Solana Labs, the company that represents the founders of and core contributors to the Solana blockchain, is entering the world of artificial intelligence with a ChatGPT plugin. The upcoming plugin will let users search the Solana blockchain using OpenAI’s conversational chatbot technology.

When the plugin launches, Solana Labs said, users will be able to perform various tasks through the ChatGPT user interface, including checking wallet balances, transferring tokens, and purchasing NFTs. Solana Labs hopes it will make it easier for users to navigate the Solana blockchain.

“The plugin is accessing code and data that is already publicly available and accessible,” Noah Gundotra, Software Engineer at Solana Labs, told Decrypt. “[Our] work in this area is intended to promote safe and human interpretable standards around [large language models] and sending transactions.”

A beta version of the ChatGPT plugin is currently available for developers on the Solana Labs GitHub account. This beta version will allow developers to test the plugin and provide feedback to Solana Labs before the official launch in the ChatGPT plugin store.

On Tuesday, the Solana Foundation announced $1 million in grants, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 each, to encourage the development and use of AI for the Solana blockchain.

“Solana Labs is working on new protocol standards that allow ChatGPT to perform common interactions with on-chain programs that promote greater safety and interpretability,” Gundotra said. He added that additional resources for both consumers and developers to better understand the details around the safety and interpretability of the plugin are also on the way.

The price of Solana’s native token, SOL, may have seen a positive impact from the announcement of the ChatGPT plugin. In the last 24 hours, the price of SOL went up 7% to trade at $22.61, according to data from CoinGecko.

Solana is not the first blockchain company to explore the integration of AI technology. Other companies bridging AI with blockchain technology include Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, Chainalysis, and Forta Network. But Solana Labs claims that it's the first prominent, existing layer-1 chain to embrace such functionality.

“By providing ChatGPT as an example plugin to understand Solana data and protocols—such as for researching NFTs or surfacing data about Solana’s computing infrastructure (RPC nodes) and DeFi projects—ChatGPT can guide its users to Solana when appropriate,” Gundotra said.

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to clarify Solana Labs' claims regarding AI implementation on layer-1 blockchains.

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