Olas, a blockchain project that offers AI agents through an app-store-style interface, will sunset Pearl Mini, its browser-based prediction-market tool, after Google moved to ban such extensions from the Chrome Web Store.
On July 1, the Chrome Web Store expanded its Regulated Goods and Services policy to prohibit extensions that enable real-money transactions on predictive outcomes, according to an Olas blog post dated July 7. Enforcement begins Aug. 1.
The update makes continued development impossible, Olas said, because the express purpose of Pearl Mini was to let users read a Polymarket market, get an AI-generated likelihood score and act on it in one click.
The episode is a pointed reminder of how much crypto-based AI projects still lean on centralized gatekeepers to reach users. A single policy change at Google took a working product offline, no matter how self-custodial its underlying design.
Olas stressed that user funds were never at risk. Pearl Mini "never touched your keys," the company said, so a third-party store's rules can pause a product but "can't put your assets out of reach." Users can export keys and withdraw through the end of July.
Prediction-market work continues on the self-custodial Pearl desktop app, outside the Chrome store, Olas said.
(HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS STORY: The first draft of this story was written on Claude Desktop using a custom skill designed to handle press-release rewrites. I then used Distro Publisher, our MCP server, to file a draft directly to DeAI News, and used the DistroVerse editing interface to make some edits. I personally checked all the facts prior to publication. I used ChatGPT to create the story illustration, using a custom project.)