> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.near.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Staking for Inference > Stake NEAR and let the staking rewards pay for private inference on NEAR AI Cloud — your principal stays yours and stays withdrawable. Calling a model today usually means handing a payment method to a cloud provider and letting it meter your usage. Staking for Inference removes that dependency: you stake NEAR, and the staking **rewards** — not the staked NEAR itself — pay for [private inference](/cloud/private-inference) on NEAR AI Cloud. You keep the NEAR. Unstake, and the credits stop. *** ## How it works Confidential inference converts the yield your stake earns, rather than the stake itself, into compute credits. Your monthly budget is a function of three things: * **How much NEAR you stake** * **The price of NEAR** * **The current staking APY** — the same yield your stake would earn anyway, redirected into compute Credits accrue continuously, on a per-second basis, as a function of your stake size — there's no waiting for a monthly refresh. One credit is worth one US dollar of usage on NEAR AI Cloud, the same unit your bill is already denominated in; unused credits carry forward. Because the reward rate is network-wide, not a fixed setting, your covered usage drifts with both the NEAR price and how much of the total supply is staked. Try the [staking calculator](/cloud/staking-for-inference/calculator) to see current numbers. ### Why the reward rate moves NEAR issues a fixed amount of new token each year and splits it among everyone staking. Your share of that depends on how much of the supply is staked network-wide: when less is staked, the same rewards divide among fewer tokens and the rate rises; when more is staked, it falls. Validator commission, typically 1–10%, comes out of that yield before it reaches you. *** ## What you keep Two things follow from paying with staking yield instead of a metered card: Staked NEAR remains withdrawable. You retain ownership of the underlying stake the entire time it's generating credits — running inference is a recoverable position, not a sunk bill. Unstake and you walk away with your original NEAR intact. The credit allowance simply stops accruing — nothing is spent or forfeited. *** ## Confidentiality guarantees Staking for Inference pays for the same private inference NEAR AI Cloud always provides — it doesn't change the privacy model, only how you pay for it. * **Open-source models** (Qwen, DeepSeek, GLM) run inside a [Trusted Execution Environment](/cloud/private-inference) — a hardware-isolated enclave on the GPU. Your prompt and the model's output are sealed off from the host operating system, the GPU operator, and NEAR AI itself. Each request returns a hardware-signed attestation in under 30 seconds, so this is a guarantee you can check, not a promise you have to trust. * **Frontier models** (from providers like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google) route through a secure gateway that itself runs inside a TEE. The provider sees a prompt arrive from the gateway and nothing else — it cannot tie the request back to you. An optional PII redaction step strips identifying details before the request leaves the enclave. *** ## Managing your stake The entire lifecycle lives in your NEAR wallet. Stake more for a larger credit budget, or unstake to reclaim your NEAR — every change is a signed wallet transaction, with no separate account or credit card involved. ## Next steps Work out how much NEAR to stake for your usage, or what a given stake gets you. See how NEAR AI Cloud's TEE architecture protects your data end to end. This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.