Interview with Illia, Co-founder of Near: From AI Legend to Blockchain Founder, Illia's Vision of AI and Crypto
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Interview with Illia, Co-founder of Near: From AI Legend to Blockchain Founder, Illia's Vision of AI and Crypto
How NEAR Leverages the Cutting Edges of AI and Crypto to Create a Better Future Through Chain Abstraction?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsInterview: Sunny & Bella, TechFlow
Guest: Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder & CEO
"The future is NEAR."
This might be the most well-known meme. From early sharding scalability to today’s chain abstraction, NEAR has continuously evolved its narrative. Yet this year, NEAR stepped into the spotlight because of AI.
On March 20, Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol—affectionately nicknamed "Yi Long" in the Chinese crypto community—joined NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang on stage at GTC24 for the “Transforming AI” keynote and panel discussion. This appearance cemented NEAR’s identity as an AI blockchain, capturing significant market attention.
So, is NEAR related to AI? Upon closer inspection, it's deeply connected.
Before entering the crypto industry, NEAR Protocol founder Illia Polosukhin was an AI scientist who contributed extensively to Google’s artificial intelligence project TensorFlow.
In late 2017, a groundbreaking paper titled “Attention Is All You Need” emerged, introducing the Transformer neural network architecture that now underpins modern natural language processing and artificial intelligence. This seminal work laid the foundation for today’s AI revolution—and Illia was one of its co-authors.
In November 2023, NEAR officially launched NEAR Tasks, a blockchain-based AI data annotation platform. Model training requesters (vendors) can post tasks and upload raw datasets; users (taskers) participate by answering questions, performing text labeling, image recognition, and other manual data-processing tasks. Upon completion, participants are rewarded with NEAR tokens, and the human-annotated data is used to train corresponding AI models.
Perhaps Illia could proudly say: “In blockchain, no one understands AI better than me; in AI, no one understands blockchain better than me.”
Beyond AI, Near focuses on chain abstraction. In Illia’s view, the biggest challenge in the crypto world has always been the lack of sufficiently compelling applications.
As more blockchains and Layer 2s emerge, the crypto landscape grows increasingly complex. The chain abstraction championed by Near aims to make everything convenient and simple: allowing users to control accounts across multiple chains via a single NEAR account, conduct all transactions within one interface, without worrying about wallets, network switching, or gas fees.
Standing at the intersection of AI and Crypto, how will NEAR use chain abstraction to create a better future?
We sat down with NEAR Protocol founder Illia Polosukhin to explore Yi Long and NEAR’s vision.
TechFlow interview snippet with Illia at ETH Denver
From AI Legend to NEAR Founder
TechFlow:We’re doing this interview in Denver today. For hackers and students just entering the industry, could you introduce NEAR to help them understand its past, present, and future?
Illia:
It's important to understand that NEAR is not just a Layer 1 blockchain—it represents a comprehensive chain abstraction stack.
We initially focused on building a blockchain primarily to enable developers to build apps using common languages like Rust and JavaScript. You can also write in C++, and people are running Python in other programming environments. This flexibility truly opens up various use cases through account abstraction.
We launched our mainnet in 2020. It uses sharding technology, offers affordable fees, and can scale capacity continuously as demand increases. This scalability is achieved through so-called sharding, which essentially parallelizes execution and storage. We recently released an updated design of our Nightshade sharding approach, leveraging state validation for scaling.
Since then, we've seen various applications adopt Layer 1 blockchain technology. At the same time, we’ve partnered with many apps—including numerous existing Web2 platforms with large user bases eager to transition to Web3. This shift brings new economic models for their users, enables asset creation, and significantly reduces transaction costs.
For example, Cosmose AI and its app KAI-Ching moved from Stripe, the Web2 payment processor, to NEAR, saving substantial fees. As a result, it's not only more cost-effective than other Web3 options but also cheaper than Web2 solutions.
