NEAR的AI货币论终于见效：产品市场契合度提升

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Bankless Nation, there's been pockets of growth in different corners of the crypto industry.

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The improved UX of the Zatl wallet has been a main driver of Zcash adoption and the growth of the Zcash shielded pool. Venice AI user growth is accelerating as more people want private [music] access to self-sovereign AI inference. I've personally been using Infinex as my dominant crypto wallet simply because it has solved all the major UX issues that has plagued Ethereum for years. What do all of these different platforms have in common?

They're all using NEAR Intents. NEAR Intents appear to be a breakout use case for the NEAR layer one. A layer one that has seemingly struggled to define and differentiate itself throughout the years has finally found product market fit supporting some of the fastest growing ecosystems in the industry. So, go to ChatGPT or Cloud whatever you use or Venice for that matter and ask your chatbot about all the projects that have integrated NEAR Intents in 2026.

Just go do it for yourself. It's a long list. So, naturally this piqued my curiosity. What does NEAR have to do with these pockets of growth in crypto? And is NEAR itself its own pocket of growth? In order to get more clarity on the state of NEAR and what's going on, I went and I found today's guest as perhaps the most articulate person in NEAR's investor circles to fill me in in what's going on with NEAR and what the future may hold for the protocol if the NEAR team executes.

Sal Turnello is the CEO of Sovereign, a Nasdaq-listed AI infrastructure company built around a NEAR treasury strategy. It's one part NEAR treasury company, but also a commercialization partner for the NEAR ecosystem. A for-profit entity focused on helping the NEAR ecosystem establish and grow its commercialization efforts. Sal is an expert at articulating the growth story for NEAR, so that's what you're going to hear today on the podcast.

I like bullish content, so that's your disclaimer. I'm sure that there is a bear case for NEAR, too. One might be that crypto-native infrastructure that is simply infrastructure for other crypto projects is just not a hot category at the moment. And some people fear it may never be. Maybe it may be another bear case is that Near's Iron Claw is a very distant third behind Hermes and Open Claw in the race for AI agent frameworks.

All of this is to say is that maybe there's a bear case for Near too, but that's not what you're going to hear on the podcast today because the bull case I think is pretty good, too. So, let's go ahead and hear that bull case for Near from my guest Sal Ternullo. Sal, welcome to Bankless. Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me. Sal, everywhere I go lately, there I'm poking around in different corners of the crypto industry, there seems to be Near there somehow.

And here's what I mean by that. Infinex is using Near Intense and Chain Signatures to do their whole unified cross-chain experiencing in the wallet. Zashi is using Near for cross-chain swaps and on-ramping assets from other chains into the Zashi wallet. Venice, the AI platform, is using the Near AI cloud to do their provably verifiably private AI inference. These are just some of the the top These are the apps that I use and have gotten a lot of attention lately, and Near is in every single one.

There's more. I could go down the list. Uh what's going on? How come Near is in all of these little corners? Yeah, I think this is the result of 5 years of really top-notch engineering and delivery now on the product side as well with Near Intense proving product market fit over the last year, rapidly scaling. Um and Near AI and Iron Claw now coming to the fore to really show the thinking that's been part of the ecosystem and design of the system over the past 5 years and really coming to light now with the focus on the crypto AI narrative, but more importantly how Near shines in the context of agenda commerce.

Um we could talk about these specific kind of verticals in their own regards, but I think it's the result really of the technology now reaching product market fit with Intense and Iron Claw quickly following on a similar trajectory to what we saw with intents over the past 12 months. There's been maybe a branding thing that Near needs to pierce through cuz it's got it's had this like series of pivots of like a strategy pivots.

There's been the most recent one which is the Near is pivoting to being like AI AI infrastructure. And I think maybe the the crypto community and people understanding watching these pivots is like, "Oh, this is just the next pivot." I This is just what they do. Is this Talk to me a little bit about that and you know, granted pivoting shouldn't be frowned upon. Is this like the final pivot in the sense that like this is working out and we're going to go forward here?

Yeah, I mean that I I don't contest the point in terms of narrative changes in the ecosystem. I've been on the ground floor since pre-mainnet launch. We're investors out of two venture funds. A100X being the most recent in the native token, but also in projects in the ecosystem. I would describe this not as a pivot, but as a returning to roots in the context of, you know, why Near was actually built with Illia leaving Google research looking at how to build distributed training systems and distributed compute systems and ultimately realizing that there was a missing back-end infrastructure layer which became the protocol.

I think now they've landed on, you know, kind of what you'll describe as the final pivot with real product market fit behind these verticals and you'll see that continue to tick up throughout the 2026 year. Um but I kind of describe it of coming back to the roots and realizing the vision that Illia and Alex and team have always painted around the protocol. If you could get a 3% top-off on your entire portfolio today, would you take it?

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