Illia Polosukhin（NEAR Protocol）談 AI 與金融的預設隱私新時代

0:00NEAR 的起點與願景

0:00大家好，很高興來到這裡，謝謝大家的參與。我是 Transformer 架構的共同作者之一，這項架構也是大型語言模型（LLM）與 GPT 的基礎。我們其實在 2017 年就以 AI 公司身分創立了 NEAR，當時其實有點太早了，沒有足夠的運算資源來訓練真正大型的語言模型。不過我們後來發現，要協調和建立很多 AI 系統，其實需要區塊鏈來做協作。因此我們在 2018 年決定打造這個協議，並一路持續建設到現在。Okay, well, it's great to be here. Thank you everyone for coming. Let's dive in. For those who are not familiar with me, I'm one of the co-inventors of LLM, the TNGPT, and we started actually Near as an AI company in 2017. We're a little bit too early. We didn't have enough compute to train the really large language models, but we ended up actually realizing that you do need a blockchain to coordinate to establish effectively a lot of the AI systems. And so we decided to build the protocol in 2018 and been building ever since.

0:44有些人可能是因為幣圈週期才認識 NEAR。2021 年時，我們主要專注在把核心區塊鏈做大規模擴展，讓它更容易用、更可程式化。但從那之後，我們開始打造一個完整、垂直整合的技術堆疊，聚焦在隱私，並實現我們的願景：AI 和代理人會成為你體驗運算的前端，而區塊鏈和市場則是後端，負責協調這些 AI 如何一起運作。今天我要分享的，就是這個方向。Some of you may have seen NEAR kind of through some of the cycles, and so this is a catch-up cycle, right? We've seen a lot of the kind of older protocols coming back with force. And so back in 2021, right, NEAR was really focused just kind of getting the core blockchain scale, make it easy to use, make it kind of truly programmable. But since then, we've actually been building out. A fully vertically integrated stack focused on privacy, focused on delivering the experience and the vision that we have, where the AI, the agents are going to be the front end, the way you experience computing, and the blockchain, the markets are going to be the back end, how these AIs are coordinating and working together. And so this is kind of what I'm presenting today.

1:32從產品出發：Near.com 的隱私體驗

1:32通常我都會先講技術堆疊，但今天我想反過來，先從產品談起。今年初我們推出了 Near.com，這是一個鏈上交易所，你可以在這裡交易、互動，不用擔心 gas 費、不用煩惱跨鏈，也不用面對過去五六年大家在 DeFi 和多鏈世界常遇到的複雜性。你可以用任何方式登入，像是 Passkey、Touch ID、Face ID，或直接用你現有的 EVM、Solana、Tron、Stellar 錢包登入。這完全是非託管式的，讓你可以同時持有加密貨幣、股票、永續合約等資產，體驗起來就像一般消費者產品，不會覺得自己在用鏈上服務。Usually I talk about all the technology and all the kind of stacks of the build, but for the first time I'm going to flip it and I'm going to start with product, right? So earlier this year we launched Near.com. It's on-chain exchange, right? This is a single place that you can go and you can trade, you can interact with blockchains, and you don't need to worry about gas, you don't need to worry about chains, you don't need to worry about all of the things that Kind of we got used to trying to interface with all of the blockchains and DeFi over the past kind of five, six years. It starts that you can log in with anything, passkey, right, something you have on your devices now, very easy, you know, Touch or Face ID, or you can use your existing wallets from EVMs, from Solana, from Tron, from Stellar. And log in into this experience. So it's fully non-custodial, and it allows you to hold assets across crypto, across stocks, across perps. And effectively have a singular experience that doesn't feel like you're on chain, that doesn't feel like you're, you know, struggling with the kind of the complexity of the blockchains, but really seems like a true consumer experience.

2:47重點是，Near.com 上所有資產、持倉都是私密的，等下我會講技術細節。你可以匿名交易，不像傳統鏈上，所有交易、資產都公開透明，大家都看得到你做了什麼。這裡一切都是私密的，你可以從任何資產換到任何資產，像是 Zcash 兌 NEAR、USDC 兌 Bitcoin 等等，完全不用管底層怎麼執行。Now, the important part is everything you have in Near.com is private. Your balances, your positions are all private, and I'll talk about technology later. Now, it also means you can trade confidentially as well. Again, usually when you're on-chain, you literally leave all of the information about just every single trade public, right? Everybody sees what all the assets you have and what trades you've executed. This allows to actually have everything private, and you— You can go from any asset to any asset, right? Zcash to NEAR, USDC to whatever, Bitcoin, etc. And you don't need, again, think about the kind of complexity that executes underneath.