(TechFlow note: KAI-Ching is the native stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, operating on the NEAR network as part of Cosmose AI’s flagship product KaiKai. Founded in 2014, Cosmose AI is a consumer shopping data analytics platform serving over 20 million stores and 1 billion users globally, with clients including LVMH, GUCCI, BURBERRY, Cartier, Tencent, and Estée Lauder.)
Through these efforts, we’ve gained a massive number of users over the past year. NEAR has the most active users on blockchain, with over 1.2 million daily active users.
The transition toward chain abstraction has always been central to our vision. The way we built NEAR has consistently focused on abstracting the NEAR blockchain itself.
Over the past year, we've not only developed extensive infrastructure but also abstracted other chains—this was achieved through decentralized finance.
Take DapDap, for instance—we successfully integrated 14 different Layer 2 solutions and 150 distinct applications into a single front-end app, enabling users to discover and interact with dApps in one place without switching networks or bridging assets. This is the chain abstraction we've been striving to achieve. Next, we’ll launch account aggregation and begin building user AI infrastructure.
We expect all these components to be integrated together next year. So this is a phased plan: starting with core blockchain infrastructure enabling identity, payments, coordination; then building aggregated front-ends; achieving account aggregation to enable usage across other blockchains; and finally enabling user AI, integrating all functionalities together.
TechFlow:After founding an AI startup focused on teaching machines to program, what inspired you to create NEAR?
Illia:
My background is in machine learning. For about ten years, I worked at Google Research on various machine learning and AI research topics and applications. Together with the team, we worked on developing transformer technology—the “T” in “GPT.” This technology now makes possible most AI advancements and products available today.
In 2017, I left Google and started a new AI startup focused on teaching machines to code.
At the time, it seemed like science fiction. Now, it’s becoming reality.
We dove deep into data crowdsourcing, data labeling, and data creation, engaging volunteers—especially students—from China, Eastern Europe, and other regions.
However, we faced challenges sending payments from the U.S. to China, especially since some individuals lacked bank accounts. Similarly, making payments to Eastern European countries was difficult because certain Western payment systems were unavailable there.
Thus, we realized the necessity of using blockchain as a global payment network for our own use case. But when evaluating different blockchains to fulfill this function, none met our needs at the time.
As system engineers, we were thus motivated to invest in building this infrastructure ourselves.
From my perspective, NEAR is not just a blockchain—it's a comprehensive suite of services and a platform designed to enable unique experiences both within Web3 and beyond.
We're already seeing many applications leverage AI on our platform. I’m also beginning to discuss a long-term vision for autonomous operational systems—an AI-enabled system where users own personal AI agents that access private data directly on your device and generate personalized experiences, alongside community-owned AIs governed, funded, and deployed via decentralized technologies.
We’re witnessing convergence in this space. NEAR is building its future not as a single blockchain, but across the entire ecosystem.
Chain Abstraction: From Initial Concept, Design to Execution
TechFlow:Given your experience in AI and building AI products, it seems this influenced your methodology around chain abstraction. Can you explain what chain abstraction entails?
Illia:
Certainly, the concept of chain abstraction is relatively straightforward. It revolves around allowing users to interact with applications or make payments without needing to think about which blockchain they’re using. Essentially, it’s about eliminating the need for users to perceive blockchains as separate entities during their Web3 interactions.
One major reason for adopting this approach is that most Web3 users currently operate on centralized exchanges and lack self-custody. This is because directly using blockchains today is very complex. Users must set up everything—from fiat onramps to gas tokens, transaction fees, wallet setup, etc.
Instead, ideally, users should be able to log in via email or facial recognition and start transacting immediately—without thinking about specific blockchains, applications, or smart contracts.
With more chains and Layer 2s launching every day, the field is becoming increasingly complex. To simplify this process, unify liquidity, enhance user experience, and broadly integrate applications, chain abstraction is essential.
The idea of chain abstraction has existed and been necessary—but its importance is particularly pronounced right now. It embodies a universal principle.
TechFlow:You emphasized building infrastructure within the NEAR ecosystem, originally conceptualized with chain abstraction in mind, to simplify user experience and attract millions—or even billions—of users. Can you share examples of applications achieving this goal by drawing in large user bases?
