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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Bankless Nation, there's been pockets of growth in different corners of the crypto industry. The improved UX of the Zottel wallet has been a main driver of Zcash adoption and the growth of the ZEC has shielded pool.
Chapter 2: Why does NEAR keep appearing in various crypto applications?
Venice AI user growth is accelerating as more people want private access to self-sovereign AI inference.
Chapter 3: Is NEAR's current direction a pivot or a return to its roots?
I've personally been using Infinex as my dominant crypto wallet simply because it has solved all the major UX issues that has plagued Ethereum for years. What do all of these different platforms have in common? They're all using near intents.
Near Intents appear to be a breakout use case for the Near Layer 1, a Layer 1 that has seemingly struggled to define and differentiate itself throughout the years, has finally found product market fit supporting some of the fastest growing ecosystems in the industry.
Chapter 4: What is the 'AI Money' thesis and its implications?
So go to ChatGPT or Cloud, whatever you use, or Venice for that matter, and ask your chatbot about all the projects that have integrated Near Intents in 2026. Just go do it for yourself.
Chapter 5: How do NEAR Intents contribute to product market fit?
It's a long list. So naturally, this piqued my curiosity.
Chapter 6: What distinguishes NEAR's tokenomics from Ethereum's?
What does Near have to do with these pockets of growth in crypto? And is Near itself its own pocket of growth? In order to get more clarity on the state of Near and what's going on, I went and I found today's guest as perhaps the most articulate person in Near's investor circles to fill me in on what's going on with Near and what the future may hold for the protocol if the Near team executes.
Chapter 7: How is NEAR scaling and capturing fees differently?
Sal Turnello is the CEO of Sovereign, a NASDAQ-listed AI infrastructure company built around a Near treasury strategy. It's one part Near treasury company, but also a commercialization partner for the Near ecosystem. a for-profit entity focused on helping the Near ecosystem establish and grow its commercialization efforts.
Sal is an expert at articulating the growth story for Near, so that's what you're going to hear today on the podcast. I like bullish content, so that's your disclaimer. I'm sure that there is a bear case for Near too. One might be that crypto-native infrastructure that is simply infrastructure for other crypto projects is just not a hot category at the moment, and some people fear it may never be.
Maybe another bear case is that Near's Ironclaw is a very distant third behind Hermes and OpenClaw in the race for AI agent frameworks. All of this is to say is that maybe there's a bear case for Near too, but that's not what you're going to hear on the podcast today because the bull case I think is pretty good too. So let's go ahead and hear that bull case for Near from my guest, Sal Ternello.
Sal, welcome to Bankless. Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me. Sal, everywhere I go lately, I'm poking around in different corners of the crypto industry, there seems to be Near there somehow. And here's what I mean by that. Infinex is using Near Intents and Chain Signatures to do their whole unified cross-chain experience thing in the wallet.
Zosche is using Near for cross-chain swaps and on-ramping assets from other chains into the Zosche wallet.
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Chapter 8: What role does privacy play in NEAR's ecosystem?
Venice, the AI platform, is using the Near AI Cloud to do their provably, verifiably private AI inference. These are the apps that I use and have gotten a lot of attention lately, and Near is in every single one. There's more. I could go down the list. What's going on? How come Near is in all of these little corners?
Yeah, I think this is the result of five years of really top-notch engineering and delivery now on the product side as well with Near Intense proving product market fit over the last year, rapidly scaling.
And Near AI and Ironclaw now coming to the fore to really show the thinking that's been part of the ecosystem and design of the system over the past five years and really coming to light now with the focus of the crypto AI narrative, but more importantly, how Near shines in the context of agenda commerce.
We could talk about these specific kind of verticals in their own regards, but I think it's the result really of the technology now reaching product market fit with Intense and Ironclaw quickly following on a similar trajectory to what we saw with Intense over the past 12 months.
There's been maybe a branding thing that Near needs to pierce through because it's had this like series of pivots of like strategy pivots. There's been the most recent one, which is Near is pivoting to being like AI infrastructure. And I think maybe the crypto community and people understanding watching these pivots is like, oh, this is just the next pivot. This is just what they do.
Talk to me a little bit about that. And granted, pivoting shouldn't be frowned upon. Is this the final pivot in the sense that this is working out and we're going to go forward here?
Yeah, I mean, I don't contest the point in terms of narrative changes in the ecosystem. I've been on the ground floor since pre-mainnet launch where investors out of two venture funds, A100X being the most recent in the native token, but also in products in the ecosystem.
I would describe this not as a pivot, but as a returning to roots in the context of, you know, why NEAR was actually built with Ilya leaving Google Research, looking at how to build distributed training systems and distributed compute systems, and ultimately realizing that there was a missing backend infrastructure layer, which became their protocol.
I think now they've landed on kind of what you'll describe as the final pivot with real product market fit behind these verticals. And you'll see that continue to take up throughout the 26th year. But I kind of describe it of coming back to the roots and realizing the vision that Ilya and Alex and team have always painted around the protocol.
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