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NEAR’s New Token Utility and AI Economy | Illia Polosukhin

August 11, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

NEAR’s co-founder Illia Polosukhin laid out a tightly integrated vision for the near token: it is becoming the native money for an emerging AI economy. The core mechanism is simple—stake NEAR to get AI inference—but the implications ripple across the entire stack, from confidential computing to autonomous agents to a transparent compute marketplace.

The AI Cloud: Confidential and Verifiable Inference

The foundation is the NEAR AI Cloud, a confidential and verifiable computing platform. Unlike standard AI providers, the cloud ensures two properties that matter when money or sensitive data is at stake. First, confidentiality: no one—not even the GPU operator—can see what prompts you send or what responses you get. This is achieved through trusted execution environments (TEEs), which carry some hardware-level trust assumptions but are pragmatic for now. Second, verifiability: every inference returns a signed attestation that proves exactly which model was used, what prompt was sent, and what output came back. As Polosukhin put it, “you actually have no idea what you’re getting back” from other providers, who may rewrite prompts, censor outputs, or even inject malicious responses. With NEAR AI Cloud, the full chain of provenance—from GPU to CPU to encryption hashes—is visible and auditable.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:02) **Episode Introduction & Near Token Upgrade** - The host frames the big announcement: the NEAR token now formally integrates with the NEAR AI Cloud, allowing users to pay for inference by staking NEAR.
  • 2 (01:08) **What is the NEAR AI Cloud?** - Illia explains the core of the platform: a confidential and verifiable computing platform for AI inference.
  • 3 (09:59) **The New Token Utility: Staking NEAR for AI** - The host asks how staking NEAR pays for the actual cost of GPU inference.
  • 4 (16:27) **Connecting the Stack: Iron Claw, Intents, and the Token Economy** - Illia explains how the AI inference, the agent framework (Iron Claw), and the cross-chain settlement layer (Intents) all connect.
  • 5 (19:36) **The NEAR Value Capture Story: "AI Money"** - The host asks for a single articulation of how the NEAR token captures value across this vertical stack.
  • 6 (24:00) **The Autonomy Thesis** - The host connects the NEAR stack to the concept of truly autonomous AI agents that are "always on."
  • 7 (28:57) **White-Labeling the NEAR AI Cloud: Partners and Use Cases** - The host notes that products like Venice and Brave are integrating the NEAR AI Cloud as a white-label solution for private, verifiable inference.

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Guests on this episode

Illia Polosukhin

Show Notes

What if staking a token could keep an AI agent thinking? NEAR cofounder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain NEAR’s new staking-powered inference model, where yield funds access to confidential and verifiable AI. They unpack how NEAR AI Cloud, IronClaw, Intents, and the NEAR token fit into one integrated economy for autonomous agents, why AI outputs may need cryptographic proof when money is at stake, and how GPU compute could become a liquid global market.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Private, Verifiable AI
4:57 Why AI Outputs Need Proof
9:13 From Staking Yield to Inference
16:16 NEAR’s Integrated AI Stack
20:01 NEAR as AI Money
24:27 Autonomous Businesses
28:51 Partners and Real-World Uses
33:26 What NEAR Ships Next
38:01 Where AI Value Accrues
40:56 The AI Operating System
48:07 Turning Compute Into a Market
51:48 Closing Thoughts

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RESOURCES

Illia Polosukhin
https://x.com/j0hnwang

Near revenue
https://revenue.near.org/

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