Cosmose AI’s Valuation Skyrockets to $500 Million Following NEAR Protocol Integration

Cosmose AI, an AI-based company focused mainly on retail shopping, has teamed up with NEAR Protocol, the Layer 1 blockchain, to make crypto payments more cost-efficient.

The partnership includes undisclosed funding from NEAR Protocol, which enables Cosmose to have a $500 million valuation.

Cosmose’s KaiKai app will use NEAR’s blockchain infrastructure to make online payments cheaper. KaiKai has its native stablecoin, Kai-Ching, equivalent to $0.01. Users can on-ramp fiat and then convert it to Kai-Ching to use it for payment purposes.

According to Miron Mironiuk, the founder of Cosmose, KaiKai can reduce the cost of transactions by approximately 50 times compared to present payment leaders such as Stripe or PayPal.

Stripe and PayPal charge 10% fees for small transactions such as a cup of $5 coffee, which eventually forces the seller to increase the price. As a result, consumers might have to pay approximately $200 extra annually. Mironiuk claims that Cosmose’s KaiKai can bring down this annual cost from $200 to $4.

Moreover, Cosmose will migrate customers’ data to NEAR Protocol’s blockchain to enhance transparency. It aims to help users customize how and what is being tracked from their data.

“It’s not only a technical challenge. It’s also a user experience challenge of how to do it in a way that people can check it and get some insights and decide quickly,” said Mironiuk.

Marieke Flament, CEO of the Near Foundation, said, “Cosmose has already been building on NEAR testnet, 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.”

Despite the partnership, the NEAR Protocol might not be the favorite choice of blockchain users. According to Token Terminal’s latest data on daily active users, the NEAR Protocol has just a 1.33% share among 19 Layer 1 projects.