3:28多元資產：股票、永續合約、質押與隱私

3:28我們最近也上線了股票交易，現在已經可以交易超過 500 檔股票，未來會持續增加。我們跟 Ondo 合作，讓這個產品像傳統股票交易所一樣好用，但你可以在全球任何地方、用非託管方式體驗。同樣地，你的持倉資訊也是保密的。永續合約部分，我們跟 Hyperliquid 合作，讓你可以在同一個地方做多 Zcash、或 20 倍槓桿做多銅（因為 AI 產業發展），所有資產都集中在一個平台。這些持倉、帳戶餘額、資金規模都是保密的，不像你自己橋接到 Hyperliquid 時，大家都能看到你錢包裡有多少錢。Now, we just launched as well stocks, right? So this is something that allows you to actually trade over 500 stocks already, and we're going to be adding more and more to— To the product as well, we partnered with Ondo, and we're going to be expanding kind of the set here as well. This feels like a normal, you know, you're trading with a centralized kind of traditional stock exchange, but it's available everywhere, kind of as you're using in a non-custodial way this product. Again, and everything, your position is confidential. Similarly with perps, right, we partner with Hyperliquid on the back end, and you're able from the same place, you can, you know, take your long Zcash position. You can also go and, you know, buy some 20x long on copper because of course AI built out, and, you know, have all of this in one place. Again, from a Hyperliquid position. It's confidential on what is your balance, what is your account, how much money you have on it, right? This is something that right now, if you try to go and bridge to Hyperliquid, everybody will see exactly kind of what's in your wallet.

4:41還有 Earn 功能，如果你有閒置資金，可以放到穩定幣產品或各種質押池，平台會幫你預估收益。從池子的角度來看，只會看到有資金進來，完全不知道是誰、從哪裡來、放了多少。這讓你可以輕鬆管理、支付、交易所有資產，不用再像傳統鏈上一樣，搞一堆地址、用 Excel 標記、怕資料外洩，還要手動搬錢。這種體驗過去幾個月已經開始爆紅。Finally, you have the same thing with Earn, right? If you have funds at rest, you can go and put them into your Stablecoin product or staking across all these places. There's a very nice kind of projection that shows you how much you're going to earn and different aspects of the different pools. And again, from a pool perspective, they just see money coming in. They don't know who. And how much you put in from where. And so this really creates this experience where you can have all of your money, you can spend, you can pay, you can trade. You don't need to worry about how exactly it's done, right? You know, compare this to a traditional on-chain way. You know, I have a hundred addresses, I have a spreadsheet, I have, like, labels on each one, who I paid from which one to make sure I don't, like, cross-reference anything. Then I need to, like, move. The funds around. All of this is effectively gone, and this experience has been, you know, catching fire over the past couple of months.

5:38AI 代理人與自動化未來

5:38展望未來，我剛剛提到 AI 會成為你的主要體驗介面。我們的目標是讓這個平台成為你的代理人基地，所有智慧都能在你的投資組合和交易上自動運作。接下來幾週我們會推出自動化功能，讓你用自然語言設定條件，例如 Zcash 漲了就自動買進，不用自己記得半夜起床操作。你可以用任何條件、任何 AI 能理解的智慧來擴展自動化。因為這些 AI 會用到你的私密資料和投資組合，所以 AI 本身也必須是私密的，這等下會細講。這一切都是為了打造一個完全鏈抽象化的體驗，你只要用自然語言溝通，不會再有「加密太難」的門檻。我們相信這會吸引越來越多新使用者進入區塊鏈世界。Now, if we project forward, right, I mentioned AI is going to be your experience. And so kind of where we're looking forward is actually turning this into your agent, your kind of agentic home base, where you have all of the intelligence running on top of. Your kind of existing portfolio and existing trades, and allowing to actually start executing things in the background. A specific thing we're going to launch in the coming weeks is ability to automate a lot of the activity, right? Think of, you know, Zcash is booming. You want to, you know, start buying into it. You don't want to manually, you know, remember, wake up to do this. You can just set up an automation. With natural language, tell it what to do. And importantly, you can kind of expand that with any set of criteria, with any set of intelligence that AI can analyze and understand. Now, because it uses all of your private data, and it Effectively has access to all of your portfolio. This AI itself needs to be private as well, and so we'll talk about that. But all of this experience effectively is targeted to create something that blockchain haven't seen before, which is completely chain-abstracted on-chain experience, where you're just using, you're just explaining, you're just kind of talking natural language. And you're not having this barrier that we've kind of got used to with crypto, that it's too complicated, it's too hard. This experience has been transformative, and we expect more and more new people coming in into blockchain with this.

