Grass Token Holder Meeting: From the minimum monthly salary model to the actual earnings, which data hides the true value?

The Grass project, one week after the historic low of $0.26 on November 16, has recovered by 45%. This change indicated strong expectations from officials for key information during the Token Holder Call meeting. Today’s meeting revealed all the information Grass has heard: revenue, customer composition, token buyback plans, airdrop schedule, and the sun business model. These various details in this data set, as well as the source of the company’s minimum monthly salary strategy, reveal the main factors that differentiate the Grass project from other DePIN projects.

Operating Model: From Network Bandwidth to AI Data

Grass is a distributed network bandwidth platform. After users install a plugin, this network uses their idle internet bandwidth to automatically collect content from web pages—text, images, videos. Requests from ordinary home IP addresses can block sites, which makes data collection expensive for clients, mainly AI companies that need large amounts of data.

Grass operates on a simple principle: it takes bandwidth from users, uses it for data collection, then sells this data to companies needing AI training data, earning the difference. In simple terms, Grass acts as an intermediary broker, so the company structure must be highly efficient.

2025 Revenue: From Zero to Over $10 Million

During the Token Holder Call, Grass officially disclosed its first revenue figures:

• Q1 2025: Almost none
• Q2 2025: Approximately $2.75 million
• Q3 2025: Approximately $4.3 million
• Q4 2025 (forecast): About $12.8 million

Officials say revenue is expected to reach $10 million only in October and November. The Q4 figures are still forecasts; actual results will be confirmed later.

Revenue Sources: 90% Multi-Format, 98% AI Model Training

Grass clarified exactly where its revenue comes from:

• 90% from multi-format data such as video, audio, images, beyond text content
• 98% from AI model training

This indicates Grass’s current clients are very limited and risky: if the AI training data market changes, Grass’s revenue will be directly affected. Currently, Grass mainly depends on a few large AI companies, which is risky for all parties.

Customers: Unknown and Relatively Limited

Grass does not disclose its customer list because AI companies consider training data proprietary. Only the following was revealed:

• During Q4, a contract was signed with a new hyperscaler (large cloud provider) and a leading lab in video generation
• Almost all current AI clients continue their purchases

However, verifying these statements externally is nearly impossible. Revealing customer lists could pose problems for Grass’s clients and future negotiations.

Token Buybacks: 5% — Not Very Large, Indicating Support

Using its business revenue, Grass repurchased GRASS tokens from the open market:

• Last week: about $100,000
• This week: about $250,000
• Total: around $350,000

Considering that Q2 and Q3 total revenue was about $7 million, this buyback accounts for about 5% of total revenue. This is not large, but it shows Grass’s need for token holders and provides a tangible basis for maintaining high token value.

Officials say future buybacks will shift from human decision-making to automated management, but specific rules have not yet been announced. It’s important to note that buybacks are not always a catalyst for rising token prices; hype and pump can also cause buybacks and real revenue to coincide, but token prices may temporarily plummet.

Monthly Active Users: From 3 Million to 8.5 Million

Grass’s network growth has been significant over the past year:

• At the first airdrop: 3 million MAU
• Now: 8.5 million MAU

Mobile users account for about 38%—more than a third—indicating many users access bandwidth via mobile apps rather than desktop plugins. Officials state that the multi-format data (video, audio, images) collected by Grass exceeds 250PB, enough to train advanced video generation models.

Company Structure: The Basis of the Minimum Monthly Salary Strategy

Grass explained its company structure in detail, which is rare for DePIN projects. The structure consists of three legal entities:

Grass Foundation — Registered in the Caymans, no shareholders. Contains two subsidiaries:

• Grass OpCo: manages network operations, airdrops, staking
• Grass DataCo: manages B2B business, all customer contracts are made in this company, and revenue flows here

Development Team — Third-party Service

The product development team is called Wynd Labs. This is not a Grass subsidiary but a third-party service provider. Wynd Labs works solely on service fees—no share of Grass’s revenue. This structure reveals the minimum monthly salary strategy: Grass has no in-house production unit; instead, it outsources, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

The meeting emphasized: even if Wynd Labs finds a customer, the contract is made in Grass DataCo, and all revenue belongs to Grass DataCo. The service fee amount was not disclosed, so exact costs for third parties are unknown.

This structure offers a major advantage: all revenue is retained by Grass DataCo, while development costs are kept minimal. It exemplifies the classic minimum salary model, where the company replaces an in-house team with a centralized or outsourcing service.

Airdrop 2: First Half of 2026, Rules Will Change

Grass held its first airdrop last year; a second phase will follow.

Participation rules will be simplified: Unlike the first airdrop, Airdrop 2 will be distributed via Grass’s official internal wallet, not an external wallet. This uses account abstraction technology, meaning users won’t need MetaMask or other third-party wallets—they can claim directly through Grass’s management panel.

Rules will change fundamentally: Officials say the new airdrop will focus more on “long-term network participation.” But the exact calculation method, required work hours, device types, and evaluation criteria have not been announced—only that it will be determined after the wallet is launched.

What does this mean for current users? If you are running a Grass node now, no clear instructions were given. The only certainty is that in the first half of 2026, rules will change dramatically. Whether current points, levels, device counts will remain, is unknown. In the bear market, it’s also uncertain whether the overall crypto situation will improve next year’s first half.

New Direction: LCR — Real-Time Data Retrieval

Grass is developing a new product called Live Context Retrieval (LCR) — real-time context search. It involves collecting data for training existing AI companies (one-time, large-scale). LCR is different: it provides real-time data during AI model operation.

For example, if a model asks for the current content of a web page, Grass will immediately collect and return it. LCR is still in early stages—officials call it “V0 version,” testing with three SEO firms and one AI lab.

Officials explain: training data is a large deal, with high sums, but not frequent, and not suitable for blockchain calculations. LCR offers high-frequency, small-amount data, with small payments per request—suitable for tokenization. If successful, GRASS tokens will be more used in real business, expanding revenue streams.

But for now, LCR is only a plan; it has not generated revenue. Additionally, the Grasshopper hardware device scheduled for release this year has been delayed due to customs issues—exact timing will be announced later.

Gigabuds: Official Discontinued Usage

Grass CEO Andre stated during the Token Holder Call: “Gigabuds have no utility”—meaning the Gigabuds NFT series has no functional benefit. However, no such statement appeared in the official written release after the meeting.

Gigabuds are a series of NFTs issued by Grass. Some owners may have expected future airdrops or network rights, but the officials explicitly rejected this during the meeting. The decline in floor prices may be related to this statement.

Officials did not explain why the statement was not included in the official release. The NFTs themselves may have collection or secondary market value, but their functional use has been officially discontinued.

Unanswered Questions: What Was Not Clarified

Many details were revealed, but some important questions remain unanswered:

• Who exactly are the customers? Not disclosed; likely confidential
• How long will buybacks continue? Currently about $350,000, future plans unknown
• Exact rules for Airdrop 2? Only “more focus on long-term participation”—no precise formula
• When will LCR generate revenue? Still in testing; market impact unknown
• Wynd Labs service fee? Not disclosed; actual costs unknown

Officials say this was Grass’s first such token holder meeting, with more to come. After this meeting, Grass took a significant step toward transparency—future meetings should focus on company evolution, buyback strategies, and new revenue channels like LCR.