Grass Glossary: Key Terms Explained

Looking to dive deeper into Grass and understand the bigger picture of how it all works? The section below breaks down key terms, explaining what they mean, why they matter, and how they connect to Grass.

Term	What it means	Why you should care
Internet Bandwidth	The speed and capacity of your internet connection; how much data can be sent or received at once.	Your internet connection isn’t always being fully used. Imagine it like a highway with multiple lanes. Most of the time, some lanes are empty. That unused capacity is your unused internet bandwidth. Grass creates an ethically sourced proxy network that rewards you for sharing your unused internet bandwidth with verified institutions, allowing them to access the web to get the public web data they need for AI training or enhancing their online products and services.
Proxy	A device connected to the internet that sends web requests on behalf of someone else.	Proxies are used by businesses, marketers, and researchers to route their web requests through real residential IP addresses, making their activity appear as if it comes from a regular internet user in their home. This helps them access geo-restricted content, verify ads, scrape web data, test localized online experiences, and maintain privacy.
Residential Proxy Network	A network of people’s internet connections used to route others' web requests.	Many free apps, VPNs, and background services secretly turn people’s home internet connections into residential proxies without clear consent or compensation. These companies then act as middlemen selling proxies to businesses, marketers, and researchers to access the web using your internet bandwidth. This means your internet connection is being used by others without you even realizing it, slowing down your internet speed and exposing you to security risks.
Ethically Sourced Proxies	Internet connections that are shared with full user consent and fair compensation.	Unlike companies that secretly sell your internet bandwidth through hidden terms in free apps and VPNs, Grass lets users voluntarily share their unused internet bandwidth and get fairly compensated. This ensures Grass' proxies are ethically sourced, creating a fair and transparent digital ecosystem. When your internet connection becomes a Grass node, you allow your internet connection to be used as an ethically sourced proxy.
Personal Data	This is information about you or what you do on the internet.	When you connect to Grass, you only share your unused internet bandwidth, you never share any personal information or what you do online. Sharing unused internet bandwidth is the same as having a friend at your house connect to WiFi on their phone. The only difference when you share it with Grass is you get rewarded.
Public Web Data	Stuff on the internet you can see without needing to log in.	Public web data powers search engines, market research, price comparisons, and AI training.
Value Extraction	Taking value from someone without fairly giving back in return.	Many online services make money off your activity, data, or attention without sharing any of that value with you. Social media platforms, search engines, and ad networks extract billions from user-generated content and behavior, while users get little to nothing in return. Understanding value extraction helps you see who truly benefits from the services you use, and whether there are fairer alternatives.
Web Request	A message sent from your device to a website asking it to load.	When you browse the internet, your device is constantly sending web requests to websites to load the text, images, and videos on the page so you can access them.
IP Address	An IP address is like a street address for your device on the internet. It helps websites, apps, and networks know who is making a web request so it knows where to send the data.	Your IP address determines your online identity, location, and access to online services. It affects privacy, security, and connectivity, and can be used for tracking, blocking, or granting access to content. It’s why people in New York see American Netflix shows while poeple in Paris see French Netflix shows.
Nodes	A single device in a residential IP proxy network.	Each node forms a part of Grass's infrastructure, enabling the network to deliver proxy services. When you sign up for Grass, your device becomes a “node” that shares unused internet bandwidth with the network.
Web Scraping	Finding and collecting information stored on the public web.	Every time you search for flight prices, compare products, or check reviews, chances are, a company used web scraping to gather that information. While big companies scrape data to improve their services, some block scrapers to keep control over valuable information. This creates a power imbalance where only a few companies benefit from public web data, rather than making it accessible for everyone.
Dataset	A collection of information that can be used to find patterns, make predictions, or generate insights. It can be as simple as a list of football statistics or as complex as a massive collection of medical images for AI training.	Understanding datasets helps people recognize how decisions in AI, business, and research are shaped by the data being used. Datasets power everything from search engines to AI assistants and financial models. The quality of a dataset affects the accuracy of AI models, meaning biased or incomplete data can lead to bad predictions or unfair outcomes.
Multimodal Data	A mix of different kinds of data, like words, pictures, and sounds.	Multimodal data enhances decision-making in fields like AI, healthcare, and autonomous systems by providing richer insights. It enables better natural language processing, more accurate medical diagnoses, and improved human-computer interactions, making technology more adaptive and intelligent.
AI Training	Teaching an AI model by giving it lots of data so it can learn how things relate to one another to deliver better responses to your prompts.	AI is only as good as the data it learns from. If the training data is biased, outdated, or controlled by a few companies, AI models will reflect those same issues. AI training impacts everything from chatbots to voice assistants, and even self-driving cars.