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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
Foreign.
- [00:05]
David
Nation. Kendall Cole is a co founder of Proximity Labs. That is a research and development firm focused on the near ecosystem. Kendall, welcome to Bankless.
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Kendall Cole
Yeah, thank you for having me, David. Excited to be here, Kendall.
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David
We've got a lot to talk about. I want to start with this one. How many stablecoins will there be? I think this, I'm reminded of the same kind of conversations. How many layer twos will, will there be on Ethereum? And once upon a time I was like saying there will be thousands of layer twos and you know, there, there are quite a lot of layer twos on Ethereum, but a few of them are very large, you know, typical Pareto distribution. How do you think about in the future? How many stable coins will there be broadly?
- [00:42]
Kendall Cole
So, yeah, I'm, I guess similar to believers in L2 proliferation. I, I, I do think that will become true for stablecoins certainly in the, in the immediate term, if not in the long term. I think that we, we probably won't see many more brands branded stablecoins like a USDC or usdt. They get really big. I mean we might see some like, oh, USD is kind of an interesting initiative, you know, from, from the bridge crew. But I, I don't think that's going to make sense for users. I think what's going to actually happen is that a lot of different players are going to issue their own stablecoins but they're not really going to promote them as an independent brand. They're going to show them as USD or maybe as, you know, some kind of indication they're a stablecoin, but they're not going to care that the user knows the full name and the ticker of that particular stablecoin. It's just going to be used as like a piece of almost like a database entry for the accounting tool. Yeah, it's a ledger.
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David
It's an asset and a ledger.
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Kendall Cole
It's an asset and a ledger. Yeah. So, but I do think that a lot of different institutions for a variety of reasons are going to issue their own stablecoin.
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David
Okay, there's the stablecoin conversation. So maybe a few stablecoins are kind of like the Bitcoin and the eth. They're going for the money, they're going for the liquidity, the network effects, the brand, you know, the trust. And we kind of know who those are. I think as you kind of saluted to O USD from open standard is like this new entrance trying to penetrate that market. But anything downstream from that is like kind of Turning into just like tokenized deposits, like your tokenized deposit is not going to be money, but it is a useful tool backend efficiency upgrade for Wall Street. But what about the chains? Because there's Tempo, there's Ark, there's stable there, there's plasma. Similar answer or how do you think about this kind of thing?
- [02:28]
Kendall Cole
So I would say less, way less on the chains. Like I'm not super. I mean obviously like certain chains, they have a really unique, you know, distribution situation. So like Tempo is definitely the best example. I mean obviously Circle, they have a lot of, they have a lot of influence and so I think they can probably get a lot of different groups to be using their chain. I think the hardest part is going to be like chain. The best positioning for chains, I think is credible neutrality. And most of these newer initiatives are like kind of very specific to either an issuer or like some type of player in the broader ecosystem. And I think that that aspect of their sort of background and story and ultimately value accrual mechanism is going to like hinder their ability to be that kind of credibly neutral layer and actually like work with all of these different players. So, you know, some of them will do well. You know. Yeah, I think Tempo, Arc, a few of those are going to do well. You know, I think like plasma is kind of taking more of the approach that actually like nearest sort of taking where like they built a blockchain that's really like designed to serve like a different product, like a very specific product in Plasma 1. So maybe they have, they have a shot there as well. But yeah, I think like generally just having like, you know, this, this if you're backed by an issuer, you have like weight to too much of an entrenched interest. While that helps you get in that initial distribution, I think ultimately it's going to be difficult for you to be that credibly neutral layer and work with a lot of different parties. So like, I don't actually think we'll see that many of those do as well. And I think, you know, really people are going to use the usual suspects. Ethereum, Solana, some of the major L2s instead.
- [04:02]
David
Kendall, the reason why I asked all this is because you operate in the world of fragmentation or maybe defragmentation is maybe like the better, the better word. Talk about what you do at Proximity Labs and in and around the near ecosystem. Why is fragmentation your deal?
- [04:20]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, great question. Yeah, so we're, we're basically a core contributor to the broader near ecosystem. And like most of the these similar groups, Near Intense has been a guiding light for, for quite some time. And the original thesis for that, that Near Intents actually kind of came out of was this idea of chain abstraction. And that was something we learned just by running near. It was like, you know, near was made a lot stronger when we were well connected to all of these other chains and ecosystems. But getting the user experience right on that was quite difficult. And there was a lot of infrastructure that was missing. And then on top of that infrastructure, there were a lot of like product experiences that were missing. And so like it was that sort of belief set of beliefs that is what led to us to ultimately build Near Intents and get to where we are now, which is Connecting I think 35 different chains. And there's, there's new ones every week at this point and delivering what we believe is actually like the simplest experience for users who want to forget about which chain they're on and want to think more in terms of assets because like ultimately think that's what's important. Right? Like chains are. Chains obviously are important, but really it's the assets that users, most users care about. So yeah, the goal is, the goal is basically just to. Initially the call was to make it so you forgot which chain you were on, but increasingly the goal is to make it forget that you're on chains at all. And it's just these like really simple experiences that feel more like, you know, Robinhood or you know, a high quality type of almost a brokerage experience than you know, a typical blockchain or like crypto experience.
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David
Now are you guys pointed at just like retail end users who want to be trading tokens or who is like kind of the main customer, product or entity that you guys are building for?
