Intents Today: Progress, Partners, and the Road Ahead

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1. 0:00

   All right, intense today. Progress Partners and the road ahead. Alex Shepchenko. That is our next panel, the one that I just mentioned. Alex, uh, welcome to Miami. How is Miami treating you? Um, so the internet is really Uh, mobile internet. I feel like I'm not in Miami, but in some kind of Miami grud. Yeah.

2. 0:19

   Uh, um, yeah, but like it's Yeah. But besides that, the events are are amazing. So many not very typical crypto people um here but lots of interest from institutions and bigger organizations which is great man. I mean just to get right into it we saw one of the largest um DeFi exploits as of late due to a a single node signer uh oneofone uh DVN is what these things are called effectively like a single node exploit.

3. 0:50

   Um, when you're thinking about the landscape for interoperability from intense, how important is it to just move away from centralized bridge designs uh and really be able to kind of scale scale into more more efficient and more a and more practical bridge designs?

4. 1:06

   Yeah, that's that's a great question. Um so fundamentally um even if you're working within a single blockchain um the people who are working with it are not just only uh decentralized applications when you have centralized exchanges integrated with these you know people who are doing like moves outside of the blockchain and uh because of this the security concerns are are extremely extremely important right you you cannot

5. 1:37

   just roll back the chain in 3 hours like Litecoin did and expect that everything performed as as it was expected 17 sigma deviation it's it's is nice this is this is what it happens with our chains the same way how we would not expect that a one day rework of Bitcoin would be okay right nobody is expecting this so from that standpoint crosschain is extremely extremely complicated and uh security practices they must be hardened

6. 2:08

   everywhere especially right now with the uh with development of AI and there are lots of we observe lots of AI assisted hacks but the nature of what we're doing we are exposed to all of these different signals from all of these different ecosystems and we need to react accordingly um and because of these uh uh our security practices on the on the top possible level here um I have been

7. 2:31

   running we I started the first bridge with the near ecosystem which was which is called the rainbow bridge at some point in time there were more than two and a half billion and of highly liquid assets on this bridge uh not being hacked and uh I would take a credit for for it. Um uh but it it evolved it evolved into omni bridge and omni bridge right now is managed by by the near one

8. 2:53

   and then the team is doing absolutely amazing job on on doing this stuff. So uh you know to need to make sure that uh there are enough fences so that uh you know people are need to make sure that uh there are enough fences so that uh you know people are not going to go through the Swiss cheese uh only through the holes. Um yeah but everybody everybody needs to be alerted. Everybody needs to expect the hack. It can happen it can happen with the best of usation

9. 3:23

   with Kalan after this. Um, yeah. So, unfortunate, very unfortunate situation with Kelpdow and Later Zero. Yeah, I was just curious. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think one of the things that you guys have done well is zero. Yeah, I was just curious. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think one of the things that you guys have done well is uh get tightly integrated with a ecosystems that are difficult to access from EVM chains or from Salana. Even just Bitcoin is difficult to bridge in

10. 3:50

    and out of for you know just traditional bridges designs. It's just tough. Near intense and near.com has kind of pa p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p paved what is now one of the best, if not the best crossexecution environment bridges, right? Like you can go from all different types of execution environments in in a very seamless way.

11. 4:08

    And specifically with Zcash, there's a there's a big privacy orientation there, right? And and and I think that's something that a lot of people want to be a bit more in the loop on and understand a bit more of. So perhaps you could kind of give the give the near intents why it is so important to connect you know ecosystems like like Zcash to Bitcoin to Ethereum but then why is it so important to do that in a confidential manner and and and that you

12. 4:35

    know these confidential intents is something that you're very very focused on. Yeah. So historically we've built um public blockchains as a as an idea to create a um decentralized version of a money where there is no centralized authority that is controlling the flow.

