NEAR co-founder: On-chain tools are reducing the need for centralized exchanges, near.com will expand fiat and tokenized stock features.

October 7 — NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin said at the Singapore 2026 Digital Asset Summit that as on-chain tools expand, users no longer need centralized exchanges for many crypto activities. near.com integrates cross-chain spot trading, tokenized stocks, yield products, and perpetual contracts into a single interface, and is advancing features such as bank withdrawals, tax transaction records, and selective disclosure for confidential transactions.

Polosukhin said the platform will add more fiat-related features. NEAR has partnered with Monerium to support users in converting between euros in bank accounts via IBAN and EURe, with the ultimate goal of enabling NEAR Intents to support "any asset to any asset" swaps. After integrating Ondo Finance in September, near.com already offers tokenized stocks and plans to add stocks from more global markets.

He also said: "AI is the front end, and blockchain is the back end." NEAR's Agent Market extends the intent model to natural language tasks, allowing users to describe their needs while the platform finds agents capable of executing the task. Funds are held in escrow and released after the task is completed and verified.