Solana Labs Launches ChatGPT Plugin for Blockchain to Help Bridge the Gap
As a rising number of blockchains are exploring the possibility of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into their operations, Solana says it has become the first Layer-1 blockchain to roll out a ChatGPT plugin for its users.
In a statement, the Solana Foundation said the functionality was developed by Solana Labs, and the plugin’s roll-out is accompanied by a strategic grants and accelerator program focused on AI growth and development on the blockchain. The AI accelerator program is intended for university students, and the strategic grant program’s aim is to accelerate the use and integration of AI on Solana.
“Every developer building consumer-oriented apps should be thinking about how their app is going to be interacted with through an AI model because this is a new paradigm for telling computers what to do,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder and the CEO of Solana Labs. “AI will make Solana more usable and understandable.”
In an earlier interview, Yakovenko said he believes “the natural language interface that ChatGPT has enabled is interesting and cool. It feels like it’s as big of a shift as when Microsoft Windows and the computer mouse were first introduced. So now we’re going into reasonably well-working text-based interfaces that can do complex actions.”
“Every dev building consumer-oriented apps should be thinking about how their app is going to be interacted with through an AI model because this is a new paradigm for telling computers what to do,” he said.
The ChatGPT plugin for Solana is designed to serve “as a reference for how AI can make it easier to understand Solana data and protocols, or surface data about Solana’s computing infrastructure and DeFi projects,” according to the Solana Foundation.
Users can use the plugin to purchase NFTs, transfer tokens, inspect transactions, interpret public account data, as well as identify NFT collections by floor price.
More funds for projects
The Solana Foundation also said that it has decided to raise the amount available in an AI-focused strategic grants program from the initial $1 million to up to $10 million.
“The grants program is intended to encourage the ecosystem to explore new use cases of machine learning models interacting with Solana protocols in safe and interpretable ways. The rolling grants program has already received 50 applications,” according to the statement.
Based in Switzerland’s Zug, the Solana Foundation is a non-profit tasked with overseeing the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana network.
Solana Labs is headquartered in San Francisco, in the U.S., and is a tech company, a creator of web3 projects, a developer of open source software, and the author and publisher of a validator client for Solana.