13. 4:53

    We did it with the tools that we had back that time and uh it was working but the way how the public blockchains are working right now is pretty bad. And to give you an example here, like if I'm going to go and pay what with my USDT on Tron for which is in some places is accepted uh for um for my coffee. Um the problem that I'm going to see is that the person on the other side of the counter would now suddenly know all of my transactions that have been happening

14. 5:26

    through all of my time. And then in case a potential person who wants to attack me would understand that I was in this coffee shop at this point in time and there is a pattern that I'm going to this coffee shop and I'm paying because they know what is the address of the coffee shop because maybe they it's leaked somewhere in the internet you know and all of the stuff. So then they can attack me. Traditional financial

15. 5:50

    system doesn't have this flaw. when I'm using my Revolute card and paying for my coffee, nobody knows how much money I own. So, so privacy and the all of the discussions around privacy with the blockchain is actually bringing back normality into the blockchain world into the financial aspect of the blockchain world and this is extremely extremely important and any meaningful adoption can happen only through the privacy. I'm

16. 6:22

    super glad for Zcash to bring this narrative back uh into the market. Uh they did an amazing job uh here and uh I'm also happy that uh near intense now supports the confidential swaps. Uh something that again everybody are expecting to have when you're going to the currency exchange. Nobody sees how much you specifically traded of US dollar into Canadian dollar for example.

17. 6:49

    and uh uh and now we have this functionality, this one additional piece of infrastructure that allows you to also confidentially uh trade currencies. Yeah, I feel like that's a big part of the next evolution of this product, right? Because I think what what we've seen is the emergence of a lot of crypto assets onchain for the last 10ish years, you know, specifically in the last five, right? And in the last you know six to 12 months we've seen a absolute

18. 7:14

    transition and major focus shift to non-crypto assets onchain right think anything from a stable coin all the way to private credit and anything in the middle of that risk spectrum with confidential intents you provide a much more institutional appeal to moving assets across chains that are non-crypto assets so I'm curious how I know you're very kind of like cippher punk and very like ethos driven. How do you think about the rise of non-crypto assets on

19. 7:45

    near intent rails and the need and and who you're serving with confidential intent? So the adoption of the confidential swapping uh at the moment it it just naturally swap it just naturally starts. uh we are deliberately not doing any uh you know crazy moves you know throwing uh tons of money millions into the marketing of of anything. We believe that the users will always use the product that they want to use and there

20. 8:16

    is no point in uh in inflating the the thing the kind of the things but I'm happy to say that uh our users are willing to use confidential swaps even though the current fees on the near.com are higher because they are willing to pay more for the confidentiality and we are already at the point when more than half of The swaps that are happening on the near.com are happening through the confidential rails. Really?

21. 8:46

    Yes. So people like this month or or last couple weeks or uh yeah just last couple of weeks. So, so users prefer to to stay confidential, which means that for me this is an indication that this problem actually bothers users, right? We hear a lot from the institutional clients that uh they they are uh tired of being tracked by Arcom and being able you know just to put the address and that oh yeah this is associated with who knows maybe bitwise

22. 9:18

    and then and then suddenly like there is no positions that are invisible. Uh the whole market operates with sufficient amount of intelligence with which which you can just buy. The whole market operates as a as a transparent like completely transparent. This is like this is unimaginable.

23. 9:37

    Imagine a tab on your Bloomberg terminal where you can see all of the trades of all of the traders in the world. Right. So that's strange. Um U. Yeah. So then I think like do you think that that there is a stronger desire then from the uh larger asset managers and allocators to use these rails for their kind of onboarding of this tokenization wave and to use confidential intent for you know

24. 10:05

    for that there are there are so so many different use cases. Um uh there are many projects that are willing to move uh for example payments and payrolls uh into on onto the blockchain because it's just much more efficient especially for the crossber transfers they want to have willing to liquidate their positions and now suddenly if there is a project that they invested in and they know what you're getting is of the fund and then suddenly if the fund wants to liquidate the position the next thing that you are getting is a fund the

25. 10:37

    fund and then suddenly if The fund wants to liquidate the position. The next thing that you are getting as a fund manager is a call from the project like why are you doing this? Uh why are you liquidating? Well well we are kind of doing the rebalancing of the portfolio blah blah blah all of this stuff. Yeah, nobody wants this. So if you want to dump your tokens dear funds come to near.com and you can do it and uh nobody will see it. Um and there are many many

26. 11:01

    other very natural use cases. Uh so I was obviously exaggerating and going to the extreme here. Uh but there are very natural a very normal feel of your financial life not being exposed to the whole world 100%. Um, when it comes to some of the revenue that Neo Intense has has uh, you know, kind of acred and generated as of late, has it has it has it surprised you? like um it somewhat surprised me but uh like

27. 11:33

    approximately one and a half two years ago when I was first looking at the crosschain market for the decentralized protocols I was surprised that this market is uh there are market participants and Thor chain back then was uh like super super big um but I was surprised that the algorithms and the approaches were extremely inefficient. It felt to me in comparison with the traditional markets that this is completely you know open field and uh

