What Is Gradient Network? Sentry Node Rewards Have Ended

Last verified on July 26, 2026, against Gradient's official website, documentation, GitHub repositories, and public funding reports. Project plans and reward policies change; always confirm against official pages before acting.

What is Gradient Network? In short, it is a Solana-ecosystem project building distributed AI infrastructure: the goal is to run large-model training and inference across an open network of everyday devices instead of a handful of centralized cloud data centers. The team calls this the Open Intelligence Stack, under the slogan "Towards Open Intelligence." Source: Gradient documentation

Many tutorials still describe Gradient as an "install the extension, farm the airdrop" project. That information is outdated — read the status check below before doing anything.

The most important fact first: Sentry Node no longer earns rewards

Gradient's official documentation now marks the Sentry Node Open Beta as Concluded. Season 1 ended on August 28, 2025, at 12:00 UTC, and Sentry Nodes stopped accumulating new Uptime and Tap rewards after that point. The documentation states it plainly: "Sentry Nodes do not receive rewards at the current moment." Source: Sentry Node Open Beta (Concluded)

What this means in practice:

Installing the Sentry Node extension today earns you nothing;
The "free Gradient farming" guides still circulating were mostly written in 2024–2025 and their reward math no longer applies;
Any referral link claiming you can "still farm Gradient points today" deserves skepticism about its author's motives.

What was Sentry Node?

For the record: Sentry Node was a Chrome extension the project described as lightweight (under 1MB of data per month), privacy-preserving, and tolerant of intermittent uptime. Nodes periodically established peer-to-peer connections with each other to verify connectivity — each successful connection was called a "Tap." During the Open Beta, millions of participants completed over 2 billion peer-to-peer connections across 190+ regions.

The experiment's value to the project: those nodes collectively formed Lattica, Gradient's distributed data communication protocol and the network foundation for everything that followed. Participants' contributions were recorded as EXP points — whose eventual utility the team has never committed to (more below).

Team and funding: $10M led by Pantera and Multicoin

Gradient is based in Singapore. On June 17, 2025, the team announced a $10 million seed round led by Pantera Capital and Multicoin Capital, with participation from HSG (HongShan, formerly Sequoia China), to develop its two core protocols — Lattica and Parallax — using Solana to coordinate network data and settlement. Source: Decrypt

The official homepage currently displays Pantera, Multicoin Capital, and HongShan as backers. Source: gradient.network

The current product line: from farming extension to AI infrastructure

Since the Sentry Node era ended, Gradient's focus has shifted visibly toward engineering-heavy products and research:

Parallax (distributed inference): a framework that shards large models across ordinary devices for cooperative inference, open-sourced on GitHub in September 2025 (GradientHQ/parallax) with 1,300+ stars. Anyone can try distributed inference through the Gradient Chatbot. Source: GitHub
Echo (distributed reinforcement learning): a system for distributing AI post-training across heterogeneous devices, with published papers and some open-sourced models.
Lattica (data communication protocol): evolved from the original Sentry Node network; it moves model weights and inference data between nodes worldwide. Live network activity is visible on the Gradient Explorer.
Gradient Cloud (enterprise): an AI inference API service for developers and businesses.

The pivot itself is worth noting: the project did not stall at the points-extension stage — it shipped verifiable open-source code and research, which is rare among idle-farming projects and distinguishes it from pure hype networks.

Will Gradient points convert into a token or airdrop?

As of this writing, Gradient has not issued a token and has published no TGE timeline. The relationship between EXP points and any future token — ratio, snapshot rules, eligibility — has never been promised.

When evaluating claims, use a simple three-tier framework:

Confirmed facts: the Open Beta has ended, points no longer accrue, funding and open-source progress are real;
Official plans: the Edge Host program, further research releases, "more ways to participate coming soon";
Unconfirmed speculation: token launch dates, EXP conversion ratios, airdrop eligibility.

A specific warning: searching "Gradient airdrop" surfaces third-party sites claiming you can "claim" tokens now. With no official token announcement, any page asking you to connect a wallet, sign a message, or pay a fee to claim a Gradient airdrop should be treated as phishing by default.

What can you actually do today?

The official participation paths right now:

Edge Host Pilot Program: an invite-only program for operators with high-availability compute (GPUs, data-center bandwidth). You apply and wait for the team to reach out — a much higher bar than the old browser extension; Source: Edge Host Pilot Program
Try the Gradient Chatbot and Explorer;
Follow the open-source repositories, papers, and community channels.

In other words, Gradient today is a project to watch, not to farm. If you want projects with active reward programs, see our upcoming analyses in the Project Watch category — and verify each program's rules are still live before you commit time.

A checklist before you engage

Ignore old tutorials: Sentry Node rewards have ended; any referral link selling that idea is outdated or misleading;
Points are not tokens: EXP conversion rules were never published — never spend real money on an expected airdrop;
Assume claim pages are phishing: until an official token announcement exists, every "claim" page is a scam — see our guide on claiming airdrops safely;
Track hard signals: open-source code, papers, and enterprise customers say more than registered-node counts;
Wait for official channels: new participation programs will appear in the official docs and the team's X account first.

Gradient is a candidate for that rare category: an idle-farming project that actually graduated. It used a massive extension experiment to bootstrap a network layer, then pivoted to AI infrastructure with real code and real research. Keep it on your watchlist — but throw away the old farming guides.

FAQ

Can I still earn points by installing Sentry Node?

No. Season 1 ended on August 28, 2025, and the official documentation states Sentry Nodes currently receive no rewards.

Are my old EXP points worth anything?

Unknown. The team has neither announced a use for EXP nor cancelled it. Keep your account, watch official announcements, and ignore third-party "conversion ratio" rumors.

Has Gradient launched a token?

No token and no TGE timeline exist as of July 26, 2026. Treat every "claim Gradient airdrop" page as phishing.

What is the legitimate way to participate now?

Apply for the invite-only Edge Host Pilot Program if you have serious compute resources; otherwise try the Chatbot and Explorer and follow official channels for new programs.