Illia:
NEAR focuses on building infrastructure within the ecosystem to eliminate steps where users must interact with complex underlying technologies. Fundamentally, the core value proposition is that when users start using an application, they shouldn’t have to worry about blockchain specifics, transaction fees, or any infrastructure details.
We’ve already begun realizing this vision on NEAR. We launched meta-transactions and, thanks to apps like KAI-Ching and Sweatcoin, as well as the recent HOT app, attracted the largest user base in Web3—applications that abstract away blockchain complexity and brought in millions of users.
Starting next month, we’ll roll out account aggregation. This innovative approach allows NEAR accounts to transact across all chains. With a NEAR account, you’ll be able to send transactions on Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin. You’ll also be able to write smart contracts on NEAR that execute transactions across all these chains.
Therefore, while blockchains are part of our ecosystem, our focus isn’t on competing with other blockchains, but on improving user experience and attracting millions—ideally billions—of users.
First Principles Thinking on AI × Web3
TechFlow:You’ve been in AI for 10 years and have done extensive research. Can you share some first-principles thoughts on combining AI and blockchain?
Illia:
Imagine an experience where everything you see and interact with on your mobile device or any other device is fully owned by you.
You’re interacting with a local language model or AI engine that can generate applications, produce content, and represent you in interactions with others, agents, communities, and brands.
All of this is underpinned by cryptography and blockchain, ensuring that—for example—when you wake up in the morning wanting to read news, there’s a way to cryptographically verify that the content you receive is accurate and published by trusted sources—not generated or manipulated.
Your local model summarizes news from various sources and presents it based on your interests, offering specific and diverse perspectives from journalists and providers—all processed locally on your device.
From there, you might want to interact with something mentioned in the article—say, a brand. That brand also has its own model, which you can interact with. You communicate peer-to-peer, securely encrypted, and can make micro-payments to directly access information or services.
Thus, all these components work seamlessly together, focusing on enhancing your experience and enabling more personalized interactions with all these systems.
TechFlow:Given your rich experience in both AI and blockchain, what are the key differences between working in these two fields? What do you see as the biggest challenge in building AI models and commercializing their consumption compared to working in blockchain?
Illia:
This clearly depends on context, as working in AI and blockchain can involve many different activities.
Some may focus on developing foundational models, concentrating on training and enhancing them—work typically done in labs, whether in companies, startups, or academic settings. This is vastly different from creating consumer products that integrate AI models.
However, I believe building consumer products that utilize AI models—whether in Web3 or elsewhere—isn’t that different.
The main difference lies in the nature of the work: developing foundational models versus building consensus mechanisms or designing protocols—each requiring a unique set of skills and knowledge.
In blockchain, greater emphasis is placed on decentralization and distributed systems, identifying and mitigating worst-case scenarios.
Conversely, in foundational model training, the focus is on developing intuitive understanding of system behavior, involving extensive experimentation—running trials to determine what works and how to progressively refine models, architectures, and data inputs. This makes AI development inherently more exploratory, whereas blockchain development demands meticulous design to ensure stability and security.
At a granular level, the differences are significant, rooted in the types of skills and knowledge deemed essential.
Yet from a broader perspective, the differences may not be so stark.
In fact, it’s entirely possible to create applications that fully leverage both domains, opening vast opportunities for innovation.
The Worst Decision
TechFlow:During NEAR’s founding journey, what were the worst and best decisions you made?
Illia:
Actually, the worst decision was made in 2019. We were continuing our research on how to build a sharded blockchain.
We ended up developing a blockchain using Tendermint as the consensus mechanism.
We considered launching it but ultimately decided against it. Instead, we completed our research, developed our sharding design, and launched over a year later.
Looking back, I think this might have been the worst decision—because if we had launched in 2019, we would have had an extra year to build, experiment, and mature our tools, enabling earlier development of more applications.