28. 12:05

    people are amateurs. Um and my feeling was that hey we can make a next step of bringing better technology that is going to be more convenient for users because we are experts in in making great user experiences. But then we also can make it closer from from from the standpoint of the guts of the protocol uh and make it at least at the level of the centralized exchanges when there are market makers when there are users they are matched against each other through some kind of form of a matching engine or like order book uh blah blah blah all

29. 12:38

    of the stuff and this will make the capital much more efficient and still preserve uh all of the great things. So uh yeah I was amazed that the market exists. it is extremely inefficient. So, uh I'm happy that Near Intense was able to uh to move forward and then capture this this attention. Uh this is definitely not because of me. Uh this is definitely because of of all of the great people who are working in the team. So, kudos to my to my team so that I can sit here and and tell about how good they are.

30. 13:11

    Yeah. And and on the revenue side, did you uh anticipate or were you worried and is it still a concern that the fee switch was going to deter users who are looking for the best rates or best pricing? Um I I don't think so. So the fee switch is just uh it was just pretty clear that the protocol needs to earn money, right?

31. 13:30

    And then for those of you who don't know um in February what we did is is we actually said that hey dear partners who are integrating with near intents you are setting up your own fees that you are getting so we would like to get a cut of this fees right that that was as simple as that this is a win-win partnership completely symbiotical uh in between the parties so this is a nature

32. 13:55

    thing a natural thing I always when I'm working with somebody within an external person I'm I'm always asking myself a question so why this person is interested in this partnership where he does earn money and if this person doesn't give me an answer to this it means that there is something sketchy that is happening here I don't want to feel sketchy I don't want others people to feel sketchy about myself so I'm able

33. 14:20

    to very openly say yes we would like to work with you because the success of your business means the success of our business too so uh let's work together. Let's grow together. We're not forcing you to have fixed payments to us.

34. 14:35

    Nothing like that. If you're big, then we are big. If you're small, then we are also small. We are working as partners forward. And Alex, why are the fees higher on the private side than the public side? Uh this is a decision of the of the product team for the for the near.com.

35. 14:51

    So the the protocol fees is like the protocol sells in in two swapping through near intense. So every time when you're executives so for example users on ledger are swapping through near intense. So every time when you're executing the swap on ledger uh there is a chance that you're going to is going to be routed through the near intense.

36. 15:12

    Uh but then there is also a our own front end which is near.com. There is there are product people that are working there. we don't want to make it you know for free and so users expect it to be free it would be a misconception h and then there was just this idea to test out what if there will be just additional five bips on top of this would people bother little bit more but for the privacy and they are they willing to pay just a little bit more but for the privacy and and what the

37. 15:44

    market tells us is that yes people care enough about privacy to pay for it. This is an absolutely great and important insight that we are getting from here. Just last thing quickly um you know what do you think gets the near intense revenue to you know several hundred million dollars a year.

38. 16:06

    So the path here uh is uh not going to be simple. uh all everybody understands this uh and uh our first and like there are multiple uh directions that we are taking in order to to get there uh and they are mostly widening up the addressable market for intents or widening up the set of products that we are proposing to our customers. So on the addressable market we are moving towards the institutions. We have great partners who are actually performing quite a lot of volume uh and uh we are

39. 16:40

    making this technology much more accessible to them. This includes uh security attestations uh ability to do uh later settlement margins you know all of these different things. Uh on the breadth of the products uh we are definitely integrating more chains more interesting tokens. This is like a very simple step uh step but then we are getting additional features like confidential intense and then an ability to earn so that the assets are not just stored there but they are productively

40. 17:11

    used they can be staked they can be LPD into defy if anyone is brave enough to put money in defy right now um and some additional things but this will pass this will pass right so uh so do more things with the assets inside of near.com that's the breadth where we're We are walking both of these roads right now. There are different teams who are focused on on these things. Uh and this

41. 17:36

    is the way how to grow it staying and all of the companies who are trying to crosschain swaps and not moving uh to the new markets or trying to serve this this this product to to wider groups. Uh they are not going to grow because this market is limited to 200 to 500 million per day. And uh uh at least our ambition uh is to become a much bigger venue uh and this market is not enough for us. That's why we are actively expanded.

42. 18:09

    Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Alex. Thank you guys. Thanks.