Grass Holder Call Concludes: Where's the Alpha?

Do you still remember Grass, the project from the last DePIN narrative?

On November 16, GRASS fell to a historical low of $0.26. However, within a week, the token rebounded more than 45% and outperformed the broader market during the same period

Some community members believe that the earlier sharp price movements were driven by speculation ahead of the project’s first Token Holder Call. Many expected the team to reveal stronger fundamental updates during this meeting, which was open to all token holders.

Grass held its Token Holder Call today as scheduled. After listening to the full session, it became clear that this was not the typical AMA where you gain little from a long conversation. Instead, it resembled a financial report style disclosure.

For the first time, Grass publicly revealed its revenue figures, customer breakdown, buyback plans, and airdrop timeline.

If you missed the call, we reviewed the recording and the official recap to compile a concise summary of all key data points and important signals. This will help you assess which developments are worth paying attention to.

Check this: Grass Token Holder and Network Participant Call YouTube link

From Zero to $10 Million in Revenue in Only Three Quarters

This is the first time Grass has publicly disclosed its revenue data:

Q1 2025: close to zero

Q2 2025: approximately $2.75 million

Q3 2025: approximately $4.3 million

Q4 2025 (forecast): approximately $12.8 million

According to the team, revenue for just the months of October and November is expected to reach 10 million dollars. It is important to note that the Q4 figure is still a forecast and the actual result remains to be confirmed.

How does Grass make money?

Grass is a distributed bandwidth network. After users install the plugin or mobile app, Grass utilizes their unused internet bandwidth to fetch publicly available web content. This can include text, images, or videos.

Because these requests originate from regular residential IPs around the world, they are less likely to be blocked by websites. This creates strong value for clients that need large scale data collection.

Who are the clients? Primarily AI companies.

Training large models requires vast amounts of data, and Grass provides a cost efficient way for them to obtain it. In simple terms, Grass “borrows” bandwidth from users, packages it into a data collection service, sells it to AI companies, and earns the margin in between.

Where does the revenue come from?

During the meeting, the team stated that 90 percent of Grass’s revenue comes from “multimodal data,” meaning the collection of non-text content such as videos, audio, and images. In addition, 98 percent of its revenue is tied to AI model training.

This shows that Grass’s customer base is highly concentrated. Its clients are essentially all AI companies, and what they purchase is primarily training data.

A focused business model has its strengths, but it also means that any change in the AI training data market would directly affect Grass’s revenue.

About the customers

Grass does not disclose its customer list, citing the fact that AI companies treat training data as a commercial secret. The meeting mentioned the following points:

• In Q4, Grass signed two major clients: a hyperscaler (a large-scale cloud computing provider) and a leading video generation lab

• Nearly all AI clients who have partnered with Grass have made repeat purchases

However, all of this information comes from the project team, and it is difficult for external parties to verify the accuracy of these claims.

Token Buyback Begins, but Scale Remains Limited

Grass disclosed that it has started using business revenue to buy GRASS tokens from the open market. Approximately $100,000 worth of buybacks were completed last week, with an additional $250,000 worth currently being executed this week.

The funds used for these buybacks come from revenue generated in the first three quarters of this year. To address concerns about the authenticity of these buybacks, the team stated they will later publish the wallet address holding the repurchased tokens.

The total buyback to date is approximately $350,000. Against Q2 and Q3 combined revenue of roughly $7 million, this represents about 5% of earnings. It's not a substantial figure and reads more as a symbolic gesture.

The team mentioned that future buybacks will transition from manual execution to programmatic processes, though they provided no specific framework or rules.

One thing worth noting is that buybacks are no guaranteed catalyst. Both HYPE and PUMP have implemented buybacks backed by real revenue, yet both tokens still suffered sharp declines during certain periods.

The team outlined two commitments: continuing token buybacks and allocating most revenue toward growth. The exact allocation between these priorities remains undefined. How long buybacks continue and whether they scale up depends entirely on whether revenue growth sustains.

Second Airdrop Scheduled for H1 2026

Grass conducted its first airdrop last year, distributing GRASS tokens to early participants. The call confirmed timing for the second round: first half of 2026.

Claiming method will change

Unlike the first airdrop, Airdrop 2 won't be claimable through external wallets. Instead, it will be distributed via Grass's upcoming built-in wallet, which uses account abstraction technology and will be embedded directly into the Grass interface.

In simpler terms, users won't need to connect MetaMask or other third-party wallets. The airdrop will be claimable directly from the Grass dashboard.

