network (AKT), and others.

The first phase of the Grass airdrop ended on Oct. 27, 2024.

Grass Price Prediction: A Coin That Neither Grows Nor Falls

GRASS reached its all-time high (ATH) on Nov. 8: the coin ROSE to $3.89. However, the price has dropped and is trading at $2.3-$2.4, about 40% lower than this peak.

But GRASS is above the level from which it began trading after the listing. According to CoinGecko, the coin price showed its lowest value on Oct. 28 (one day after the airdrop)—$0.655.

It turns out that the GRASS price growth from $0.655 to ATH was about 494% in a few weeks. There were several reasons for such success.

Crypto researcher Hitesh attributes such a GRASS pump to the airdrop. The project distributed 10% of the total supply during the first part, meaning about two million users received the coin. By industry standards, this is quite a lot.

Moreover, Grass itself called its airdrop “the most widely distributed airdrop in history.”

The final checker for Airdrop One will be available on October 21st, 2024. The first Grass airdrop represents the most widely distributed airdrop in history.

Hitesh also calculated how much revenue Grass can receive per month, considering that in Nov. the project reached 80 TB of daily data retrieval:

Another factor behind the coin’s growth in November is the staking yield. Researchers at AXSN calculated that the APY is approximately 50% per annum. However, the reward will decrease over 2.5 years, as the project has allocated 30 million GRASS for this period.

A crypto trader nicknamed Doc believes that the GRASS price will remain at the current level for some time, with periodic fluctuations up to $3 and above. Then, the coin will be able to rise to its ATH.

$GRASS – Good region of support here after a 20% pullback right into confluent mid-range and daily trends. Looking for us to put in yet another higher lowpic.twitter.com/N03lT9kLkR

Another trader, Reetika, noted that the GRASS price does not show any sharp changes. This may be good news for those who have recently started holding the coin because there are no sharp drops from the current decline. However, it is unclear how soon (and whether it will happen at all) that the price will jump above its ATH.

$GRASSLots of chatter about how bad the PA on this coin is – true if you're trying to max lev swing long it. Else it has been one of the comfier holds in spot and has just been ranging instead of getting absolutely rekt like other alts.Double digits. pic.twitter.com/HBOnKx9y8u

The fall of the GRASS price began a couple of weeks after the airdrop. While the coin hit a record $3.89 on Nov. 8, by Nov. 23, its value had dropped to $1.94.

Despite the fact that GRASS recovered and returned to the $2 level, the price has not shown a similar performance since then — the hype around the airdrop is over.

Opportunities and Challenges of Grass

On the one hand, the protocol has its downsides. For example, Grass has not been audited, and its code is closed. This means that it cannot be verified.

Moreover, if you want to study the protocol data (number of users, active nodes, how many times the app has been installed in your browser, etc.), you will find that there is very little of it. Only official information from Grass and some of its parameters is available.

It also remains questionable how regulators in other countries feel about Grass collecting user data, albeit in encrypted and secure form. However, it is worth remembering the lawsuits between Meta and Amazon and European courts related to this issue.

On the other hand, one of the advantages of Grass is that the project is part of the Solana ecosystem — one of the main decentralized finance (DeFi) giants.

Also, the DePIN sector, which Grass belongs to, is one of the most promising in the crypto market. Such projects show how to use blockchain in the real world. Solana has taken a strong position here.

For example, Render, which has the largest market capitalization in this sector, comes from the Solana ecosystem.

Along with Render and Grass, DePIN projects like Helium, IoTeX, and others are also built on Solana.

Although the coin is already listed on many centralized exchanges, including ByBit, Bitget, KuCoin, and others, Binance has not announced such a decision. Another growth point for Grass is the potential listing on the largest CEX. However, this causes a short-term rise, as often happened with meme coins like Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) and others.

The high current APY for staking and the potential launch of an iOS app may once again draw the crypto community’s attention to Grass.