In his latest article, Illia Polosukhin, CEO of NEAR, delves into the transformative potential of AI in revolutionizing computing and collaborative efforts. In addition, he highlights NEAR ecosystem rise as a prominent consumer blockchain catering to mainstream applications, handling a substantial volume of transactions each day. Moreover, Polosukhin underscores the forthcoming stage of NEAR’s roadmap, which centers on establishing the platform as the primary nexus for User-Owned AI.
NEAR Focus on Usability and Scalability
NEAR’s ecosystem maintains its emphasis on usability and mainstream applications, with plans for sharding and scalability improvements on the horizon. However, the emergence of AI as the most disruptive technology of the coming decade is undeniable, with progress predominantly concentrated within centralized, closed for-profit entities. Meanwhile, the aim for NEAR is clear: to ensure that the power of AI resides in the hands of users, rather than a select few mega-corporations.
As per Illia Polosukhin, CEO of NEAR, The NEAR Foundation is directing resources towards establishing NEAR as the premier ecosystem for the next era of AI research and applications.
This involves investing in core infrastructure, including data collection, rewarding creators, and providing access to computing resources and innovative monetization avenues. However, NEAR envisions itself as the destination where any AI application and innovative consumer use case can leverage top-tier User-Owned AI infrastructure within the Web3 ecosystem.
Introducing the NEAR.AI R&D Lab
Looking ahead, NEAR.AI R&D Lab, under the oversight of Alex Skidanov, Illia Polosukhin, and other leaders, will focus on developing an “AI Developer” to address the challenge of constructing end-to-end Web3 applications based on user intents. In addition, a team of AI researchers will be assembled, with resources allocated to cutting-edge research required to achieve this goal.
NEAR’s ecosystem is uniquely positioned to realize this vision on a large scale, leveraging its vast user reach, Web3 developer ecosystem, and substantial financial resources managed by a non-profit Swiss Foundation. In addition, with the involvement of key figures and connections in both Web3 and AI domains, NEAR is capable of attracting top AI talent to drive the User-Owned AI movement forward.
A Positive Cycle for User-Owned AI Success
These initiatives in ecosystem development, R&D, and infrastructure will create a positive cycle, attracting more creators and positioning the User-Owned AI ecosystem for global success. Meanwhile, the ultimate objective is to offer an alternative to closed, centralized entities and foster a future where powerful AI truly serves users and communities, catalyzing new economies and accelerating innovation and creativity.
The NEAR Foundation pledges to nurture and finance projects developing AI infrastructure on the NEAR platform, covering areas such as computing and inference, data curation and incentivizing creators, crowdsourcing and synthetic data markets, as well as agentic infrastructure, among others. However, NEAR offers premier User-Owned AI infrastructure accessible to any AI application and innovative consumer use case, with connectivity to everyone in Web3 through Chain Abstraction.
