chronear
1.2K posts
chronear
@chronear
Building @NEARProtocol; views personal
After over four years building THORChain, I’m starting a new chapter. I’m joining @NEARProtocol to build NEAR Intents, focusing on BD & growth. This is a conviction bet on DeFi, Privacy, AI, and the NEAR team. I couldn’t be more excited to join a strong ecosystem of builders. I think NEAR has several advantages that will help us accelerate the next wave of DeFi adoption (and far beyond) through Intents: 1) Market structure: There is no single unified marketplace. Instead, a competitive solver network sources the best price from anywhere. Competition is the edge. It’s why NEAR achieves strong price execution and continues to improve as the network grows 2) Privacy: Private transactions extend privacy to any connected asset without sacrificing self custody. Institutions and serious individuals don’t want their business to be your business. Ironically, many rely on centralized exchanges today for that privacy. We can bring that activity onchain without making everyone’s transactions public 3) Compliance: If DeFi wants broad adoption, sensible compliance is unavoidable. The challenge is doing it without compromising censorship resistance and permissionlessness. Serious actors will not come onchain unless their safety and users are protected 4) Deposit channels: This is gold standard UX. Send assets to an address and top up your onchain account. Simple & familiar, giving CEX-like parity without giving up self custody. That removes friction and accelerates adoption 5) Brand and trust: Branding is underrated infrastructure. NEAR is in the perfect position for this 6) Narrative alignment: Stablecoins as USD rails. Native Bitcoin rails. Blockchains as infrastructure. Onchain privacy. Agents transacting onchain. NEAR sits at the intersection of every major narrative that continues to gain momentum 7) AI alignment: Agents will play a growing role in everyday life. NEAR sits at the intersection of AI coordination and crypto rails. That convergence is only beginning and has yet to meaningfully play out, as the space is still very young. NEAR is an AI org at its core. 8) Builders who ship: I’ve been consistently impressed by the team’s velocity and focus on real products that improve users’ lives. Not vaporware. In the arena, trying things 9) A superset of all finance: Today the focus is crypto to crypto rails. The end state is much larger. Stocks, derivatives, forex, prediction markets, commodities, lending. Intents can become coordination infrastructure for all financial venues as they move onchain. 10) Beyond just finance: Intents are not limited to capital markets. They enable subjective requests executed by agents. Find an apartment, book a trip, sell a car, coordinate logistics. Intents as programmable infrastructure for real world coordination, not just finance. This is largely unexplored space which will grow massively in the coming years and Intents is the perfect coordination layer I still fully intend to remain a THORChain community member. That’s who I am and what I considered myself since Day 1 over five years ago and I don’t see that changing. I’m immensely proud of what we built over the last few years. I also will continue maintaining Rune Tools as the network continues to evolve. I’m infinitely grateful to those who helped me along the way, especially Chad, Gavin, and the 9R team who gave me the opportunity to work on the cutting edge. Personally, it’s very bittersweet for me and I’m sad to leave the team, but also very excited to start on a new chapter for myself. One where I think I have a major opportunity to help to accelerate DeFi, Bitcoin, AI alignment, & the principles that helped keep me in this space. Infinite thanks and gratitude to my friends and colleagues (you know who you are) I feel like I have so much more I want to accomplish and I couldn’t be more excited to be in the arena at the cutting edge of crypto rails, privacy, and AI at NEAR Much love ❤️ Tyler FamiliarCow
I've never seen two communities more elated about each other's wins than Zcash and NEAR. Getting increasingly convinced that the most potent hedge against Orwellian AI is the machinery of freedom, fueled by encrypted money and cypherpunk liquidity. Accelerate.