Rules will change

The team stated the new airdrop will "place greater emphasis on long-term network contribution." Specifics remain undisclosed. Details on what qualifies as long-term participation, how contribution is measured, and how different devices or activities are weighted will only be revealed after the built-in wallet launches.

What this means for existing users

If you're currently running a Grass node, the meeting offered no concrete action items. The only certainties: rules will change, timing is H1 2026, and a new calculation method is coming. Whether current points, tier levels, or device counts will carry weight under the new system remains unknown.

The crypto market is still in a bear cycle, and whether conditions improve by mid-2026 is uncertain. As the timeline for Airdrop 2 appears to be vague, it could be a delaying tactic to navigate the current downturn.

Monthly Active Users Grew from 3M to 8.5M

Grass's network has scaled significantly over the past year. According to official data, monthly active participants grew from roughly 3 million at the time of the first airdrop to approximately 8.5 million today. Mobile users now account for about 38% of the network, meaning over one-third of participants contribute bandwidth through the mobile app rather than the browser extension.

According to the team, Grass has accumulated over 250PB of multimodal data spanning video, audio, and images. One petabyte equals roughly 1 million gigabytes. By their estimate, this volume is "sufficient to train a frontier-level video generation model."

From selling training data to providing real-time queries

Grass is developing a new product line called Live Context Retrieval (LCR), which translates directly as "real-time context retrieval."

The existing business model involves collecting large-scale data in batches for AI companies to train models. LCR takes a different approach: it provides real-time data to AI models during inference. For example, if a model needs to query the current content of a webpage, Grass can fetch and return it instantly.

LCR remains in early development. The team calls it the "V0 version" and is currently testing with three SEO companies and one AI lab.

The team's rationale: training data is a large-contract business with high deal values but low transaction frequency, making on-chain settlement impractical. LCR targets high-frequency, micro-payment scenarios where each query triggers a small payment, making token-based settlement more viable.

If LCR proves successful, the GRASS token would gain real utility within the business model. But this remains speculative. LCR has generated no revenue to date.

Separately, Grasshopper, the hardware device originally slated for release this year, has been delayed due to tariff-related supply chain disruptions. The team will announce a revised timeline later.

A Sentence Removed from the Official Recap

During the token utility discussion, Grass CEO Andre stated: "Gigabuds have no utility." It basically means that Gigabuds offer no functional purpose.

However, that line was omitted from the official written summary released after the call.

What are Gigabuds?

Gigabuds is an NFT collection launched by Grass. Some holders expected it would confer advantages in future airdrops or network rewards. The team explicitly shut down that expectation during the call.

The subsequent floor price decline likely reflects market response to this clarification.

As for why this sentence was omitted from the official recap, there was no explaination. The likely reasons are to avoid triggering negative sentiment among NFT holders or deeming it non-essential to core business updates.

The statement was definitely made during the meeting and appears in the transcript.

If you hold Gigabuds based on the expectation of future utility, this remark should be seen as an explicit official stance. Whether the NFT retains collectible or secondary market value is a separate matter, but the team has explicitly ruled out any functional use case.

Revenue to Foundation, Service Fees to Dev Team

Many crypto projects operate with opaque corporate structures, leaving users unable to determine who controls revenue, tokens, or how the development team relates to the broader project. Grass offered unusual transparency on this call.

Three entities, distinct functions

Grass Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation with no shareholders. It controls two subsidiaries:

• Grass OpCo: Handles network operations, including airdrops and staking

• Grass DataCo: Manages B2B business. All client contracts are signed through this entity, and all revenue flows here

Development team is outsourced

The team handling product development is Wynd Labs, an external service provider, not a Grass subsidiary. Wynd Labs operates on a service fee model and takes no revenue share from Grass.

The call emphasized one key point: even when Wynd Labs sources a client, contracts are signed by Grass DataCo and revenue flows to Grass DataCo.

How much are the service fees?

Undisclosed. There's no way for outsiders to determine what the development team actually earns.

Summary

This call covered revenue figures, buyback progress, the airdrop timeline, product direction, and corporate structure. For a DePIN project, this level of information density is uncommon.

Now for what was not discussed: the specific customers, the expected scale and duration of future buybacks, the detailed rules for Airdrop 2, and when the new business lines will begin generating revenue. For these topics, the team either said they could not disclose the information or that details would be released later.

This was the first time Grass held such a call, and the team stated that more will follow. For token holders, these operational updates may be more valuable to track than short-term price swings.

It would also be beneficial for more crypto projects to openly share their business revenue in this manner. In a market where underperformance is common, this level of transparency already stands out.

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