NEW INTENTS INTEGRATION
NEAR Intents is now live in @talostrading's Order and Execution Management System, which has processed over $1 trillion in all-time trading volume.
Talos's institutional clients can now source cross-chain liquidity across 100+ native assets and 35+ chains, plus centralized venues, from the same setup they already use.
Talos clients can now source liquidity from the NEAR Intents solver network through the same RFQ workflow they use for spot blocks, OTC options and ETF creations and redemptions.
Solvers compete on price across 30+ blockchains and centralized venues, with assets signed from clients’ existing custody relationships, so there is no second operating model to stand up.
➡️ Read the announcement: https://t.co/WM7Z7Sv8lo
🎙️“This is what institutional access to DeFi should look like: no new custody, no new workflow, and competitive cross-chain pricing on every order.” – Alex Shevchenko (@AlexAuroraDev) CEO of DefuseLabs (developer of @NEARProtocol's @near_intents)
🎙️“Competitive quoting is becoming a real source of institutional liquidity.” – Daniel Packham, VP and Head of Provider Network, Talos
NEAR Mobile users can now open post-quantum vaults: accounts that sign every transaction with ML-DSA, the NIST-standardized scheme NEAR added to mainnet in July.
Send, receive, and stake from a quantum-safe account on your phone.
🚀 NEAR Mobile v4.1.0 is now LIVE!
🔐 Post-Quantum Vaults
🔗 Link imported accounts to your recovery phrase
👀 Show implicit addresses
🛡️ More secure & flexible backups
Plus, performance improvements and bug fixes across the app.
Update now 👉🏻 https://t.co/MhnUga9SZl
As agents start moving money, whoever controls the rails they run on will also control global finance.
Privacy for AI and finance is a precondition for a user-owned agent economy. @ilblackdragon on the stakes of the agentic shift:
Who Really Controls Your AI? Illia Polosukhin on Privacy, Ownership, and the Future of Intelligence
In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with @ilblackdragon, co-founder of @NEARProtocol and CEO of the @NEARFoundation, to discuss his journey from helping develop the transformer architecture behind ChatGPT and Claude to building a blockchain ecosystem focused on user-owned AI.
We explore what happens to our personal information when we use AI, why concentrating intelligence in the hands of a few companies could be dangerous, and how cryptography could give individuals greater control over their data and digital lives.
From Growing Up in Ukraine to Helping Build Modern AI
Growing up in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Illia experienced firsthand what happens when financial institutions fail. His grandparents' savings became practically worthless, hyperinflation made everyday necessities increasingly expensive, and his family had to grow much of its own food.
Technology offered him a different path. He started programming at age ten, eventually pursuing competitive programming and joining Google as an AI researcher. At Google, Illia contributed to the groundbreaking 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need, which introduced the transformer architecture that would become foundational to modern large language models.
Before transformers, many language models processed text sequentially, analyzing one word after another. Transformers introduced an approach that could process words in parallel, using a mechanism called attention to understand relationships between them. This made it possible to train increasingly capable language models much more efficiently.
For Illia, the achievement was part of a much older ambition. At fourteen, he had already imagined computers that could understand human language and program themselves. Yet despite Google's resources, he found that developing disruptive products within a large organization was difficult. He eventually left to build NEAR AI, taking a significant risk to pursue his ideas independently.
How a Payment Problem Led Him Into Crypto
Illia’s AI startup relied on students across Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to complete small data-labeling tasks, which sometimes earned as little as fifteen cents per assignment, making traditional international payments impractical. Unfortunately, existing blockchain networks weren't much better, with transaction fees that could exceed the amount being paid.
Illia saw an opportunity to build financial infrastructure that made moving money globally faster, cheaper, and more accessible. But as he explored blockchain technology, he began to recognize its potential to protect individuals from the institutional failures he had witnessed growing up. This inspired NEAR's broader mission of enabling people to control their data, assets, and freedom of choice.
However, building NEAR wasn't straightforward. The team initially expected to develop its blockchain in six to eight months, but the process took approximately two years. They also navigated difficult fundraising conditions and multiple crypto market cycles. What sustained the project was a belief that the infrastructure solved a genuine problem, regardless of market sentiment.