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Kendall Cole
Yeah, good question. I mean, so there's two splits there. So Near Intents initially started more as like purely B2B. And so the main customers are like, were and still are wallets. There's like trust wallet ledger, like aggregators, like lifi and these type of. More like it was more of a pure infrastructure. There was no really front end sort of component to Near Intents. As of earlier this year, there was the launch of near.com, which is more of like a true end user product. And so, I mean, ultimately those have very different users, right? Like near.com is ultimately just trying to be like the simplest possible experience for any user globally who wants and right now exposure to cryptocurrencies by increasingly real world assets and stablecoins as well. And Even, you know, with integrations with products like Hyper Liquid and there's a few others coming down the pipe there. But, you know, I mean, a lot of the. Most of the volume for Near Intense still comes from all these excellent partners that are more like, you know, B2, B2C. And there's. Yeah, there's. There's some evolution there happening. Like, some more, you know, kind of traditional players that are starting to look at Near Intents as a way just to make it very simple for either themselves or for their. Their end customers to, you know, get access to all of these different assets.
- [07:18]
David
My exposure to Near Intense came in this one two punch where I was using Infinix more and more. And Infinix is integrated into Near Intense, which is. It's basically how Infinix does its magic secret sauce where, like, hey, I don't need my ledger anymore. Not that, you know, Ledger is a great product, but I just want to click on my password manager with all my other passwords, and infinitex solves that problem. And then it hosts all of the assets through Near Intents that I would ever want it to. And so I was like, oh, look at this, like, UX upgrade in my wallet experience that I'm getting from Infinix. And it's hooked into Near Intents, which is where the magic come from. So that was great. And then I saw on the other side of things, Venice hooked into near AI. I was like, oh, wait, Venice is, like, getting adopted and it's got this product that's offering to the world. And how is that product being built? Oh, it's being built with near in the background. Like, there's another point for Near. I saw all these, like, different, like, ways that near was getting integrated. And then I was the. My. The last part of the story is that I was, like, just cleaning up dust from old wallets. You know, like, accumulated 30 wallets over the years.
- [08:22]
Kendall Cole
I just like, all right, let's.
- [08:22]
David
Let's clear it out. You know, I have tokens on, like, Monad. I have tokens on, you know, the Ethereum layer 1. I got tokens where's, like, one single place I can send it all. And that was the first time I opened up near.com and I was like, oh, let me just send it to the place that can, like, connect with everything. And so as I'm clearing out all my dust, like, I don't have, like, the destination of where do I send everything ended up just being just like the near.com wallet because it integrates with Every single blockchain. And I'm like, oh, and also, NEAR never exposed me to any blockchain ever. It just showed me, as you were saying, assets only. And so there's this, like, this is like. Near just kept on poking up in my world, like a little bit more and more and more. And so, like, talk about just like how that experience is, like, where you guys are at with that experience and where you guys are trying to go with it, both with near intents and if you want, near AI in the back end, but also near.com the front end, like retail user experience as I was using it for.
- [09:19]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, glad you had that experience. Infinix has been an amazing partner in this journey. They kind of saw the vision as we were laying it out. Kane was really great about that. Yeah. So, I mean, when it started, it was basically like, okay, we just need to integrate all the chains people want. And that was an enormous amount of work. I mean, my team did not deal with that. That was a massive credit to the NEAR intense core team and the bridge team from NEAR one that have and still are kind of putting together all these different, as robust as possible integrations with all these different chains. Just like an enormous amount of engineering effort that goes into that. And so it was as simple as that. It's basically like, okay, we basically just need to support these chains step one and make it so you can actually interact with these assets in a non custodial and safe way. Then step two was like, okay, now we need to go out and recruit a bunch and work with a bunch of solvers and market makers to actually be able to like, quote with these different assets. And you know, basically that took years. Right? Like, it's, you know, we're kind of coming out of that, that like, very long period of just like basically bootstrapping all of the chain integrations and all of the, you know, like the liquidity. And then as a piece of that was like getting integrated into Infinix and into these different players that actually would have end users that are coming and like bringing order flow so that, like this, you know, this entire system works. So, yeah, that's really what it's been about up until now. And it was kind of like the growth potential for your incense was really as simple as, like, we just need to integrate these chains and then the assets on those chains. So most of the chains that I think people want to trade on are more or less integrated. There's still others that are coming down the pipe. I mean, there's still a roadmap to be, you know, to kind of be completed there. But increasingly the focus is a lot more on, like, well, just making sure that we have, you know, the best liquidity possible so that, like, users are getting the best possible quotes. And that's an ongoing game. Like, that's basically an infinite game. I don't think that'll ever end. There's. There's always competition there, which is great. And I think, you know, ultimately makes the end product better for. For everyone. And then assets and, you know, being able to support all these different assets and that obviously is going through an insane kind of explosion. You know, I think before it was basically just like coming up with new, you know, cryptocurrencies for people to trade moot tokens, which, like, yeah, you know, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. But, you know, now with like the kind of like, RWA explosion and like, all the serious players actually getting involved there, the SEC coming up with, like, real ways to issue token, like tokenized assets on chain that are, you know, high quality, regulated products. And then, you know, things like polymarket that are. And, you know, Kalshi that have created, like, entirely new asset classes that are extremely popular now that's actually given us like a whole new roadmap. Right. Is like, making sure that all of those things are available to users on Near Intents in a way that's as seamless as possible. So basically we went from, like, chain integrations being like the main thing then to, you know, just like, integrators being the main thing to now just making sure that we actually have all of the assets that users, like, want access to globally. Right. Like creating true global financial markets. Right. Like, I think, I mean, this is the story for Near Intents is very similar to the story for, you know, blockchains in general, which is like, the real magic is that we create this kind of stateless financial system where anyone globally can have very easy, you know, kind of ideally frictionless access to all the different financial assets and products that they might want. And so, you know, we've done a lot of work on the kind of crypto piece of it. And like, increasingly we're doing work still on the crypto piece of it, but also like, expanding into, you know, all types of other assets as those. As those come online. Right. Like, I think we're still very much in the early innings of, you know, all like, the regulation coming into play and all of these different, you know, great groups like putting together the products and bringing them on chain and then we want to make sure that like Near Intent is able to support all those assets early and often and then expose Those users through near.com through all the partners like Infinix, through you know, whoever, whoever kind of might be there.
