FET is the native cryptocurrency of Fetch.ai, which is a blockchain-based project aimed at introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to the cryptocurrency economy. Its main selling point are its “autonomous economic agents” (AEAs), powered by AI, that automate decentralized finance functions. Put simply, AEAs are coined as “intelligent software agents” that can perform tasks, such as finding the cheapest airline tickets to Spain or selling an item online to the highest bidder.

The all-time high price of Fetch.ai’s FET token was $1.17 on Sept. 8, 2021. Its all-time low value was $0.00816959 on March 12, 2020.

FET, a token issued on the Ethereum blockchain through the ERC-20 token standard, has a total supply of 1.15 billion. Unlike the case with many other tokens, there is no burning or halving mechanism in place for Fetch.ai’s native token.

FET’s price is volatile, even for the cryptocurrency industry. Despite a successful launch, FET quickly dropped from $0.35 to $0.03 in late 2019 and went even lower in early 2020.

An uptick to $0.15 occurred in August 2020 before the price fell to $0.05 and lower. In March 2021, FET hit $0.28 and $0.78 in quick succession. The price then returned to $0.205 by June before surging again to $0.918415 and $1.17 in September 2021.

Fetch.ai uses a “smart ledger,” which combines blockchain architecture with “direct acrylic graph” (DAG) technology. The system allows for transactions to be “assigned” to different routes, creating a fragmented network. The network can create new routes if one of the existing “lanes” has a heavy load.

Under the hood, Fetch.ai uses the UPoW (useful proof-of-work/proof-of-beneficial work) consensus mechanism, a combination of proof-of-work, proof-of-stake and DAG.

In a future release, Fetch.ai will support sharding to process transactions in parallel.

At a programming level, Fetch.ai uses the Etch language to create and interact with smart contracts.

Fetch.ai was founded in the U.K. in 2017 by entrepreneur Humayun Sheikh, scientist Thomas Hain and software developer Toby Simpson.

The team raised $15 million in a seed funding round in June 2018 that included investments from Outlier Ventures and Blockwall Management. In February 2019, Fetch.ai raised $6 million through an initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Binance crypto exchange, and in March 2021, a funding round brought in another $5 million. GDA Group, a Toronto-based digital asset firm, led that round.

In November 2020, Fetch.AI formed a partnership with Cudo, a service known as an “oracle” that brings data from outside sources to a blockchain, to enable batch processing of decentralized machine learning tasks on the Fetch.ai network. Cudo also provides computer power for autonomous software agents on the network.

Fetch.ai upgraded its network in July 2021, and a month later, following a judgment from the London High Court, Fetch.ai succeeded in forcing Binance to find and freeze $2.6 million worth of assets allegedly stolen from Fetch.ai’s Binance trading account by hackers.