Grayscale has flagged three crypto projects building AI infrastructure, including Pearl, whose token is up 580% in three months, but the money they earn does not always reach token holders.
Key Takeaways
01Sui Foundation investing $30 million in DATA Network
02DATA: 250 million registered contributions, licences undisclosed
03CHIP: no equity, dividend or profit rights
04Together AI’s Pearl discount: over 25%, emissions-funded
Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl named DATA Network, USD.AI and Pearl in an October 23 note, saying the firm is keeping an eye on them.
DATA has registrations, but paid licences are undisclosed
DATA collects human-contributed training material such as photos, video and voice recordings. According to Grayscale, apps on the network license those datasets to AI labs while rewarding contributors. The Sui Foundation’s October 12 announcement adds detail: DATA’s Trace registry, launched in June, records where each contribution came from and the rights attached to it, and settles payment to the contributor.
Trace has registered more than 250 million contributions and processes over 3 million receipts a day on average, the foundation said. Apps writing to it, including Kled, Numo and Oto, license data to frontier AI labs and robotics companies. None of the published figures say how many contributions were bought, at what price, or how much contributors received.
The Sui Foundation is also investing $30 million in the DATA Network, making it the largest institutional holder, as DATA moves to Sui and Walrus. Its own chain will be retired, and DATA tokens will carry over one-for-one, with holder economics and governance rights described as at least equivalent to today’s. A transition plan is due before the upgrade. Neither announcement explains how licence revenue reaches DATA holders.
Grayscale’s USD.AI ticker gets governance, not the interest
Grayscale lists USD.AI under the ticker CHIP and describes CHIP as arranging loans backed by GPU equipment, with onchain pools that let participants earn yield. The borrowers are compute operators that need capital before their GPUs pay for themselves, the same squeeze behind the tougher funding market facing miners moving into AI. In USD.AI’s own documentation, however, the yield and the ticker sit in different places.
USDai
A stablecoin backed one-to-one by PYUSD. No yield and no exposure to GPU loans.
sUSDai: earns the interest
Value tracks GPU loans and reserves and can rise or fall. Not a stablecoin.
CHIP: Grayscale’s ticker
Votes on upgrades and risk settings.
Under USD.AI’s sUSDai page, the yield comes from interest that GPU operators pay on loans, plus income on escrowed capital and reserves not yet lent out. Loans cover up to 80% of a GPU’s value. Exits run through a 30-day queue funded by loan repayments and reserves, and the token carries credit, liquidity and smart-contract risk.
CHIP’s MiCA white paper says the token does not confer equity, dividend or profit rights and does not entitle anyone to payments or interest simply for holding it. Staking CHIP in insurance modules is a separate, optional activity. The same document lists a possible fee switch for tokenholders among future protocol decisions, and USD.AI says an updated white paper is being prepared.
Pearl’s 580% rally and the subsidy behind it
Grayscale says PEARL has risen 580% in the past three months, citing CoinGecko data as of October 22. Pearl wants GPUs to do double duty: run AI workloads and secure a proof-of-work blockchain through the matrix multiplication those workloads already perform, letting operators earn PRL rewards on top of their AI revenue. Grayscale labels the token PEARL while describing rewards in PRL, and Together AI writes it as ¶PRL.
Together AI launched its first Pearl-powered product, a discounted inference endpoint, on May 15. The discount of more than 25% is offset by the future value of crypto emissions, and Together said that as PRL’s price rises, it expects to use more of that value to cut prices further. Customers pay less because new coins cover part of the bill, and the discount depends on what those coins are worth.
A June preprint by researcher Abhinaba Basu challenged the useful-work claim. Measuring a network of roughly 320,000 GPU-equivalents drawing an estimated 112 MW, it concluded the network “produces zero useful AI computation.” The dominant mining software contained no inference code, and the paper’s own miner had 44 shares accepted using random matrices. It is a single-author study that has not been peer reviewed, with measurements taken in early June, before the three-month rally Grayscale cites.
Follow the money
| Project | Where the money comes from | Who gets paid | What the named token gets |
|---|---|---|---|
| DATA | AI labs licensing training data | Apps that license the data, and contributors through Trace | Governance and holder terms still to be detailed |
| USD.AI | Interest from GPU operators | sUSDai holders | CHIP: governance, no profit rights |
| Pearl | AI customers plus newly issued coins | GPU operators running the network | PEARL is the reward itself, so its value depends on price and issuance |
Grayscale says the projects’ long-term relevance will depend on adoption and competitive economics. Its disclaimer notes that the firm and its affiliates may have interests in the assets discussed, and that the projects named do not necessarily represent current or future holdings.
Three disclosures would show whether token holders get a share of what these businesses earn: DATA’s transition plan, due before its Sui upgrade; USD.AI’s updated CHIP white paper, including whether a fee switch ever reaches a vote; and evidence of how much of Pearl’s rewarded work serves paying AI customers.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Project descriptions and economic arrangements can change; lending and digital assets carry risks of loss.
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.
Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem.
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