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The Near Foundation has unveiled a $20 million fund to accelerate the growth of autonomous AI agents on its blockchain. It marks a significant step in converging artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized technology. Nevertheless, some remain skeptical about AI agents, with the sector’s market capitalization also revealing a concerning trend. Near Foundation to Advance AI Agents with $20 Million Fund Only weeks after announcing the expansion of the Near Protocol AI agent ecosystem, the foundation committed to deploying a $20 million AI agent fund on-chain over the next few months. It would go toward supporting agent tokens that introduce novel AI-driven use cases. These include AI-powered gaming, market-making, and permissionless oracles. Near Foundation highlighted its vision to establish AI agents as a transformative force in commerce and business. It focuses on AI-driven agent tokenization, agent-curated order flow, fully on-chain gaming, financial entertainment, and market-maker agents. “The Foundation is looking to invest in agent tokens that push the boundaries of the onchain agentic design space beyond the basic social poster agents,” an excerpt in the blog read. Beyond financial incentives, Near’s AI Agent Fund will complement other initiatives, such as the Horizon AI accelerator and AI hackathons. This would encourage the next generation of developers to push the AI and Web3 integration boundaries. Despite this news, however, Near Protocol’s powering token is down by over 3% since Friday’s session opened. BeInCrypto data shows NEAR was trading for $3.22 as of this writing. NEAR Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Nevertheless, the announcement comes after AI agents made headlines in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2024. CoinGecko highlighted them among the dominant trends in the past year. In the same tone, OKX Ventures says the hype around AI agents could continue in Web3 in 2025. “As AI agents reshape the DeFi landscape, developing robust security and governance frameworks becomes…

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Filed under: News - @ February 7, 2025 11:18 am