San Francisco, California – $NEAR has launched Near.com, a new cryptocurrency wallet and consumer app that aims to make blockchain technology feel as easy as using traditional financial apps, while also sitting at the intersection of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI).
Polosukhin previously co-authored a paper introducing the Transformer Model, the architecture that underpins modern AI systems such as ChatGPT and many other large-scale language models, and is increasingly focused on how blockchain infrastructure can support the next wave of AI-driven applications.
“We are entering a world where AI is becoming the interface for computing,” Poloskin said during his presentation.
$NEAR The token has fallen nearly 3% in the past 24 hours.
At its core, Near.com is designed to remove much of the friction that has long made crypto confusing for everyday users. Instead of worrying about gas fees, private keys, or switching between different blockchains, users can manage their assets in one place.
“You don’t have to think about blockchain. You don’t have to think about gas or keys,” Poloskin said. “Just use it as your main wallet.”
Near.com supports a variety of digital assets including Bitcoin, stablecoins, NFTs, and other tokens. The idea is to bring together activities that typically span multiple wallets and networks into a single, streamlined interface.
Near.com Super App (Margaux Nijkerk/CoinDesk)
but $NEAR’s ambitions go beyond just building another wallet. The company is betting that the next big wave of cryptocurrencies will come from merging with AI.
As AI agents become more capable of booking travel, managing emails, and processing online purchases, transactional capabilities will become increasingly necessary. That’s where crypto infrastructure comes into play. Blockchain can provide programmable payments, global money transfers, and automated payments without relying on traditional intermediaries.
Poloskin argued that once AI systems begin to interact with each other, they effectively become “economic actors,” software programs that negotiate, pay, and coordinate tasks. In that world, cryptocurrencies become the financial layer that enables the activities of these agents.
Near.com is designed to serve as that layer, serving as an easy-to-use wallet for people and an economic backend for AI-driven activities.
An important part of this announcement is privacy. One of the long-standing trade-offs of blockchain is transparency. Transactions are usually visible to everyone. While this openness builds trust, it can also expose sensitive financial information to disclosure.
“Everything we do on-chain is transparent,” Poloskin said. “This is not practical for normal use cases or everyday use.”
To deal with this, $NEAR We have introduced “Confidential Mode” within Near.com. This feature allows you to keep your balances, transfers, and trading activity private within the network’s security framework. The company says this will make the wallet more practical not only for individuals and businesses, but also for AI agents who need to trade without revealing their strategies or sensitive data.
This launch signals broader changes in the world $NEAR.
“We have the stack. We have all the components. We have the product,” Poloskin said. “We’re now switching to a way to actually scale adoption, to bring this to billions of people around the world.”
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