7:13NEAR Intents：跨鏈、跨市場的流動性協作

7:13這一切背後的關鍵技術是我們的 NEAR Intents。它讓跨鏈執行變得簡單，使用者不用煩惱資產怎麼移動、誰提供流動性，可以直接串接所有鏈的流動性。你只要提出「意圖請求」（intent request），就會有不同的 solver 或代理人來報價、執行，告訴你需要多少時間、多少費用。這些 solver 可以連接不同區塊鏈，也可以連接中心化交易所，甚至 Nasdaq。傳統股票市場需要大量靜態流動性來支撐每一檔股票，但 NEAR Intents 可以在有人下單時，solver 直接去 Nasdaq 買、即時代幣化、送到你錢包，不用預先準備巨額資金。這種架構讓你可以串接全球各種市場，甚至私有市場，真正實現流動性聯合。Now, behind the scenes, one of the main things that enabled this is our near-intent technology. This is what really enables a cross-chain execution in such a way that you as a user don't need to think about how the assets are going to move, who is going to provide liquidity, and really tap in into all the liquidity across different chains, right? This starts with effectively saying, hey, I want this outcome, so that's what we call intent request. And then you have different solvers or agents who then say, hey, cool, I can execute that, and it's going to take this much time, and it's going to take this much money to do that. And then they can go and tap in into different blockchains or As we're expanding the set of assets that this works is now across venues, right? So this is not just trading on-chain, right, across, you know, Solana, Base, Near. It's also trading across centralized exchanges because solvers can tap into that liquidity. It also trades across Nasdaq. So one of the problems, for example, with stocks traditionally is that it's a lot of— Liquidity at rest that's required to bootstrap every single asset, right? If you want to have 500 stocks, you effectively need normally 500 pools with at least, you know, a couple million dollars each, right? And so now you're effectively into a billion dollars just on itself to bootstrap liquidity for this market. Instead, with Near Intents, you flip the script. You effectively say, hey, at the time when somebody wants to buy a million dollars worth of Nvidia, the solver can say, cool, I'll actually buy it on Nasdaq, tokenize it in the moment, and deliver it to your wallet, right? Removing this kind of atomicity requirement that we got used to in blockchain, and really moving this into this intent architecture, now you can tap in into all of the different markets around the world and really get a union of liquidity across all of them. And so. This also means, you know, you can have like private venues trading here as well. You can have markets globally tap into this.

9:11再往前一步，這其實不限於金融資產，任何合約都可以這樣做。舉例來說，你可以用自然語言請求分析、程式碼審查、買房、訂場地等，代理人會來報價、執行，甚至可以發 email、聯絡人、完成任務，就像真人或公司一樣。這讓我們從單純金融資產，進化到直接用意圖驅動各種結果，這就是 NEAR Intents 的進化方向。Now, if you take this one step further, this really is about any contract, right? If we usually talk about kind of smart contracts on chain, here we're really talking about any kind of outcome that you would really want a counterparty to partner with, right? And so the example of this is an agent market where you have effectively a natural language request, right? I need some analysis, I need a code review, I need to buy a, you know, house, or I need to book a venue for an event. And agents can effectively come in and say, cool, I'll actually execute this. It'll take maybe, you know, a couple days to— completion, and you establish this intent, and then they go and effectively can, you know, email, they can talk to people, they can actually execute all of this as if they were individuals or companies executing this. And so the idea is that we're moving away from just, you know, financial assets to now effectively willing. And into existence the outcomes we want directly through this experience. So that's kind of how Near Intents is evolving as it goes.