- [13:11]
David
I suppose there was like this original Cambrian explosion with Meme coins where there, you know, there was already thousands of assets in crypto but then Meme coins came and it really just like you know, order of magnitude increase the number of assets out there. But they're all still like inert and fleeting. But like nonetheless the. The number of assets went up to like a bajillion but no one really cared about them other than the meme coin traders. And so they didn't really proliferate. No one really needed to integrate with these things. The next. You alluded to it, the next like explosion of assets that I'm seeing on chain is just like all the real, real world asset stuff. All the tokenized stocks like Robinhood chain for example, launched on the first. And you can you. I'm just looking at the, the real world asset XYZ page for Robinhood and there's 30 assets, you know, Nvidia Robinhood Token, Tesla Robinhood tokenized stock, Micron, AMD and these all have somewhere between 400 and a million dollars of liquidity in day one. Still needs to be a lot more. But like if I was interested in integrating tokenized stocks and I'm a chain, well then I need someone to get me that token on my chain. And I'm assuming that's where Near Intents can come in and kind of fill that gap of like whether, whether I'm even a wallet or a blockchain or even a layer one app on some, some layer one, be it like AAVE or something on Solana. And I see Robinhood issuing tokenized stocks on one single chain, then I'm like well how do I get those assets into like my app? And so I'm sure that like this explosion, this like Cambrian explosion of, of real world tokenized assets is actually far more of an opportunity for near than like meme coins or any other asset revolution before them. Is that, is that correct? Like, and talk to me about this experience that you've been having.
- [15:01]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that what you kind of stated is exactly right. Like a great opportunity is when like a new chain launches that has like unique super high quality assets. And so then there's this question for basically everyone is like, how do we make it as seamless as possible to Move from like wherever we currently are, wherever our assets currently are, into this new chain and like into those new assets and like. Yeah, I mean, so that's, that's exactly right. I mean, I think we're, we're very excited about what Robinhood's been doing there. You know, only a matter of time before, before that support will be in your intense. Because clearly there's going to be demand, right? So. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, it, I mean there's, there's so like, if you look at like the, the rebalancing of asset movements across chains, like it, I mean it's, it's constantly changing, right? And I think that change is really sort of what we see as the opportunity. Like there's just a lot of these different ecosystems have like really been able to entrench themselves in like, and get some like, really sticky demand. I mean, I think Salon obviously has done a fantastic job. Ethereum is still, you know, ultimately the king. Even Tron, you know, like, has like a very unique kind of like role that they sort of play. And so like, the more that that exists and that, that is true and we don't see that changing. I think we might not see the insane fragmentation that we had of like a billion L2s, right, which was like an almost like, I mean like an impossible to solve problem. It's just like too much. But I think we are going to see, you know, at least a dozen or more of these different ecosystems that are like really, I mean, Hyper Liquid, another great example, right, that are just going to be like really entrenched and thriving. And so the interaction between them and like making sure you have this like nice abstraction between them is going to be really important, right? Like ultimately users, they want it. They want to be able to trade on Hyper Liquid. They want to be able to like, you know, like bet on, on Poly Market. They want to be able to buy Tesla on Robinhood chain. They like want to be able to, you know, use AAVE on Etherium. And then they want to be able to like you to transfer like pay their friends in stablecoins on Solana, right? And it's like, so if you want to do all these different things, you need an experience that makes that as just, just feel like one application, right? And so new.com, the goal is for, is that to be one of those applications, but we also want to power as many of these as possible. Like Infinix I think, has done an amazing job there as well. Like, we want to, we Want to make all of these different experiences possible so that users are finally just like really excited to use these products that ultimately are just non custodial and backed by all these on chain products. Which is the vision we've all been trying to kind of push for. For a long time now.
- [17:20]
David
There's been a handful of companies that are going after the super app idea or the financial super app like Coinbase wants you to be able. It's basically the thing, it's like Coinbase wants to build Robinhood any neo bank because I think everyone kind of has the tools to be the super app. I was thinking about this, this is a while ago and I was like, you know what the original super app was? Layer ones, like layer ones were supposed to be and, and are the place where like any asset gets tokenized. Well, it's, you know, it's tokenized on Ethereum. Like any financial application is built on Ethereum. Now that's kind of like spread out and that now it's been like fragmented. Ethereum is not really the epicenter that it was once but, but nonetheless it has all of these different apps and, and, and things in the thesis that I, you know, once had for Ethereum is that kind of like in the same way that Bitcoiners had the same thesis where if it's useful it will eventually become built on Ethereum or excuse me, on Bitcoin and you know, for Ethereum the same way like if that's useful, like if it's good, it'll be tokenized on Ethereum, which is still true. And then it's also getting to like, you know, and then there's also perps on Hyper Liquid and there's like meme coins on Solana. And so I think like the real manifestation of like this super, the open source super app thesis is potentially being expressed in near.com whereas like because of intents, if there is anything that is of use and of interest to anyone because of Near Intents, you can surface it on near.com.