What Really Happens to Your Data When You Use AI?
Today, Illia sees another form of institutional dependence emerging through artificial intelligence. Every time people interact with an AI assistant, they share information about their businesses, finances, health, relationships, and decisions. This is even worse for companies using AI agents that access internal documents, emails, proprietary workflows, and strategic discussions.
Illia argues that when this information is processed through centralized AI providers, users must trust those companies' policies and security practices. Even when providers offer settings that restrict model training, he questions whether users have sufficient visibility into how their information is processed, retained, or otherwise used. There is also the risk of unauthorized access and legal disclosure, particularly for sensitive financial, medical, legal, and proprietary business information.
But his concern extends beyond privacy.
As AI becomes the primary interface through which people access information, the companies operating these systems could gain enormous influence over what users see, believe, and decide. The deeper problem, Illia argues, is the lack of independent verification over how these systems operate.
Building AI That Works for, not Against, You
Illia's proposed alternative is user-owned AI. “AI should be on your side,” he explains.
His argument is that conventional AI companies ultimately answer to their business interests and incentives that may not align with what benefits individual users. User-owned AI would instead prioritize privacy, individual control, and alignment with the user's interests.
To make this possible, NEAR is combining blockchain infrastructure with privacy-preserving AI technology. One component is encrypted AI processing, designed to prevent providers from accessing users' prompts and responses in readable form. Another is cryptographic verification, which can provide evidence about the model, software, and computing environment used to process a request.
Illia compares the intended user experience to the security indicator in a web browser. People shouldn't need to understand the underlying cryptography to know whether an application provides verified privacy protections. Blockchain also provides a potential economic foundation for this system, allowing participants to hold tokens and access services rather than relying entirely on a single company.
Still, it’s concerning that more private AI could also make it harder to monitor harmful uses. Illia acknowledges safety as one of the strongest arguments against his approach, but believes privacy and security can coexist through better technical systems.
The Next Shift Could Be Bigger Than AI
Looking ahead, Illia is particularly excited about personalized medicine. He imagines a future where AI can analyze an individual's medical information and help develop treatments tailored to their specific needs, including therapies that might otherwise be commercially unattractive to large pharmaceutical companies.
He also expects AI to automate more activities where people primarily care about the outcome, while human experiences such as sports, music, and art retain their value because people care about the process itself.
Ultimately, Illia's believes that technology should expand what individuals can do without requiring them to surrender control over their lives.
As AI becomes more powerful and deeply integrated into everyday decisions, the bigger question won’t be how intelligent these systems can become, but who they ultimately serve.
👉If you enjoyed reading the summary, head over to When Shift Happens on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform to access the full convo.
Open https://t.co/sryybkRtlA and your whole account is on one screen.
Portfolio, what needs your attention, and the day's biggest movers. Balance section in the sidebar, all confidential by default.
Who Really Controls Your AI? Illia Polosukhin on Privacy, Ownership, and the Future of Intelligence
In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with @ilblackdragon, co-founder of @NEARProtocol and CEO of the @NEARFoundation, to discuss his journey from helping develop the transformer architecture behind ChatGPT and Claude to building a blockchain ecosystem focused on user-owned AI.
We explore what happens to our personal information when we use AI, why concentrating intelligence in the hands of a few companies could be dangerous, and how cryptography could give individuals greater control over their data and digital lives.
From Growing Up in Ukraine to Helping Build Modern AI
Growing up in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Illia experienced firsthand what happens when financial institutions fail. His grandparents' savings became practically worthless, hyperinflation made everyday necessities increasingly expensive, and his family had to grow much of its own food.
Technology offered him a different path. He started programming at age ten, eventually pursuing competitive programming and joining Google as an AI researcher. At Google, Illia contributed to the groundbreaking 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need, which introduced the transformer architecture that would become foundational to modern large language models.
Before transformers, many language models processed text sequentially, analyzing one word after another. Transformers introduced an approach that could process words in parallel, using a mechanism called attention to understand relationships between them. This made it possible to train increasingly capable language models much more efficiently.
For Illia, the achievement was part of a much older ambition. At fourteen, he had already imagined computers that could understand human language and program themselves. Yet despite Google's resources, he found that developing disruptive products within a large organization was difficult. He eventually left to build NEAR AI, taking a significant risk to pursue his ideas independently.