10:29AI 與隱私：NEAR AI 與機密運算

10:29要讓這一切成立，隱私是最重要的。你提出的意圖不能被市場其他人知道，不然有人可能會搶先一步、搶你要租的場地。所以 AI 端也必須有隱私，這就是我們在 NEAR AI 上努力的方向。NEAR AI 是我們的去中心化機密運算平台，從資產和交易的隱私技術延伸，做到你的 AI 提問和回應都能端對端加密。傳統 AI API 你根本不知道資料怎麼被用，也不知道回應是不是來自你預期的模型，甚至有研究發現有些路由器會插入惡意指令，讓你的代理人執行惡意程式碼。NEAR AI 用端對端加密解決這些問題，讓你能驗證對方 GPU、CPU 型號，還有模型的 hash 和簽章，這些都可以在 playground 上檢查，也能嵌入你的軟體。Venice、Brave 等專案已經在用這套技術。Now, for this really to work, right, the privacy is going to be paramount, right? You need to make sure that when you're asking for a specific outcome, that that outcome is not going to leak across, you know, whole market, that everybody will be tipped off, or that somebody will effectively be in adverse position, right, and try to swoop in and rent the same venue you're trying to rent. And so you need privacy on the AI side as well, and that's— What we've been working on on the Near AI side, Near AI is effectively our kind of decentralized confidential computing platform, and it starts really with the same technology we use for privacy for assets and trading, we use to enable end-to-end encryption for your prompts and for your responses. Again. To compare it with the current world, right, when you're hitting some API endpoint for AI, you have no idea what's going on inside. You have no idea if the— You know, recording your data and using it, we've seen a lot of news around that. You don't actually know if the response is coming from the model you expect. And importantly, there's been studies where some of the routers actually are malicious and insert malicious Bash commands into the outputs for your agents, and effectively can insert and execute malicious code on your machine by you just using some API endpoint. This is effectively addressed with NEAR AI by enabling an end-to-end encryption, where you effectively have a guarantee to a specific GPU with a specific model running on the other side. And so, to really get that, you have with Near AI an ability to verify the exact GPU and CPU hardware that's running for your workload. You have provenance, hash, and signatures available for you, and this is an example of our playground. You can inspect this, and you can embed this into your software. And Venice, Brave, and others are already using this to really provide this experience. And so this is how we make sure that it's not just your kind of on-chain experience, but also your intelligence experience stays private.

12:35NEAR 技術進展：動態分片與後量子安全

12:35回到底層技術，我們已經建設 NEAR 超過八年。今年我們推出了動態分片（dynamic resharding），這是我們 2019 年就列在路線圖上的目標。要讓區塊鏈真正支援 AI 和金融世界，不能像傳統鏈一樣容量有限。動態分片讓區塊大小能隨需求成長，同時維持固定手續費。另一個重大進展是我們的後量子加密路線圖。我們已經上線用 ML-DSA 來控管 NEAR 帳號，讓你可以換鑰匙、冷錢包存放十年都不用怕量子電腦破解。這是業界第一個上線的，讓生態系有最長時間適應。當然還有共識和鏈簽章等加密細節要做，明天我會細講。Now, coming back to the underlying technology, right? We've been building NEAR for over eight years, and it's been obviously a long journey. This year, we actually released dynamic resharding. This has been kind of one of the things we put out on our roadmap back in 2019, when we established that for blockchain to truly scale, to be able to enable this kind of AI and Financial world we're outlining, you cannot have a limited capacity of traditional blockchains. And so dynamic resharding really enables to grow the block size as there is more demand coming and continue maintaining fixed fees for the whole thing. Now, the other thing we've recently published is our post-quantum roadmap. We've released actually. And the ability to control NIR accounts with post-quantum secure cryptography, MLDSA, which enables you to effectively, you know. Replace keys on NEAR account right now. You know, go disappear for 10 years, so put it in a cold storage and not worry about quantum computers coming in. We released it now as one of the first, if not the first one. Available because we want to give the maximum time for the whole ecosystem to adapt and kind of implement this. There's a lot of other pieces that needs to be done to be fully post-quantum around cryptography of the consensus and our chain signatures technology. And if you want to learn more about this, I'm going to be kind of talking in more detail tomorrow.

14:11鏈簽章、Confidential Shard 與跨鏈互動

14:11另一個關鍵組件是鏈簽章（chain signatures），這是一個多方計算網路，讓 NEAR 智慧合約可以自己簽交易，不用靠外部錢包。這也是 NEAR Intents 和其他創新應用的基礎。這個網路已經在全球運作。為了推動隱私，今年初我們推出 Confidential Shard，讓你的資產、交易、Earn、股票都能在同一個分片上保密運作，未來還會擴大。這些技術讓 NEAR 不只自己可擴展、抗量子，還能跟其他鏈互動，NEAR 智慧合約可以跟任何鏈的合約溝通。這一切都包裝在 NEAR Intents，成為市場中的市場基礎設施。Now. One of the other key components that we have is called chain signatures. This is actually a multi-party computation network that enables a way for NEAR smart contracts to sign transactions. And so this is, again, the first time you can actually have smart contracts sign transactions, not just kind of external wallets. And this is what enables near intents and a lot of other really cool use cases to be built. And so this is just an example of kind of visualizing how this network is operating. Around the world. Finally, I mentioned, right, everything has been moving into privacy, and so to enable that, early this year we'll launch Confidential Shard, right? This is the kind of enabler for running your balances, your trading, your earn, your stocks, all confidentially. And it's all done effectively as, for now, a single shard, and we're going to be expanding that as well. And so all of those pieces together, really, to enable a scalable blockchain that is proof for future usage, both on scale and on. Post-quantum, and it enables you to really program not just for NEAR blockchain itself, but really for any blockchain, right? Your NEAR smart contracts can actually interact and transact with any other smart contract around any other chain. And all of this is being kind of packaged into NEAR Intents, which is this kind of market of markets infrastructure.

