Hex Trust, a leading provider of digital asset solutions for institutional finance and the Web3 ecosystem, announces a strategic partnership with Grass. This viral, new decentralized infrastructure network is building the first open internet-to-scale web crawl. Today, the network is powered by over 2 million users who are running nodes to scrape petabytes of web data for AI models. The partnership also cements Hex Trust’s position as a major service provider and custodian within the Solana and SPL ecosystem. 

Hex Trust was selected to support the Grass Foundation with their much anticipated upcoming token generation event (TGE). Hex Trust was chosen due to its exceptional track record in supporting foundations, its regulatory compliance, and multi-jurisdictional licensing. Institutional clients will also be able to access, trade, store and stake Grass - all from a secure and insured custody environment. 

With the global big data market set to triple by 2027, demand for AI products continues to grow exponentially. The cost of obtaining data to train AI models continues to rise in tandem. Quality data is also scarce and the vast majority is being gatekept by a handful of centralized firms.

Grass has turned this model on its head and reimagined how web data is collected, owned, and used in training AI models - and is rewarding users with ownership in the network. Node operators can passively earn with a desktop app or web extension that is easy to run and automatically operates in the background. 

The protocol uses idle internet bandwidth and operates as a decentralized network for web scraping, aiming to transform public web data into valuable datasets. Once the raw, unstructured web data is collected it is indexed and can be sold to various AI platforms seeking training for their specific models. The protocol has already amassed over 2 million node operators who contribute their unused bandwidth.

The project is backed by Polychain Capital, Tribe Capital, and other notable investors.

Calvin Shen, Managing Director at Hex Trust, said, “Our partnership with Grass is a strategic move to provide an integrated solution that combines custody, staking and prime solutions. This integration allows us to offer a more streamlined and secure experience for our clients, meeting the evolving demands of the digital asset market.”