NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin says near.com is close to replacing the centralized exchange for much of what traders do. The platform is adding fiat routes, tokenized stocks and private trading, even as the project recovers from a recent exploit.
“You Don’t Need It” for Many Things
Polosukhin spoke on Wednesday with The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson in a live interview at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in Singapore.
“I think for a lot of things now, you don’t need it,” he said of centralized exchanges. He called near.com “almost there,” with a “big roadmap of things to keep adding.”
Items on that list include bank withdrawals, transaction records for tax purposes and selective disclosure of confidential transactions. He also pointed to his own experience: one of his accounts at a centralized exchange was deleted even though he knows the company’s CEO. “You log in, and it says this account doesn’t exist,” he said.
What near.com Offers
Near.com puts cross-chain spot trading, tokenized stocks, earn products and perpetual futures into one interface. Polosukhin said most of the NEAR Intents infrastructure has moved to a confidential shard. Trading activity stays private, but users can reveal individual transactions when needed. He discussed Confidential Intents and privacy on The Block’s The Starting Block in July.
More Fiat and Stocks Coming
“We have a lot of fiat-related stuff coming as well,” Polosukhin said. He cited NEAR’s work with Monerium, which lets users move between euros in a bank account and EURe through an IBAN. The longer-term goal is for NEAR Intents to handle “any asset to any asset,” such as U.S. dollars to euros or Singapore dollars to Hong Kong dollars.
Tokenized stocks arrived on near.com after a September integration with Ondo Finance. Users can, for example, go from euros into tokenized Nvidia stock, and Polosukhin said NEAR is “planning to add more stocks kind of around the world.” Beyond that, the project wants to add more fiat routes and eventually enable commerce directly onchain.
Coming Off a $3.8 Million Exploit
The remarks arrive less than a week after NEAR Intents suffered an exploit of roughly $3.8 million that temporarily halted services. The Block reported that a bug affected how its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract. The flaw was patched, NEAR Intents pledged to compensate affected users, and near.com and NEAR Intents came back online. The funds were eventually returned in full after an ultimatum from NEAR Intents General Manager Alex Shevchenko.
AI Agents as the Front End
Polosukhin also sees AI agents as a new interface for onchain markets. “AI is a front-end, blockchain is a back-end,” he said, or more specifically, “agent is a front-end and markets is a back-end.” NEAR’s Agent Market extends the intents model to tasks described in natural language. Users say what they want done, and the market finds agents to carry it out. Payment sits in escrow and is released once the work is verified.
What to Watch
The roadmap is ambitious, but the exploit shows how much trust self-custodial platforms still have to earn. Bank withdrawals, tax records and fiat routes are the features that would test whether near.com can serve users who now rely on centralized exchanges. Polosukhin is also a NEAR co-founder promoting his own product, so the “you don’t need it” claim is a view, not a measured result.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is for general purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The author’s views are personal and may not reflect the views of chainrant.com. Before making any investment decisions, you should always conduct your own research. chainrant.com is not responsible for any financial losses.