How a Payment Problem Led Him Into Crypto
Illia’s AI startup relied on students across Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to complete small data-labeling tasks, which sometimes earned as little as fifteen cents per assignment, making traditional international payments impractical. Unfortunately, existing blockchain networks weren't much better, with transaction fees that could exceed the amount being paid.
Illia saw an opportunity to build financial infrastructure that made moving money globally faster, cheaper, and more accessible. But as he explored blockchain technology, he began to recognize its potential to protect individuals from the institutional failures he had witnessed growing up. This inspired NEAR's broader mission of enabling people to control their data, assets, and freedom of choice.
However, building NEAR wasn't straightforward. The team initially expected to develop its blockchain in six to eight months, but the process took approximately two years. They also navigated difficult fundraising conditions and multiple crypto market cycles. What sustained the project was a belief that the infrastructure solved a genuine problem, regardless of market sentiment.
What Really Happens to Your Data When You Use AI?
Today, Illia sees another form of institutional dependence emerging through artificial intelligence. Every time people interact with an AI assistant, they share information about their businesses, finances, health, relationships, and decisions. This is even worse for companies using AI agents that access internal documents, emails, proprietary workflows, and strategic discussions.
Illia argues that when this information is processed through centralized AI providers, users must trust those companies' policies and security practices. Even when providers offer settings that restrict model training, he questions whether users have sufficient visibility into how their information is processed, retained, or otherwise used. There is also the risk of unauthorized access and legal disclosure, particularly for sensitive financial, medical, legal, and proprietary business information.
But his concern extends beyond privacy.
As AI becomes the primary interface through which people access information, the companies operating these systems could gain enormous influence over what users see, believe, and decide. The deeper problem, Illia argues, is the lack of independent verification over how these systems operate.
Building AI That Works for, not Against, You
Illia's proposed alternative is user-owned AI. “AI should be on your side,” he explains.
His argument is that conventional AI companies ultimately answer to their business interests and incentives that may not align with what benefits individual users. User-owned AI would instead prioritize privacy, individual control, and alignment with the user's interests.
To make this possible, NEAR is combining blockchain infrastructure with privacy-preserving AI technology. One component is encrypted AI processing, designed to prevent providers from accessing users' prompts and responses in readable form. Another is cryptographic verification, which can provide evidence about the model, software, and computing environment used to process a request.
Illia compares the intended user experience to the security indicator in a web browser. People shouldn't need to understand the underlying cryptography to know whether an application provides verified privacy protections. Blockchain also provides a potential economic foundation for this system, allowing participants to hold tokens and access services rather than relying entirely on a single company.
Still, it’s concerning that more private AI could also make it harder to monitor harmful uses. Illia acknowledges safety as one of the strongest arguments against his approach, but believes privacy and security can coexist through better technical systems.
The Next Shift Could Be Bigger Than AI
Looking ahead, Illia is particularly excited about personalized medicine. He imagines a future where AI can analyze an individual's medical information and help develop treatments tailored to their specific needs, including therapies that might otherwise be commercially unattractive to large pharmaceutical companies.
He also expects AI to automate more activities where people primarily care about the outcome, while human experiences such as sports, music, and art retain their value because people care about the process itself.
Ultimately, Illia's believes that technology should expand what individuals can do without requiring them to surrender control over their lives.
As AI becomes more powerful and deeply integrated into everyday decisions, the bigger question won’t be how intelligent these systems can become, but who they ultimately serve.
👉If you enjoyed reading the summary, head over to When Shift Happens on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform to access the full convo.
No team? No ideas? Feel like there isn’t enough time?
NEAR Builders just dropped a NEAR Hackathon in 3 days guide to fix that: take an idea from @ilblackdragon, use the starting prompts from @NEARDevHub, join the @NearBuilders and find teammates.