- [18:55]
Kendall Cole
yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean I'll leave this to, to that team to you know, kind of kind of reveal as they're, as they're putting it together. But so I think one thing that's not very well known about Near Intents, like people think of it as swaps and that's obviously a huge, you know, the most important part of it for now, but really near intense is a true chain abstraction infrastructure. It's like you can have what is a near account that's actually custodying assets on any chain and can also then interact with any protocol on any chain. So like Hyperload I think is one of the early examples where they showed that experience where like you can the swap can almost become a background piece of it. Where it's just like if you happen to have assets on different chains, sometimes even the same asset on different chains, right? Like you could have USDC on Polygon, but you need to have it, you need to get it to hyper liquid so that you can you know, take a per position that like that that's going to just become a background piece. And really it's the most important piece of technology that was built there is account that can just actually sign any transaction on any chain and then endorse like use anything that exists on any chain. So it's this really nice primitive that allows near.com to go and actually integrate all of these different products that exist on all these different places while keeping the UX very, very seamless. And then like the other really key piece they built there is they have really powerful kind of like gas extraction where they're. I mean basically it doesn't feel like you as a user on your.com ever are touching gas fees. The only time you really experience that is when you're depositing from like it's an air.com from wherever you are. You have to you know, very explicitly on your side pay that gas fee on whatever chain. But once you're on your.com like it's all completely abstracted away. So yeah, that core piece is where basically any chain that pops into existence. As long as Near Chain signature supports the signature scheme, which I mean there's really only two that anybody uses at this point in EDDSA and ecdsa it's not a problem. And then obviously if there's another one that arose with post Quantum or whatever, then that team will of course add support as needed. And so that means that there's this really great primitive basically to have that like that kind of non custodial everything app that like preserves like the really important properties while also just having a pretty simple time to basically adopt and integrate all these different apps regardless of where they are that people might want to use. So that's kind of why it's like yeah, near is still a layer one that's really key for building all this stuff on top of. But we no longer have to worry about like get it convincing all of these different like great app developers to actually come and build directly on Near. They can Build on whatever chain is convenient for them. And then you know, users, users who have some exposure to an integration of near intents or use near.com directly will be able to utilize those those products very seamlessly.
- [21:36]
David
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- [23:10]
Podcast Host
Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael NATO. He runs the Defi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10:10 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years and this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether and where we are in the cycle. There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes, they're short, they're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast, Search the Defi Report Wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show Notes, there's a new episode waiting for you now.
- [23:57]
David
Hey, Bankless Nation, it's David. If you're hearing this, that's because you are listening to the free Bankless podcast feed. Did you know that there is a premium Bankless RSS feed? The premium feed has extra interviews that I do for my own personal research and just deeper questions that I want answered about the crypto industry. Questions that I want to answer so I can be more informed as an investor both at Bankless Ventures and also just in my own personal portfolio too. Also, there are no ads, which we means if you listen to the premium feed instead of the free feed, you'll get about 20 hours of your life back every year because you choose to support Bankless directly. So if you're interested in getting extra content all while skipping the ads, or you just appreciate what we do here and want us to keep doing it, we'd appreciate it if you signed up for Bankless Premium and there is a link in the show notes to get started. Cheers to a good 2026. I want to talk about recent current events and how this kind of like near model for the world applies here. So what's going on with Mica right now and how it's just impacting the flows of like crypto companies and crypto users in, in Europe.
- [24:55]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, yeah, it was a big week last week. That was I guess the, the final sort of deadline for I guess, I mean anybody who falls under sort of like the Mica, you know, Mika regime. Definitely the biggest news there was, you know, some of the exchanges and the moves that they had to make. So like the Binance, you know, they, they were not able to, to secure their license before that timeline. I do expect they will get it eventually, but, you know, who knows. And so yeah, I guess like if you're, you know, an EU user, you, you currently do not have access to, to Binance, which is pretty massive given that they are the number one exchange or at least were the number one exchange in the eu. And then I think the second biggest news that I saw there was like so Bybit, which does have an EU and Mica Nika registered entity, but that entity, they had to move users over to it, which creates some friction. And then they also, they don't have perpetual swaps, which is obviously a very popular product that they offer. And so like the two of those together like actually left kind of, I think like a pretty massive, you know, massive gap where like you had all these people that all of a sudden needed to either move to Amica Registered Exchange or needed to start looking on Chain at some of the different products. So I think that's like, that was like a massive sort of, you know, tailwind for the on chain space is all of a sudden there's like, you know, people who didn't want to move before because like the, you know, it's additional friction and like why would they all of a sudden are looking for a home and so like it's an opportunity basically for them to, you know, consider like, oh, maybe on Chain has actually become, you know, just a competitive product in a lot of ways and this is an opportunity to do that. So I think that was the biggest news. We're also obviously we're excited. I think similar to you know, genius in the US like the fact that Namika is now kind of in full force and there was a quite a number of sort of actually regulated and compliant Euro stablecoin issuers. I think we're starting to see the similar adoption we're seeing from us fintechs and banks where they're actually comfortable exposing those products directly to their users. Because now they're like, okay, this is, we understand what this is. We know what a Euro stablecoin that's actually regulated means and the protections that it has for our users and we feel comfortable actually give them that experience. And, and I mean ultimately I think that is the, you know, like this is what's going to make on ramps like as frictionless as possible is you'll just be able to get access to, you know, these, these whether it's a Euro stablecoin, a US Dollar stablecoin or whatever currency, you're going to be able to get access to that directly from your bank or your fintech app. And so getting on Chain will be just as simple as like moving money to any, anywhere else you would move money from, from your bank, which is I think going to be a pretty magical time.
- [27:29]
David
I was doing some of the numbers before recording only 210 crypto firms operating in Europe received their authorization by the July 1 deadline. That's out of like 3,000 so, so like 7% got it in time. 7% clearance rate, you know, nice job, victory to Europe for all their compliance.
- [27:49]
Kendall Cole
Yeah.
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David
So like as you said, it leaves a big hole in the market, especially when it's Binance and Bybit. But how does does near.com I know you're not on a near.com team, but does near.com need to be compliant or is that kind of the whole deal where it's like, oh, maybe somebody owns the front end, but the near blockchain just accepts user inputs. How does near as a project fill that gap left behind in the EU from Binance and Bybit?
