TL;DR:
- Grayscale Investments published a report authored by its Head of Research, Zach Pandl, dated October 23, 2026.
- The document identified three protocols with hardware and data use cases: DATA Network (DATA), USD.AI (CHIP), and Pearl (PEARL).
- CoinGecko records as of October 22, 2026, showed a 580% increase in the PEARL token over the past three months.
Asset manager Grayscale Investments identified three crypto ecosystem initiatives aimed at solving bottlenecks in AI infrastructure, addressing everything from data collection to hardware financing.
Frontier tech and crypto are converging.
Crypto projects part of the AI buildout:$DATA → Licensing and verifying AI training data.$CHIP → Financing GPU hardware through onchain loans.$PEARL → Merging proof-of-work with AI compute, letting miners earn rewards while powering… pic.twitter.com/XKdhrNxguN— Grayscale (@Grayscale) October 23, 2026
The technical analysis was presented on Friday, October 23, in the institutional research series The Stack.
Grayscale’s thesis posits that the intersection between decentralized networks and machine learning models extends beyond the use cases commonly observed on platforms like Bittensor, NEAR, or World. According to the report, technical integration now reaches into fundamental operational layers of computing.
The need for computing power has transformed the financial requirements of hardware operators. Data from the report suggests that physical component shortages and high acquisition costs are driving the search for decentralized capital models.
Decentralized solutions for data, credit, and computing power
The first protocol highlighted by the firm is DATA Network (DATA). The project develops tools for the collection, licensing, and traceability of human-generated information, including video, audio, and photo files.
Applications built on this network license these data packages to artificial intelligence laboratories for model training. Official protocol documentation indicates that on October 12, 2026, plans were announced to migrate its base architecture to the Sui network, designating Walrus as its default storage layer.
The second project analyzed is USD.AI, associated with the CHIP token. This platform structures credit instruments directly backed by graphics processing units (GPUs) and the cash flows derived from their commercial activity.
The system operates through on-chain pools. According to Grayscale’s document, this mechanism enables on-chain capital to finance loans collateralized by computing hardware in exchange for yields for liquidity providers.
The third platform highlighted in the research is Pearl (PEARL), aimed at monetizing computing power. Its design seeks to allow processing equipment to execute artificial intelligence workloads while securing a Proof-of-Work network.
This technical framework would allow data center operators to earn rewards in the network’s native asset on top of their regular processing revenues. In terms of secondary market pricing, the PEARL token accumulated a 580% gain in the quarter ending October 22, 2026, according to CoinGecko metrics cited in the report.
All three initiatives address direct technical links in current computational deployment. Despite recent performance figures, Grayscale’s analysis underscores that the long-term viability of these ecosystems will depend on actual operational adoption metrics and their ability to maintain competitive economics against traditional cloud infrastructure providers.
The investment firm will maintain technical tracking of these assets ahead of the quarterly rebalancing of its thematic products, scheduled for the close of the current fiscal period.
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