- The NEAR Protocol provided Cosmose AI with an undisclosed sum of money. The company is now valued at $500 million.
- Cosmose’s KaiKai app will use NEAR’s blockchain infrastructure to reduce the cost of online payments.
- In terms of daily active users, NEAR Protocol lags behind other Layer 1 blockchains.
Cosmose AI has received undisclosed funding from the NEAR Protocol to reduce the cost of crypto payments.
Cosmose, an AI-based company primarily focused on retail shopping, has partnered with NEAR Protocol, a Layer 1 blockchain. According to TechCrunch, the latest round of funding allows Cosmose to exercise a $500 million valuation.
Cosmose’s KaiKai app will use NEAR’s blockchain infrastructure to reduce the cost of online payments.
Cosmose hopes that blockchain will make payments 50 times cheaper
KaiKai has its stablecoin, Kai-Ching, which is worth $0.01. Users can use fiat to the on-ramp and then convert it to Kai-Ching for payment purposes.
Cosmose founder Miron Mironiuk believes that KaiKai can reduce transaction costs by 50 times compared to current payment leaders such as Stripe or PayPal.
Stripe and PayPal, he explains, charge 10% fees for small transactions such as a $5 cup of coffee. Eventually, the high fees force the seller to raise the price, and consumers may have to pay an extra $200 per year. He claims that Cosmose’s KaiKai will reduce the annual cost from $200 to $4.
Transparency via the NEAR Protocol
Cosmose will also migrate customer data to the NEAR Protocol’s blockchain to improve transparency. It eventually wants users to be able to customize how and what is tracked from their data.
“It’s not just a technical challenge,” Mironiuk says.
It’s also a user experience challenge to figure out how to do it so that people can check it out, get some insights, and make a decision quickly,” the founder explained.”
“Cosmose has already been building on NEAR testnet,” says Marieke Flament, CEO of the Near Foundation, “and with this additional support, it will have many more opportunities to grow and expand its offerings with Web3 in a sustainable, transparent, and infinitely scalable way.”
However, NEAR Protocol may not be a popular choice among blockchain users. According to the most recent Token Terminal data on daily active users, the NEAR Protocol has a 1.33% market share among 19 Layer 1 projects.
Conclusion
Near and Cosmose are also said to be developing a system that will allow users to see how they are being tracked, including location data and time spent in a store.
Meanwhile, Cosmose announced that it had expanded its product offerings and geographical footprint since the 2020 fundraising, making the platform available to customers in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
