The Rollup (@therollupco) “NEW EP: Inside @NEARProtocol 10+ Years Building Toward the Agent Economy with Il” — TopicDigg

NEW EP: Inside @NEARProtocol 10+ Years Building Toward the Agent Economy with Illia Polosukhin (@ilblackdragon) From pioneering the transformer architecture now used in every AI stack to building the rails for the agent economy, NEAR Co-Founder Illia Polosukhin connects the full arc in this inaugural episode of “Inside NEAR,” a new quarterly series on The Rollup. Illia breaks down NEAR’s early architectural bets that are now paying off, why privacy had to be a base-layer choice, and how it all culminates in NEAR becoming AI money: the unit of account for inference, compute, and every agent-to-agent transaction settling onchain. With $20 billion+ in Intents volume and a path to deflation, the thesis is simple: NEAR’s TAM isn't crypto, it's all of commerce. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:38 State Of NEAR Quarterly 04:32 The Transformer's Origin Story 06:51 NEAR Started As AI 11:40 Post-Quantum Crypto Coming Soon 13:48 Root Of Trust Solved 19:36 Target Market All Commerce 20:41 AI Frontend Blockchain Backend 22:44 Confidential Intents TVL Rising 28:51 Fee Switch Turned On 34:04 NEAR Is AI Money 36:30 One Line Changes Reality Full episode links below.