"The winning infrastructure may no longer be the chain with the most visible activity. It may be the one enabling activity everywhere else."
Just published pt. 2 in the reintroducing @NEARProtocol series, with the aim of showing how a clear vision, pursued consistently over time, can compound into lasting impact for all.
After my time at Messari came to a close, I found myself wondering what was next. Fortunately, a few incredible opportunities found their way to me. Each offered a unique path, and I genuinely did not know which one was right.
After countless conversations, I realized I was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking “what job do I want?” I needed to ask: “what problem do I want to spend my time on?”
For me, that problem is this:
How do we ensure humanity preserves its values in a world increasingly shaped by AI?
We are in the fastest technology expansion in modern history. Companies like Palantir, Snowflake, and Databricks spent more than a decade building category-defining software businesses with thousands of employees and billions in revenue. Today, AI companies are reaching similar scale in a fraction of the time. Anthropic reportedly added the equivalent of their combined ARR in roughly a month. Cursor became one of the fastest-growing software companies ever, and SpaceX is tracking toward one of the largest private-company outcomes in history.
That acceleration is exciting, but it also raises an important question: who controls the infrastructure shaping the next phase of humanity?
Most of today’s AI systems are being built as closed platforms. As these models become more powerful and integrated into daily life, the stakes around transparency, ownership, and privacy grow dramatically. We have all consumed enough sci-fi to understand how quickly things can move in the wrong direction when technology is concentrated in too few hands, and we’ve already lived through enough financial blowups and abuses of personal data to understand the risks that come from centralization and opaque corporate interests.
The more I thought about where the world is heading, the more convinced I became that open infrastructure will be one of the defining challenges of the next decade.
That’s why I’ve decided to join @NEARProtocol.
In my view, NEAR is one of the first big players deeply focused on building the open infrastructure layer for the AI-powered world. Infrastructure designed to give users more ownership, privacy, and control.
I’m excited to help tell that story.
The first piece of that puzzle is Authorship.
More below :)
- Tokenomics changes (inflation rate cut 50% to 2.5%, buybacks from NEAR Intent revenue, fully circ supply) - NEAR Intent growth overall (pushed by confidential swaps & withdraws) - NEAR AI partnered w/ Bermuda Gov. for real AI work - Dynamic Resharding creates a true pathway toward the scaleability needed for agentic finance - Arthur Hayes essay & Ansem buying yesterday
@JuddLobel @0xCryptoSam@andyyy@near_intents@IronClawAI Coming soon on my end!
For now would point you here: https://t.co/F3qi8hSZBF
- https://t.co/t19v6Y1r0F
- https://t.co/F2bgMJduKd
Here’s everything you need to know about NEAR:
✦ What NEAR is today, from NEAR Protocol to $NEAR token, Intents to IronClaw
✦ Why NEAR matters
✦ Why now
🧵
Main thesis is @near_intents@IronClawAI growth & usage. Along with tokenomic changes (inflation cut in half + buybacks from Intents revenue = deflationary status when certain volume is hit ).
Internal pipeline is also cooking 👀
To see rev in real time: https://t.co/xdEVJYYJqA
@zebriez Ties directly into the human psyche. To me it's actually helpful, it keeps you grounded and hungry. Almost every big opportunity in my life came with that feeling, but eventually you realize you're more than capable and you crush it. Then the cycle starts again.