- [28:17]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, I mean I'll let the near.com team speak to, to their specific stance there. But as far as Near Intense and broadly and you know, at least like how we interact with it, like it the goal is, is for, you know, for Near Intense to be, to be non custodial like Near Intense. The core protocol is in fact noncustodial. And so because of that, you know that a lot of like Mica does not or Mika does not specifically, you know, apply to, you know, to at least to Near Intense itself. Now so for integrators they have to kind of, you know, do their own sort of, you know, legal analysis on like and a lot of that will come down to like how the keys are managed on behalf of users and you know, the different, the different aspects there. But I think what is powerful is that Near Intents can be used at least in these non custodial products that you know, are able to just more, more seamlessly onboard users. And so to give an example, you know, of something that you know that happened last week on Air Intense is one of these regulated euro stablecoins issued by Minarium called Year E was, was launched on Near Intense and also on near.com and part of the reason that you know that that was like kind of an earlyish initiative in getting a euro stablecoin listed on Near Intense and integrated into Near Intense. Is that it? Minarium has done a really great job of making it frictionless for European bank account holders to use SEPA instant to transfer funds to. In this case they transfer it to Minarium as the issuer and thenarium gives them one to one, no fees your E as you know, basically in return for that for that euro. And they do that for both on and off ramps. And so if you use one of the, you know, Monarium, you can use the Monarium app directly or you can use like Gnosis. I think it's a really great option. Gnosis has done a very good Job of creating an app that's like, I mean incredibly seamless, no gas fees, all of that you do have to kyc but once you do that KYC with them you can straight up bank transfer Euros into gnosis. You'll get your re on the noses chain and then we support our near intent supports your ease. You can deposit that into your.com and then you can trade for any asset that's supported on your dot com. So it's actually, I mean depending on, you know, depending on the day and like the solvers, there's some solvers doing some really tight quotes with USDC and so that actually unlocks like using USDC as the underlying pair that unlocks like really competitive pricing for Euros to Bitcoin to zcash to Height to all these different assets that are on near.com and that's kind of just the beginning. Like I think it's cool that you have that experience. There is still generally going to be that KYC blocker and I think the next phase is that there's a lot of European banks that are already looking into and at various stages of integration of doing an even deeper kind of integration with Euros. And I think the, the gold standard for that experience that happened a few weeks ago is like Cash app did their integration of stablecoins where like you actually do not even deal with the like the blockchains or gas fees or any sort of pricing at all in order to transfer USDC out from your dollar balance on on Cash app. So if we see that same experience moving to European banks then it won't feel like an on ramp anymore. It'll just be like oh yeah, just you know, you can transfer from your European bank account into near.com because all you have to do is you'll get an address on near.com you paste that into you know, your bank app and you just transfer €100 and then bam, all of a sudden you're able to buy all these different assets. You're on chain, you can participate in, you know, any sort of, you know, any sort of application on any sort of sort of chain which I think is going to be really magical.
- [31:38]
David
Okay, so this is the part that like I get kind of excited about because this shows how silly and dumb and ineffective regulation is. This is me speaking, but you can let me go on my like libertarian soapbox for a moment. So the, all the big fintechs that are no longer compliant in EU as of July 1st like six days ago, the grace period for MICA is over. And so like now people are truly, if you're uncompliant, you are now illegal in the eyes of the eu. And so that now like BYBIT and Binance, if you said has bat out from the market. One of the big reasons why MICA was established was monetary sovereignty. Like the EU was trying to protect the euro as a, as a unit and as a brand and as it's like money like didn't want to leak value of the euro and so Mika is supposed to protect the euro. And so there's like a pretty like explicit transaction cap for non EU stable coins for $1 million of transactions daily in payment value when mean when used as a means of exchange within the eu. So if it's over a million, excuse me, not a million dollars, a million euros daily then you had, then you have to be using a euro according to Mika. And so if you, if you use dollars or any other like non denominated stable coins. And so I would expect that that was one of the main reasons, one of many reasons why so many centralized, you know, super fintechs, you know, the Coinbase's Binance is of the world. Just like saw all the, the MICA regulation and be like it's so too hard, it's so much. And as a result some something we've seen in the stablecoin market are the thinner on ramps. You talked about minarium but they're just thinner on ramps that are just like you know, app specific. So it's like what do we do? We get dollars on chain. What do we do? We get euros on chain. That's the whole thing that we do. We don't do anything else. And that to me like then carves out like a faster way to get on chain. And the on chain world doesn't give a fuck about Mika. The on chain world is decentralized protocols. Like they are, they are whatever about Mika. They are indifferent to Mika. That's the whole point about being on chain is like if you are on chain you are supra to you know, nation state borders and regulations and you kind of see the whole same thing with like near AI. Whereas it's like there's certain regulations but the whole idea about being a public permissionless protocol is like you don't really give an F about the regulations. And so I'm seeing like the, the siloed walls of the EU go up and then they make minarium, you know, Mika compliant. And it's easy for Mika for minarium to be Mika compliant because it does One thing and one thing only, which is it gets tokenized euros on chain and so that's permissible. But then they go go straight onto near where you can literally do anything including swapping to dollars, which is likely going to be no offense to Euro holders, but much more of the, the stor currency that one would elect to use. And then going back to the whole like on chain L1 super app idea, like you have full access to the full, you know, might of on chain applications because. Because with like the very thin on ramp onto near.com and then you have direct access to the rest of the world all of a sudden like Mika regulations just don't matter. Like six walls that you put up, guys, but like we permeated right through them. And so I think it's just, it's a funny anecdote for why regulation is kind of silly and it's nice that it's just like. Actually we'll have like an anecdote to talk about.
- [35:14]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, you know, yeah, anything that's like looks or resembles kind of currency controls and in this day and age is not going to. Good luck, you know, kind of escaping the forces of the broader market, you know. So I think like the at least nice part about Mika is that I do think that, I mean regardless of what the initial goal was, I think having every currency that wants to be part of the global community I think should be tokenized at this point. And that's going to take a long time before it actually happens. But it's super useful frankly, that there is a way to get European banks to utilize stablecoins. So yeah, if the goal of the eve with that was basically to prevent people from using USDC or USDT instead of Euros, like that's probably not gonna, you know, have much of an effect and may even have like some ways where it like leaks value because it does like actually break down the barrier of getting on chain. But if the goal is like just to make the euro more like broadly useful globally, then I think actually it, you know, it does, it does have some benefits. Right. I mean there are going to be companies at least and probably individuals that like have to denominate their life in Euros because they live in the EU and thus like they have exposure to expenses.
