Illia Polosukhin Says NEAR May Cut Centralized Exchanges Out of Many Trades

Polosukhin's Exchange-Free Case in Singapore

If Illia Polosukhin's read of the market is right, a growing slice of what a centralized exchange does today simply stops being necessary. The NEAR Protocol (NEAR) co-founder told the Digital Asset Summit 2026 stage in Singapore on Wednesday, October 7 that on-chain infrastructure has reached the point where users no longer need centralized venues for many crypto trades, according to remarks published from the summit. The qualification matters: in his wording, exchanges are unneeded for “many things,” not for everything.

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According to remarks published from the summit.

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The claim rests on near.com, the trading interface NEAR has been assembling. It already brings spot trading across different blockchain networks, perpetual futures, the indefinitely rolling derivative contracts familiar from centralized venues, yield products and tokenized stocks into one screen, with assets crossing networks through bridge protocol mechanics inside NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Intents rather than through a separate exchange account. Polosukhin described the platform as unfinished, but said it has come close to the point where it can stand in for a centralized exchange across a large set of everyday tasks. What is missing sits at the system's edges. The roadmap adds withdrawals to bank accounts, new fiat on-ramps, transaction records formatted for tax filing, and selective disclosure in private transactions. Most of NEAR Intents now runs on a privacy shard, which keeps a user's trading activity hidden while still allowing details of a specific transaction to be shared when a regulator or counterparty requires it. How much of that replacement actually lands, and what it does to the NEAR price, comes down to shipping the rest of the plan.

The equity leg of the strategy is already live in one form. near.com gained access to tokenized stocks in September through an Ondo Finance integration, and Polosukhin's worked example runs from euros straight into a tokenized NVDA share. That path removes a chore: a user who wants equity exposure next to crypto today usually funds a broker and an exchange separately and moves money between them. The next target is geography rather than product. He said NEAR Protocol (NEAR) plans to add shares from more markets worldwide, and the existing Monerium integration already moves balances between euros in a bank account and the EURe stablecoin across an IBAN rail. His long-term goal for NEAR Intents is any-asset-to-any-asset conversion, with dollar-euro and Singapore dollar-Hong Kong dollar conversions as his examples. The NEAR Protocol roadmap extends past financial assets, too. He framed AI agents as a coming interface between users and on-chain markets, an “AI front end, blockchain back end” model in which a user states a task in natural language through Agent Market, the system finds a suitable agent, and payment sits in escrow until the job verifies. None of that stands apart from security. NEAR Intents absorbed an attack of roughly $3.8 million on Thursday, October 1, traced to a flaw in how the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract. Services were halted and NEAR cross-chain swaps were paused until the vulnerability was patched and operations resumed. The funds taken in the attack were returned in full, and affected users were told their losses would be covered. The episode lands in a month when the token holds $4.92 after a near-tripling from $1.80 in September, so the security record is being weighed alongside the roadmap.

Liquidity, Security and the $3.8M Record

The load-bearing document here is Polosukhin's own summit statement, and it claims a gap is closing, not closed. For a layer-1 blockchain protocol like NEAR, the mechanism connecting this roadmap to fee demand runs through usage: every swap, settlement or tokenized-share trade that settles on-chain instead of on a venue is activity the protocol captures. What the statement does not settle is the competitive side. Liquidity depth, fiat compliance and user experience decide whether traders actually move, and the $3.8M October exploit is the standing argument for caution. What survives either way is narrower but firm: near.com's current product set, the Ondo and Monerium integrations, and a returned $3.8M.