Co-Founder @NEARProtocol. Bringing 1B users into User-Owned Internet. AI researcher. #AIAYN. RTs & likes are not endorsement. Always DYOR.
Joined October 2009
- Tweets 9,150
- Following 454
- Followers 113,498
- Likes 29,783
466 Photos and videos
Frontier AI access just became an acute geopolitical and sovereignty issue.
The alternative path is to be open source and governed by decentralized community. Not relying on a single government or developing organization to make decisions when and how this tech can be used.
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 11
The IronClaw Hackathon kicks off our June events π
Over the next few weeks, we'll be meeting builders across Asia, Europe, and North America to explore the future of secure AI agents, verifiable execution, and agent infrastructure.
Deploy Secure Agents. Join us at an event near you.
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Great episode of Chopping Block this week with @mert @hosseeb @tomhschmidt -- watch for takes on:
-why code vulnerabilities are easier to find with AI and we need to formally verify everything
-how DeFi needs to evolve: detection systems for responding faster to exploits, offering more safety features for users, AI-augmented governance
-why blockchains will take AI from single player mode to multiplayer mode and eventually underpin all commerce and interfaces
this week: saylor sold 32 bitcoin and broke the market, an AI found a money printer inside zcash, defi got told it's terminal, and illia says robots will do your shopping.
Ep. w/ @ilblackdragon & @mert
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:17 Weekend Crypto Meltdown & Bitcoin Crash
02:52 Saylor, STRC & the DAT Death Spiral Fears
11:51 "No Sell Button" β Saylor's Lesson Learned
13:14 Zcash Bug: 50% Crash Explained
20:30 The Fix: Ironwood Pool & Formal Verification
23:11 AI vs Crypto Security: The Attacker Advantage
27:21 What Is Formal Verification?
30:07 Spaceship-Grade Smart Contract Security
31:36 OPSEC, Oracles & Anomaly Detection
36:08 Cypherpunk Dilemma: Stop the Hack or Not?
38:37 Will DeFi Survive? Long Math
42:49 NEAR's AI Agents & Intents Vision
48:43 Is Agentic Commerce Real? Mert's Skepticism
π₯Stay updated with all the latest hot takes by following and subscribing to @_ChoppingBlock and @unchained_pod!
π₯ YouTube: youtu.be/Y2lyeoL-vK8
π§ Spotify: bit.ly/3wiIOyy
π Apple: bit.ly/3w9HQ7J
π Podcast Home: choppingblock.xyz
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 10
Builders, Devs & AI folks - IronClaw Hackathon is coming!
June 12-20 | Hybrid Format (Barcelona Remote)
Build privacy-first secure agents. Remote participants get full access to workshops, mentorship, and live demo showcase on June 18.
Ship the future of secure AI Agents. β
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 10
Insane week in crypto, so we brought @Mert and @ilblackdragon on the show to break it down:
> Saylor's market meltdown
> The Zcash counterfeiting bug and how real it is
> What NEAR AI Mythos mean for the future of smart contracts (formal verification or death?)
Listen inπ
this week: saylor sold 32 bitcoin and broke the market, an AI found a money printer inside zcash, defi got told it's terminal, and illia says robots will do your shopping.
Ep. w/ @ilblackdragon & @mert
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:17 Weekend Crypto Meltdown & Bitcoin Crash
02:52 Saylor, STRC & the DAT Death Spiral Fears
11:51 "No Sell Button" β Saylor's Lesson Learned
13:14 Zcash Bug: 50% Crash Explained
20:30 The Fix: Ironwood Pool & Formal Verification
23:11 AI vs Crypto Security: The Attacker Advantage
27:21 What Is Formal Verification?
30:07 Spaceship-Grade Smart Contract Security
31:36 OPSEC, Oracles & Anomaly Detection
36:08 Cypherpunk Dilemma: Stop the Hack or Not?
38:37 Will DeFi Survive? Long Math
42:49 NEAR's AI Agents & Intents Vision
48:43 Is Agentic Commerce Real? Mert's Skepticism
π₯Stay updated with all the latest hot takes by following and subscribing to @_ChoppingBlock and @unchained_pod!
π₯ YouTube: youtu.be/Y2lyeoL-vK8
π§ Spotify: bit.ly/3wiIOyy
π Apple: bit.ly/3w9HQ7J
π Podcast Home: choppingblock.xyz
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You can now access @HyperliquidX perps directly from near(dot)com. One account for everything you want in DeFi.
And coming soon...confidential perps.
Jun 9
Hyperliquid perps are now live on nearβ.com.
Deposit any asset from 35 chains directly into @HyperliquidX to access 50 markets with up to 40x leverage.
