As you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you aren’t using your internet connection’s full capacity. Maybe you’re only using 20% of your available internet (or bandwidth), while the other 80% sits idle.
What you might not realize is that some of the biggest tech companies have been quietly tapping into that unused portion of your internet and using it to gather the massive amount of knowledge and data necessary to train, develop, and deliver AI models. This isn’t some conspiracy theory. It’s hidden in plain sight, buried deep in those terms of service so many scroll past without reading.
While you’re paying your monthly internet bill, those companies are essentially getting a free ride on your connection, turning your unused bandwidth into their profit margins.
What if there was a way you could benefit directly from sharing your unused bandwidth? What if you could share in the value created from the AI models your internet connection was helping to build?
Welcome to the Grass app.
How Does Grass Work?
Think of your internet connection like a large highway. Most of the time, multiple “lanes” sit empty. The Grass app serves as a toll booth, rewarding you for allowing verified companies to use those empty lanes without slowing down or impacting your own internet usage in any way. Through Grass, if your unused internet is being used, you’ll get rewarded for it.
You also become a crucial node in a global data infrastructure. Your connection helps AI companies access public websites from your geographic location, giving them local insights.
Ethical Web Scraping: Why Grass Takes a Better Route
Before we dive into why Grass does things differently, let’s talk about web scraping. It’s essentially the digital equivalent of sending out research assistants to gather information. Instead of manually visiting thousands of websites to collect data, companies use automated tools (called “indexers”or “scrapers”) to systematically browse the internet and pull information. This process is crucial for everything from AI training to price comparison websites, market research, and even academic studies.
When it comes to traditional web scraping, most companies need to make their scraping look like it’s coming from regular home internet connections rather than obvious data centers. Why? Because many websites block or limit access from corporate IP addresses.
So what do these companies do? They use “residential proxy networks” that secretly embed web traffic routing software into free apps, VPNs, games, and even smart TV screensavers. This software, known as “proxyware,” uses the internet of the host devices to access websites.
The result is that your internet connection becomes part of their scraping network without you knowing it or being rewarded for it.
The Grass Difference
Grass flips this model on its head by making three fundamental commitments to its users.
- Complete Transparency: With the Grass app, you know exactly what’s happening. There are no hidden clauses or buried permissions. You actively choose to participate, and you can pause or stop sharing your extra internet anytime you want.
- Fair Compensation: Instead of companies profiting from your bandwidth while you get nothing, Grass ensures you’re rewarded for your contribution with Grass Points (more on that next!).
- Ethical Data Collection: Grass only works with verified institutions and maintains strict standards about what types of data can be collected. Your personal information, browsing history, and private data are completely off limits.
By creating an ethical way to collect information from the public web, Grass helps to ensure that a core function of the internet economy is built on a foundation of fair compensation and user consent rather than exploitation.
Incentives and Rewards: From Grass Points to Grass Tokens
Now, let’s talk about the good stuff, i.e., how your participation in the Grass network translates into real rewards and actual ownership in the infrastructure you’re helping to build.
When you share your unused internet with Grass, you earn Grass Points. Think of them as your personal scorecard for your contributions to the network. Best of all, you can earn Grass Points in multiple ways:
- Active Participation: By simply downloading the Grass app or using the Grass browser extension and letting it run in the background, you earn Grass Points.
- Referral Rewards: When you invite friends to join Grass, you earn a bonus based on how many Grass Points they accumulate. (Your bonuses don’t take away from their earnings.)
- Secondary and Tertiary Referrals: The Grass referral system goes even deeper. You can earn even more Grass Points when the people you refer go on to refer others who sign up. You can earn referral bonuses through three levels of referrals.
How Grass Points Turn into Grass Tokens
Here’s where things get interesting. Grass Points aren’t just arbitrary things. They’re your pathway to actual ownership in the Grass network through Grass Tokens, the native currency of the Grass network.
The transition from Points to Tokens happens through periodic airdrops. The first airdrop occurred in October of 2024 when Grass distributed 100 million Grass Tokens to over two million Grass users. Each Grass Token is a distribution of ownership in the Grass network.
Claiming your stake in the Grass network isn’t just about immediate rewards. It’s also about reshaping the future of the internet itself. While tech giants have built trillion-dollar empires using a resource you didn’t even know you had, Grass offers you a pathway to participate in that value creation directly.
As our digital lives expand, the infrastructure that powers our connections grows more valuable. By downloading the Grass app, you can position yourself at the forefront of a movement that’s redistributing ownership of this critical resource.
Grass in Perspective: Impact on Ethical AI and Data Ecosystems
Taking a step back, it’s worth considering what Grass is building. While on the surface, Grass is a way for users to earn extra rewards from their unused internet, look a little deeper, and you’ll see that the company is also trying to reshape how AI development works.
Right now, the world is experiencing an AI revolution, but it’s built on a problematic foundation. The biggest tech companies train their AI models using the resources of users without their consent. Meanwhile, smaller AI companies and researchers struggle to access the high-quality, diverse datasets they need to build competitive systems.
This creates a dangerous concentration of AI power in the hands of a few massive corporations. The Grass network is working to create an ethical pathway for AI companies to access the public web data they need while rewarding the users who help them with this process.
When you run the Grass app, you’re not just earning Grass Points, you're also contributing to a more diverse, decentralized approach to AI development.
UNESCO’s Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory recently noted, “Getting AI governance right is one of the most consequential challenges of our time.” This thought perfectly captures why Grass matters. When you join the Grass network, you’re not just a user; you’re helping to support good practices that will shape how AI develops globally.
Harnessing Idle Internet for a Fairer AI Future
Every time you open the Grass app and connect to the network, you’re casting a vote for a different kind of internet where users are partners, not products. You’re helping to prove that ethical AI development isn’t just a nice idea. It’s a viable, value-chain expanding reality that benefits everyone involved.
The future of AI will be shaped by the choices you make today about how data is collected, who benefits from it, and who gets to participate in the economic value it creates. Grass gives you the power to influence those choices while earning Grass Tokens that represent your stake in the future.
Download the Grass app or the Grass browser extension today.