- [36:24]
David
You need to pay taxes in the eu.
- [36:26]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, so you like. I mean you're going to have currency risk if you're just in the dollar and like, you know, maybe that's a risk you want to take, maybe it's not. Right. It'll kind of depends. So like I, but if you don't, if you don't have this digital version then like I, I think that you, yeah, your users are going to be like shut out. Like Europeans are going to be shut out. A lot of these like really great global, this emergent, like truly frictionless global financial system. So yeah, I kind of agree and, and disagree in the sense that like, yeah, if that was, if that was the core goal, like that was kind of ridiculous. But there are at least some like nice other benefits that I think do help the eu. It's kind of like why we were so excited about Genius. We're like, guys, this is literally going to make the dollar like continue like more important like for a longer period of time. Right. Like any declining dollar dominance is going to be stemmed by the fact that like people want to denominate the Internet in the dollar and this is the way that we can actually make that happen. And yeah, I think that that's, I mean that's the argument I would make for any regulator that's like looking at like, should we have, you know, should we create a pathway to our own currency, stablecoin? It's like, yes, if you want your users to be able to participate in this global economy, then you have no choice but to do it. And you absolutely should probably look at Genius more than Mika as far as like a way to do that. I mean, obviously Genius is still coming online, so we'll see what it looks like when it's all done and dusted.
- [37:40]
David
What about confidentiality? At least previously with the pre Mica era, one could onboard onto Binance and Bybit and then, and then get on chain and those two actions would be separated. And so like at least on chain like you're not connected, you're not connecting your bank accounts, you're still not doing that with in this method. But just like sexes did provide some user identity obfuscation for the on chain world. How does confidentiality work in the near world?
- [38:10]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, great question. Yeah, today, today was a big day actually today being July 7th there was that we, we're able to push out broad support for access to confidential intents. So there's going to be a lot of the near intents partners. It's been on near.com for a couple of months now. But now the broader set of near intents partners will be able to support confidential intents. So the way that works is there's actually a shard of, near as a shard of blockchain meaning not every validator has to process every single transaction, but ultimately it rolls into one set of blocks. And that's done primarily for scalability. But there's also some interesting, an interesting aspect of that where we can have shards that have specific use cases. So one of that, like the first one actually that was shipped is this confidential shard. And so that actually works. There's basically a set of rather a subset of validators on NEAR that are running basically a parallel version of the NEAR blockchain. They're running it within a trusted execution environment which enforces a set of rules where these validators are not able to actually like view much information about what users are doing. They can't view balances, they can't view transactions or like anything that could be, you know, de anonymizing. The only way that that can happen is if, you know, basically I think it's like, I believe it's like either the. A super majority of them basically agree to de anonymize a transaction. And that was done for compliance. That was done ultimately if there's a court order, you know, to de anonymize something. This was important for you know, getting kind of like enterprises to actually take this product seriously. So that's like one case in which they can be de anonymized. Or the more common case is that a user can basically have a viewing key or give a. They can create viewing keys and then give them to different parties so that themselves and those other parties have the ability to, you know, to reveal those transactions. And so that's, that's another piece of kind of compliance there. But like by default, nobody other than, you know, you yourself as the user with your own viewing key is actually going to be able to, you know, view what's happening with these transactions. And so initially that started off where is literally you just like transfer like your near intense assets into this private chart. And then like your balance is shielded and you can set, you could just do a simple transfer within that shard to any other user and those. Those transactions will be hidden. And then the second phase is of course allowing solvers to actually come in and quote assets and then trade with users within this confidential shard so that, you know, even those trades are anonymous. So the result is that you can custody any asset that's supported on NEAR intents in like in a confidential way. And you can then trade the vast majority of this near intense assets within the confidential chart. So it's basically a very broad, I'd say it's the broadest by number of assets and definitely number of chains kind of privacy product that exists in the space right now.
- [41:01]
David
I mean, I'm sure the answer is both. But is this mainly for just retail individual users who want individual privacy, or is this more for enterprise enterprises who need some level of just like sovereignty over their information in order to be able to integrate something like this?
- [41:16]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, it's definitely both. I think, like, initially it was, you know, like the initial traction has been just near.com, which is primarily, you know, a variety of different types of retail users. A lot coming from like, kind of like the zcash community, you know, which has been a great partner to near Intense, but increasingly. And the reason that, you know, I mean, the reason that it's designed the way that it was, was to also be friendly to enterprises because interestingly enough, I think they, the first wave of people who cared about privacy in crypto is like the true cypherpunks, right, who have very specific ideals that they're trying to uphold. But I think the next wave is not like broader retail. It's actually is like most of the feature requests that I think the industry is hearing is actually coming more from enterprises who are like, well, this is sensitive business information, right? If I'm using the blockchain to move assets around or for my customers to pay me or to like rebalance my treasury or whatever it is like, that is extremely sensitive commercial information. And you know, I can't possibly imagine, you know, like revealing that to the whole world and to anyone who's looking and you can have their agent analyzing that and like putting together really detailed competitive analysis on me. So yeah, like, it very much started more as I think, like, you know, designed for like frankly a niche of retail. Who are these kind of more cypherpunk, like you know, very privacy focused individuals. But like increasingly it is like the focus has very much been on, you know, enterprises and making sure that it's like actually a usable product for them.
