A Co-Creator of the AI Transformer Quietly Runs This Blockchain. The Market Just Noticed.
Most people don't know this: Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, is one of the 8 co-authors of "Attention Is All You Need" — the 2017 paper that modern AI and every LLM are built on. He left Google to build NEAR. So NEAR's pivot to "the chain for AI agents" isn't a narrative grab — it's coming from someone who helped write the narrative. 👇
🤖 What's live (not roadmap)
• NEAR Intents — you state a desired outcome, the chain finds the route and settles it across 30+ chains. ~$18.8B volume to date.
• Confidential Intents — private balances, swaps, agent strategies.
• Confidential AI inference — private model execution onchain.
📊 Why the move now (NEAR +63% in 30 days)
• Bitwise NEAR staking ETP pulling inflows (~$3M last week, ~$36M AUM)
• VC unlocks effectively done — no more sell overhang
• Renewed institutional + AI-agent narrative momentum
🤔 The tension
~$3B market cap. A co-creator of transformers at the helm. $18.8B in intent volume. ETP inflows. Yet for two years the market priced NEAR like a forgotten L1. Either it stays mispriced — or "slow chain" was the misread.
🎯 Bottom line
NEAR didn't chase the AI narrative — it was built by someone who helped write it. Hype or real usage, the volume and the inflows are the part that doesn't lie.
DYOR. Not financial advice.