15:37代理人 API 與使用者自主權

15:37我剛剛提到代理人會越來越多使用者採用，我們也會推出 Agents API，讓代理人可以直接簽意圖、執行交易。你可以設定代理人的權限和限制，就像請理財經理幫你管錢，不會直接把所有錢都交給他，而是設限、超過要回報。這個 API 可以直接串接你的私密意圖和餘額，讓你用自己的代理人或 Near.com 內建代理人來操作。這些基礎設施，都是為了讓使用者端產品能有順暢體驗，未來產品會越來越「代理人化」。Now, importantly, I mentioned agents are going to be coming more and more. of users already. And we're going to be launching another kind of piece of infrastructure for them. We call it Agents API that enables agents. You know, right now you would give them a key, they can sign intents, they can already transact and do actions. But you really want them to have a little bit more of a policy of how they can execute, right? Imagine you hire someone to manage money. You're probably not going to give them, you know, okay, here's all the money, go, you know, at it. You would say, hey, look, here's the restrictions, here's the limits, and, you know, if you want to go outside of them, come back to me and get an approval. And so this actually enables this exact API, plugging in directly into your private intents, into your private balance, and enables for you to plug in either your agent or your kind of the agent from Near.com. To execute and interact with it directly. So all of these pieces together, just kind of to show you that the customer product, right, that we're building is based on a massive amount of infrastructure to enable a smooth experience. And we're going to continue enabling and developing this for the world where your products are becoming more and more agentic, right? The previous speaker was talking about how the— Financial advisory itself makes sense to be fully agentic and actually executor of this. And some of these missing pieces are really being these types of kind of backend to enable it. And all of this is going to drive more and more adoption for NEAR itself, right?

17:14NEAR Intents 成績與未來展望

17:14舉個例子，NEAR Intents 上線一年半以來，已經處理超過 330 億美元交易量，上個月就有 40 億，還在持續成長。這是所有人都能用的基礎設施，支援 Web3 各種應用。Confidential Shard 上線後，資金流入也大幅成長，大家都開始用它來保密存放、交易、管理資產。隱私已經不是梗圖，而是真正大家都能用的產品，體驗也能媲美中心化交易所。And so this is just to give you an example of where we are already over kind of last. I guess a year and a half since we launched the NEAR Intents, it's processed over 33 billion in volume. I think last month was over 4 billion on itself, and we see continuous growth coming through that. It's an infrastructure that is available for everyone to tap in and to develop, right, to use across lots and lots of different existing applications in Web3. And then as we launched the confidential shard and kind of been enabling more and more features through it. We've seen a massive growth as well of the money moving in into confidential shard to store confidentially, to have the kind of trading and balances all being private. And so really exciting to see kind of the Like, the privacy is not a meme anymore. It's really now a product that everybody can use, and it's really experience that is compatible to what you normally have with centralized exchanges.

18:18邀請參與：使用者、開發者都能加入

18:18最後，我們有推薦計畫，這是個很棒的機會，讓 Web3 內外的人都能來體驗 Near.com。我鼓勵大家自己來試試，也邀請親友一起用這種全新體驗，不用再分開管理各種鏈上資產。如果你是開發者，也可以自己打造 Near.com、串接 API、運行自己的代理人。相關文件都在我們的 docs，歡迎大家加入。謝謝大家，讓我們一起走向隱私時代！Now, just to finish off. We have a referral program, and so if you're familiar with kind of the referral programs of before, this is a really great opportunity to actually bring all the people in Web3 and outside to actually experience this, right? And so I'm encouraging everyone to kind of tap in yourself into Near.com and bring all your friends and family to start using this experience versus still trying to kind of Manage all the different kind of on-chain experiences separately. Now, if you are a builder, you can actually build your own Near.com. You can build all of those pieces yourself. You can run your agents off it. And so there's an API on our docs that you can tap in as well. So thank you very much, and let's go private.