NEAR's Polosukhin sees less need for centralized exchanges as onchain tools expand

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) co-founder Illia Polosukhin said users no longer need centralized exchanges for much crypto activity as near.com expands its onchain offerings. Polosukhin spoke during a live interview at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in Singapore on Wednesday. Polosukhin described near.com as nearly ready and said the platform has an extensive roadmap. Polosukhin identified bank withdrawals, transaction records for tax purposes and selective disclosure of confidential transactions as areas under development.

Near.com combines spot trading across different chains, tokenized stocks, earn products and perpetual futures in one interface. Polosukhin said most NEAR Intents infrastructure has moved to a confidential shard, allowing trading activity to remain private while users can reveal individual transactions. Polosukhin previously discussed Confidential Intents and privacy on The Starting Block in July. Polosukhin said a centralized exchange deleted one of his accounts despite his knowing the company's CEO.

Polosukhin said more fiat-related features are coming. Polosukhin highlighted NEAR's existing work with Monerium, which allows users to move between euros in a bank account and EURe through an IBAN. Polosukhin said the ultimate plan is for NEAR Intents to handle conversions between any assets. Polosukhin gave examples of U.S. dollars to euros and Singapore dollars to Hong Kong dollars.

Tokenized stocks are already available through near.com following a September integration with Ondo Finance. Polosukhin said users can move from euros into tokenized Nvidia stock. Polosukhin said NEAR plans to add stocks from more markets around the world. Polosukhin said Wednesday that NEAR's roadmap includes more fiat routes and eventually enabling commerce directly onchain.

The comments came less than a week after NEAR Intents suffered a roughly $3.8 million exploit that temporarily halted services. A bug affected the interaction between the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and the NEAR Intents smart contract. The vulnerability was patched. NEAR Intents pledged to compensate affected users. Near.com and NEAR Intents subsequently resumed services. The funds were eventually returned in full following an ultimatum from NEAR Intents General Manager Alex Shevchenko.

Polosukhin also sees AI agents as another interface for onchain markets. Polosukhin described agents as the user interface and markets as the underlying infrastructure. Polosukhin pointed to NEAR's Agent Market, which extends the intents model to tasks requested in natural language. Polosukhin said users can describe a task and Agent Market finds agents that can perform the task. Agent Market holds money in escrow and releases the money once the work is verified.