Whatβs next: confidential perps. Today is step one. π§΅
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Joining in a few to talk with @mert all things privacy, ZEC and NEAR
Jun 5
π¨LIVE: BTC In Trouble?! ZCash Bug From CLAUDE?! EMERGENCY SHOW with Mert, Josh & Haseeb x.com/i/broadcasts/1qKVmmDVMβ¦
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 5
NEAR is Hitting On Revenue, Privacy, And AI At Once with @svrn_ai CEO, @sal_ternullo
Timestamps
00:49 Institutional Inbound Explained
02:28 Bitcoin Negative Correlation
04:35 NEAR Investment Thesis Evolution
06:16 NEAR AI Stack
08:29 Bear Case And Risks
09:56 Venice Integration Breakdown
11:27 Path To Deflation
14:18 Intents Fee Model Analysis
15:51 Fee Structure Vs Volume
17:46 Confidential Intents Premium
19:42 Token Buyback Pre-Commitment
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DeFi has been operating in a binary of who is responsible for funds: either the user gives everything up to a third party or they have complete responsibility (and risk).
We need to realign this trade-off into a spectrum. Protocols can embrace elements of both self-custody and safety by offering optionality to users. NEAR Intents is taking steps to offer better safety and security to users without compromising on privacy. Read more ‡οΈ
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Rethinking the Self-Custody/Safety Binary in DeFi: a deep dive
ilblackdragon.substack.com/pβ¦
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Steady lads, shipping features on near(.)com
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 2
Eight people wrote the paper that built modern AI. @ilblackdragon was the first to leave Google.
The others founded labs like Character, Cohere, and Inceptive. Illia built @near_ai around a different idea: that AI should belong to the people using it, not the labs running it.
In Episode 4 of @opencommonspod, we get into why open weights aren't enough, what user-owned AI actually looks like, and how your prompts might already be getting rewritten without you knowing.
Out today: youtu.be/eFEMWvgGvyA
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May was busy for NEAR but June is going to be busier.
So much is cooking across all pillars.
May 31
What NEAR shipped this month:
β¦ NEAR Intents crossed $19B in all-time volume and 25M total swaps.
β¦ Confidential Payments went live on near.com with Universal Send.
β¦ $VVV is live on NEAR Intents and near.com.
β¦ Illia Polosukhin (@ilblackdragon) and Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) discussed the Privacy Renaissance on @therollup.
β¦ NEAR AI and the Government of Bermuda partnered to deploy AI-powered public services.
β¦ NEAR Intents began powering cross-chain swaps in Ledger Wallet.
β¦ IronClaw released version v0.28 βIronClaw Rebornβ.
β¦ NEAR Intents integrated private USDC payments for the NEAR AI Agent Market.
⦠NEAR Intents⨠joined the strkBTC Federation.
β¦ NEAR AI shipped automatic PII anonymization.
β¦ NEAR introduced Dynamic Resharding.
β¦ NEAR AI and FailSafe launched AttackBench.
β¦ NEAR hosted events at Consensus Miami and the SALT Digital Finance Forum in Bermuda.
β¦ near.com referrals went live
β¦ The Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP drew roughly $3M in inflows
β¦ Trezu (@trezuapp) launched confidential treasuries
And much more.
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Most crypto x AI takes are too small.
The real shift is from humans operating businesses through spreadsheets, dashboards, and SaaS to AI becoming the interface for computing and business.
But AI needs more than payments. It need identity, discovery, reputation, dispute resolution, escrow, insurance, forwards, and markets for work.
NEAR Intents are not just better crypto routing. It's the transaction layer for agentic business.
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Old crypto: lots of wallets, different chains, gas tokens, bridges, blind sign
New crypto: near(.)com to hold, trade and use all your crypto across 35 chains confidentially by just having Intent
Future: agentic commerce on the same rails
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Get your NEAR merch at nearmerch(.)com
@ekang426 is rocking Intents look
Jun 3
Due to a huge number of requestsβ¦ made it happen! Wear it with me with intentsπ₯
nearmerch.com/products/near-β¦
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
Jun 3
Somewhere along the way:
$1B π€
$5B π€
$10B π€
Today, NEAR Intents crossed $20B in all-time volume.
Twenty. Billion.
Along the way we added new chains, new assets, confidentiality, near(.)com, and a whole lot more.
The best part?
Many of the things we're most excited about haven't even launched yet.
See you at the next milestone.
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
This is a casual reminder that NEAR is fully unlocked.
If you see any deal with locked NEAR at a discount, this is probably a scam.
You can get long-term exposure to NEAR through spot markets and a set of structured products.
NFA, DYOR. Stay safe, beware of impersonators.
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Illia (root.near) (πΊπ¦, β) retweeted
I almost buried this interview.
Back in February, I sat down with @ilblackdragon the Founder of $NEAR.
The quality wasnβt perfect.
I was traveling.
The window to film it was tiny.
So I never released it.
But the conversation never left my mind.
We talked about AI, crypto, capitalism, sovereignty, agents, privacy, robotics, and what happens when software stops being software and becomes intelligence.
This was the first time I really understood why blockchain may not just be βfinance infrastructureββ¦
It may be the only thing that stops AI from becoming owned by a few centralized gods.
User-owned AI.
Private agents.
Sovereign data.
A post-SaaS world.
A post-AGI society.
This conversation changed my entire worldview.
Releasing it now.
Hope you enjoy.
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