Bankless|27. Mai
NEAR Is Powering Every App You Use — And It's Still Mispriced
Overview
In this episode, Bankless host discusses with Sal Trello (CEO of Sovereign) why NEAR is quietly powering many fast-growing crypto apps like Zashi, Infinex, and Venice AI. Despite multiple narrative pivots, NEAR has found product-market fit with NEAR Intents – a cross-chain abstraction layer that enables seamless swaps and unified liquidity.
NEAR Intents: The Breakthrough- Over $20 billion in volume processed, $30+ million in fees generated.
- Used by apps for cross-chain swaps, on-ramping, and private AI inference.
- Fees are burned, creating buy pressure on NEAR tokens (similar to EIP-1559 but at the app layer).
- Protocol emissions reduced to 2.5% annualized; validators voted for this.
- NEAR Intents fees now permanently remove NEAR from circulation (~3 million NEAR burned so far).
- Sal argues the token is mispriced at $2B market cap; fundamentals alone (human usage) suggest $4-6B.
- NEAR’s grand vision is AI Money – a settlement layer for autonomous agents.
- NEAR AI and Ironclaw provide private, user-owned AI infrastructure.
- Agents will transact at high frequency, driving massive volume through intents.
- Privacy features (confidential transactions) appeal to enterprises and retail.
- Sovereign (SVRN) is a for-profit treasury company focused on driving NEAR adoption.
- Active governance (MPC node incentives) and go-to-market support.
- Acts as a capital markets and commercial bridge, similar to Strategy for Bitcoin.
NEAR is not just another L1; it’s an infrastructure layer for cross-chain and AI agent commerce. With strong fundamentals, real adoption, and a clear narrative, Sal believes the asset is significantly undervalued both now and especially in the agentic future.