- [42:41]
David
Well, the first time I heard about it, well, not heard about it, but just like saw it impact the market was when Zoddle, Zozi Zashi, now Zoddle integrated, integrated this. And that was. That was where zcash kind of got its like first big pump was because people downloaded Zashi Zottle, formerly Zashi now, now Zottle. And. And because of near intents and confidential intents, like the app just worked better. And then like near, then zcash had its first like big price bump and then that's been Part of the narrative ever since that to me counts as an entity, not an individual who is like using and integrating near products to the betterment of their own product in pursuit of their own ideals.
- [43:29]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I think that's. And that, that kind of breaks down to the. Yeah. So initially that wasn't confidential Intent. So that was, that was regular intense.
- [43:37]
David
Regular intense.
- [43:37]
Kendall Cole
Yeah.
- [43:37]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [43:37]
Kendall Cole
And I mean the cool part about like. Yeah, so what users were doing is they'd be like, well, I have, you know, USDC on Solana and I want zcash and I want to shield it. So they would, you know, use. Using Zottle, they would basically near intents integrated into it. They get an address in Zotto where they could deposit us to see to. Then that would be swapped into zcash and then they could. And then they could shield it and then they could do whatever they want to after that. And so like, that was, you know, that's basically how it worked up until, you know, fairly recently. And then now, now there is confidential intents where like, they can actually, they could, they could shield, shield, you know, quote unquote, that USDC on Solana before even leaving Solana and then swap to zcash within the confidential realm. So like even that initial step is kind of like lost. Right. You don't even see the fact that, that. Because on the early days with, with Zodel or was actually at the time that swap between USDC and Solana to zcash that would have been public. Right. So now even that piece can be, you know, can be basically made private with Zashi.
- [44:37]
David
Now Zotel, it was the hub that was obfuscated. That's once, once you were already bought to zcash, then you could shield it. So the hub. But now, now with confidential intents, it's the hub and the spokes. And really there is that whole idea that, you know, they're. You don't really get privacy unless everything is private. If, if like a healthy chunk of society opts out of privacy and they just like, don't care, be like, ah, whatever, I have nothing to hide. You actually make it harder for the people who are seeking privacy to seek privacy because like, if there's. There's only like, you know, 10 people in the world who are looking for privacy, well then like those 10 people don't have privacy. You actually need a very large privacy set in the broad sense. And so the fact that it. That confidential intents is expanding privacy from just the hub of zcash And Z asset to the hub and spokes and then also just spokes independently of zcash just elsewhere. That to me is just like we are increasing the net privacy on the Internet. Did you see Alex Karp's not crash out fake crash out on media recently?
- [45:42]
Kendall Cole
I heard about it, I have not watched it.
- [45:45]
David
Yeah, he basically was like getting, I mean he's always very animated so that's what, that's why the media was calling him, calling it a crash out. But to me it made perfect sense. It's just like all of anthropic and OpenAI's customers are just feeding these two AI super labs all of their data, all of their information, all their alpha and then, and then these companies are just taking that and turning that into products and so they're, they're competitive with their own user base because if their user base gives them any alpha, if they're, if they're prompt into ChatGPT or Claude is at all useful to anthropic or OpenAI then they're ingesting that and like using that as their competitive edge which is like a huge violation of like a social contract that could be solved with privacy. And I actually think that's like a really big bull case for, for Venice or anyone doing any sort of thing that's protecting user data from like coagulating into these massive super scalar AI labs. I don't have a question here but
- [46:43]
Kendall Cole
I'm just like throwing, it's a good segue to like near AI too which I don't think you've brought it up a couple times. I haven't talked about it but yeah, I mean it's a similar like similar goal there on the AI side where the goal is to have infrastructure where, where AI models are run within a privacy preserving way that also cannot actually have any like basically leak any sort of any of your prompted like any context that you're putting into the model. Right. So yeah, you mentioned Venice, who, who uses it as like one of one of the ways they can offer end to end privacy where like yeah these, so there are, and the early users of, of Near AI are basically enterprises are like we, we have to be using these models, we have ones that we identified that we want to use but we have really serious concerns either either because like we have compliance regulations like HIPAA or something or just you know, competitive you know, concerns about like giving all that information to these model developers or also giving them to, I mean open Router is amazing but they also like do have all These kind of like pretty unknown like posters of the models that I doubt enterprises are using too heavily. But like a lot of people just see one that's like fast and cheap and use it. But like, that could be anyone who's up there and they can like collect as much information as possible. Right. And so basically, yeah, like you still get the hosted, like the, the whole like hosted setup of like people running GPUs for you and optimizing the entire infrastructure, but then also knowing that you have some sort of like technical way that can prevent that hoster from like actually getting access to your information and your data. So like, I, yeah, I fully agree. I mean, I think Alex Karp's concerns are, are very valid.
- [48:19]
David
I don't.
- [48:19]
Kendall Cole
It's funny, it's one of those things where like, I kind of doubt that that is even too much of a priority for OpenAI or anthropic at the moment.
- [48:26]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [48:27]
Kendall Cole
They're in such hyper competition. They're just like, we need better models. But yeah, absolutely. They have this complete treasure trove that they will first are using probably just to make the models better, but ultimately will use for competitive products once their margins get squeezed so much that they're like, well, where else is there? Where else can we expand?
- [48:45]
David
I wouldn't be too sure about that because Dylan Field from Figma had some problems that he said because he was, he was a client of Anthropic and then, and then like they launched like
- [48:59]
Kendall Cole
Anthropic Design, the design product right afterwards.
- [49:01]
David
And so like, I don't think they're doing it like everywhere all the time, but they are definitely identifying high value products that they are seeing grow success in the market and then like, well, we can make that independently.
- [49:13]
Kendall Cole
No, yeah, good point. I mean like, yeah, and I was seeing like Open Eye Health and like they're hiring like investing bankers now. Yeah. So yeah, for sure. They're gonna, they're gonna go for everything. They're gonna try to eat everything they can. I mean. Yeah, as they should.