Regardless, the sharding component was eventually integrated. Still, we managed to continuously upgrade and innovate our sharding design behind the scenes, effectively hiding this complexity from users, who don’t need to be aware of it when interacting with the blockchain.
That’s the essence of chain abstraction thinking.
From that standpoint, delaying our launch may have been our worst decision. Entering the market earlier would have accelerated tool maturity and developer education.
On the flip side, what was the best decision? That’s a good question. I believe launching NEAR, transitioning into blockchain, and truly focusing on tackling this challenge was an excellent decision. There was a clear need that matched our skillset. Bringing all this together and being able to attract an exceptionally skilled team with rich systems experience from top companies was a critical and timely move.
TechFlow:What do you think is the biggest problem facing NEAR or the blockchain industry today?
Illia:
So far, the biggest challenge has been the lack of sufficiently interesting applications.
A large part of this stems from heavy investment in infrastructure without corresponding investment in applications—especially consumer-facing apps and other domains.
Now that we have chain abstraction and other developments, we can launch applications regardless of the blockchain they operate on. We can reach all users in Web3, including newcomers. Therefore, I expect to see increased investment in consumer and business applications to truly drive these interactions.
However, so far, the real frustration has been exactly this: Despite having many DeFi applications, it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to engage in DeFi.
We need a broader range of consumer applications—from creative platforms to social media, even location-based apps for various interactions.
Essentially, we need more applications at the application and business layers—covering everything from payments to project management—all leveraging blockchain.
DePIN, AI, and Chain Abstraction
TechFlow:Based on your observations, why has DePIN captured major interest in the blockchain industry over the past year?
Illia:
The fascination with these platforms stems from several deep use cases gaining significant traction. For example, we’ve observed strong public interest in Akash. Specifically, Akash appeals to conventional AI companies seeking GPU access but unable to obtain it. Akash provides a decentralized marketplace where individuals can rent out their GPU resources.
This model demonstrates the market power (crowdsourcing) of blockchain, enabling fascinating use cases beyond traditional applications.
Such frameworks generate considerable interest, showing how blockchain can facilitate diverse approaches and create markets like Akash.
TechFlow:Given your insights and the emerging trends you emphasize, have you identified a trend within the blockchain industry that genuinely resonates and has potential to thrive?
Illia:
Regarding trends, we’ve discussed various ones. I believe chain abstraction will become a major trend, as it drives a fundamental shift in how we build on NEAR.
The trend of integrating AI with Web3 is also evident. How to combine AI and Web3 to make computation more decentralized, ensure user ownership of computing, and guarantee high-quality, community-generated data for models are all crucial issues.
Payment use cases are also gaining traction. The use of stablecoins for settlement and other payment-related applications is increasing. On NEAR, through HOT Wallet, we’re seeing more participation, benefiting from zero-fee stablecoin transactions.
The concept of DePIN is becoming especially attractive because blockchain provides an excellent framework for markets, simplifying supply chain management. This creates an opportunity to rapidly aggregate large supplies, potentially offer more competitive pricing, and capture larger market shares in infrastructure or any other market.
As I mentioned, the vision is to create a fully sovereign operating system combining all these elements, enabling users to seamlessly interact with their local knowledge, global events, other brands, and communities.
This includes governance at every level—AI will play a key role in driving governance decisions, summarizing information, providing explanations, and assisting in voting processes. I believe as both technologies mature and scale, we’ll witness transformative changes across many domains.
With NEAR growing tenfold each year, I expect to see a billion users in our ecosystem within the next two to three years. That’s where we’re headed.
TechFlow:Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience?
Illia:
If you’re a developer, I encourage you to check out our documentation on how to use chain signatures and layers to build multi-chain applications. We’ll be updating more docs soon. For those building in AI, there are many ways to participate and engage. If you’re generally interested, please follow us on Twitter @NEARProtocol and me @ilblackdragon.
We’re changing this.
You will be able to use any application on any chain.
While we support it, it’s actually powered by all blockchains working behind the scenes.
And that— is chain abstraction.
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