. @ilblackdragon explains NEAR’s concept of user owned AI and why companies building AI models end up working against their own users
“If I’m a company and I’m making an AI model and I’m offering a product on top of it like ChatGPT, my motivation is not to make you successful”
“As soon as you achieve your target audience, you need to continue growing your revenue. You need to start making more money from every individual user. And so you start doing things that are not particularly always good for your users”
“User owned AI is effectively the opposite. How do we build AI that is on your side? It needs to be private. It needs to be aligned with you. The way I explain it is AI is almost like your mom. It’s always aligned with your success. It doesn’t always agree with you, it may give you feedback, but it needs to be aligned with you”
@NEARProtocol
Tomorrow in NYC: a full day building with private AI inference for the NEAR Hackathon.
Get started on NEAR AI Cloud, explore confidential computing and agentic commerce, form teams, build with mentors, and practice your demo.
Sign up to attend 👇
Buildcity x Near Legion: Private AI Hackathon NYC
The agenda is out. Tomorrow we build 👇
→ 9:00 Check-in, breakfast, NEAR wallet + NEAR AI Cloud sign-up
→ 9:45 Welcome, then the NEAR AI Cloud quick start
→ 10:10 Talks: confidential computing, data privacy and ownership, ICM, agentic commerce
→ 11:30 Idea worksheet, mixer and team formation
→ 1:30 Building with mentors in the room
→ 4:30 Demos and showcase
→ 5:30 Closing and networking
Kick off your project for the global NEAR Hackathon (Nov 1–14, $250K prize pool, 13 tracks) 🚀
📅 Wednesday, Nov 11
⏰ 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM ET
📍 The Wilson, 132 W 27th St, NYC
Bring your laptop and your favorite AI coding assistant. Solo builders and teams up to 4 welcome.
@NEARProtocol@NEARLegion
Luma link in comments 👇
NEAR Hackathon track: Agent Economy.
⠀
Build agents that earn, spend, negotiate, hire other agents and pay for APIs, compute or data, directly or through NEAR Intents.
⠀
Start here: https://t.co/UIr8pVdEDs
https://t.co/UIr8pVdEDs
4 days left in the NEAR Hackathon.
490 projects in. $250K in NEAR on the table. Judged by @ilblackdragon, @eddylazzarin, @hosseeb and more.
No sign-up. Ship by Nov 14, 23:59 UTC.
https://t.co/VGdPTWdWPA
ICYMI: @blknoiz06 sat down with @ilblackdragon and @AlexAuroraDev to break down crypto security, NEAR Intents, confidential infrastructure, and recent NEAR announcements & integrations.
Catch it all here:
Market Bubble ep.26: my full conversation with @ilblackdragon and @AlexAuroraDev
on the Binance hack, NEAR Intents, crypto security, Pearl's AI mining, agentic commerce and personalized medicine
0:00 - Binance hack and decentralized liquidity
6:25 - NEAR Intents and private trading
8:04 - Security, AI red teaming and formal proofs
18:22 - Pearl, AI mining and agentic commerce
24:12 - Personalized medicine and open AI
Global Dollar on https://t.co/sryybkRtlA. Deposit $USDG from Robinhood Chain. Swap it with 180+ assets across 30+ chains. Pay anyone with it. Issued by @Paxos.
One account, confidential by default.
NEAR Hackathon track: AI Swarms.
⠀
Coordination markets, bidding, collective purchasing and intent-based settlement between agents.
⠀
Build the economies that emerge when agents work together.
⠀
Start here: https://t.co/UIr8pVdEDs
NEAR Intents is now integrated into @FordefiHQ by @Paxos.
Fordefi users can now access NEAR Intents-powered cross-chain swaps directly from the Swap & Bridge section.
Institutions already trust Fordefi to secure their funds. Now they can move them across chains with NEAR Intents.
Starting with EVM-to-EVM swaps today, with non-EVM chains coming in phases, including Zcash, Bitcoin and Solana.
NEAR Hackathon Track: Games With Real Economies.
⠀
NPCs with wallets, player-owned markets and economies that evolve without a dev patch.
⠀
Players should never notice the chain.
⠀
Start building at https://t.co/UIr8pVdEDs
NEAR HACKATHON is now live with $250K+ in prizes.
No signup. Just ship a public repo + public demo post between November 1st & Nov 14, 23:59 UTC.
Build on NEAR Intents, chain signatures, chain abstraction, NEAR AI Cloud, & more.
Full details: https://t.co/mkP9hKatU4