- [49:24]
David
I want to work back into, into your neck or the woods on the, on the, on the near ecosystem just with like intense and everything. Of all the things that we've talked about, what is the way that the NEAR ecosystem captures value the most? We talked about there's like the growing explosion of stablecoins and assets, the assets that other chains and apps want to integrate with, where there's like near intents, like kind of settling between all this. How does near capture all of the value that is creating with With Near Intents and all. And all the. Just like the aggregation of everything useful in crypto.
- [50:01]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now it's actually very straightforward. It's really, it's volume, right? So near Near Tensor protocol, which is thus near takes a cut from every single swap that goes through Near Intents. And so that, that fee varies based on, you know, the partners that integrating it. There's kind of like a whole, you know, type of, you know, revenue agreement program that exists with these different partners. And then there's near.com, which takes, you know, takes its own fee. Right? And then like just takes like the, the fee there. And so I think like the average is somewhere around like, you know, 10, 10 to 20 bips, depending on 20, 10 to 20 basis points, depending on, you know, where it's coming from. But yeah, that, that goes into right now like the near house of stake, which basically controls that pool and has been at least quite a bit been buying back near. And so it's pretty straightforward. Basically more volume that's going through Near Intense is going to lead to, you know, more potential buybacks of near or at least more control by near token holders of a, you know, a growing treasury that's just been accumulated from the fees that Air Tense takes. So, you know, I mean, look, I think ultimately there's, there's a lot of ways to kind of monetize this infrastructure that'll go beyond just swaps. But right now the, the North Star is pretty simple. It's like, make sure that Near Intense is creating enough, enough value to all of these integrators who have demand for moving between assets, whether explicitly or implicitly, and, and then just, and then monetize, you know, by taking a cut from that. So I, I'd say like, yeah, there are really the two parts of the business, the like, Near Intense as, as infrastructure and that is still the dominant one and like an absolute, you know, top priority for, you know, for everyone. Like, we have a lot of really great, a great and growing number of partners that are integrating Near Intense and that's going to continue. And then I do think there are some unique opportunities to create just basically do some experiments and like run, you know, kind of like popularize some like, newer products. So like the way that the Confidential Intents rollout happened I think was like a useful demonstration of that where like it landed on near.com first to get the experience right before, you know, making that more broadly available throughout the network. And that can be another opportunity for Near.com to kind of capture that revenue directly for the near ecosystem.
- [52:20]
David
One idea I've been working with lately is every business model in crypto is just being an exchange. Like that is actually just the business model. I remember my bitcoiner friend telling me this in 2021 during right after DeFi summer and in 2021 where we had just finished trading food tokens and now we're trading JPEGs. And all the bitcoiners were back in that era kind of ruffled. They had their feathers ruffled just because Ethereum was capturing so much attention. And why was Ethereum capturing so much attention? Oh, because it's a fantastic exchange of literally any single asset that you could ever imagine was being traded on the Ethereum layer one. And like what Uniswap was the darling of that era, dydx at the time. And then Ethereum couldn't scale. So the layer twos are like, well, now you can come trade on our chain. And what was the breakout app on top of Arbitrum? It was gmx, another perp exchange. Now we have like hyper and lighter. And what are the biggest centralized business models in crypto? Still being an exchange. What are stablecoins for payments, which is still an exchange. It's a trading, a good for money or for being a trading pair. You have AAVE and the borrowing lending protocols.
- [53:37]
Kendall Cole
But that's still, that's a swap, right?
- [53:39]
David
You can still argue that's a swap. And so any successful business model of crypto is doing some form of exchange, which I think actually if that, if we accept that idea, which I'm not saying is correct, but I think it's still illustrative. You can point this towards near intents and like, oh, just near is the platform for apps and chains and issuers. Minarium issuing euro gets to be exchanged with any other asset inside of any other app across the rest of the ecosystem. So like, as far as I'm concerned, just near is another form of an exchange, but it's just got a little bit of its own kind of properties that carve out space for it inside of like the crypto verse. How do you, how do you like that, that, that thesis?
- [54:23]
Kendall Cole
No, that, that's a simple, very simple way to say it. Right. And that's why like volume is like what's the North Star for exchanges? Like ultimately volume, right. I mean, you know, you make trade offs at different times to like capture users and like, you know, optimize the product. But like ultimately, you know, exchanges make money by people exchanging and like yeah, so you volume, you take a bit of a cut of volume and then like, you know, as long as you're making that number ultimately go up and like continue to expand in the markets that you can kind of like ultimately create the best product and like a line up buyers and sellers. Yeah, that's what's going to make. That's what's going to make it work. And so yeah, that's, that is, I mean that's exactly right. That's why I was like, started with like integrating more chains and that's still part of it. Continued into like, you know, integrating industry new partners that like can you create like have that order flow and that's still a big part of it. And then yeah, we want, you know, we want every single asset in the world that people desire it to be available on near.com. and I mean I think that's, yeah, that's like, that is exploding. Right. With like AI is also like, you know, agents and different products that are coming out there. I think that's going to unlock an entirely new set of, you know, assets that people want to trade and traders. Right. Like agents will, you know, are and increasingly will be trading. And so like we want to make sure that near Intense is just like providing enough value to all of those different parties that like we are the exchange in a lot, as many cases as possible there'll be a volume, we'll take a cut of volume and then ultimately that'll, you know, that'll flow back to near.
- [55:40]
David
Beautiful. Kendall, thanks for coming on the show today.
- [55:42]
Kendall Cole
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [55:43]
David
Bankless Nation. You guys know the deal. Crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. You can exchange it and maybe it goes away, but hopefully not. This is frontier. It's not for everyone. But we are glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot,
- [56:04]
Kendall Cole
Sam.