The Most Important Blockchain You’ve Never Heard Of
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| By Beth Canova |
How the internet works isn’t something you likely think about often. Because you don’t have to.
Very few people actually care whether a website runs on Amazon's servers or Google's. You simply type the address, and it loads.
The infrastructure takes care of the rest.
But crypto doesn't work that way. Not yet, at least.
And that’s one reason adoption hasn’t hit critical mass yet. Especially when it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi). Because each ecosystem is, essentially, its own island — with its own language and rules — rather than part of a larger whole.
This makes moving value from one island to another a hurdle that doesn’t exist in TradFi.
You need the right app, the right wallet and the right bridge, which many times is unique to that ecosystem. And along the way, you’ll pay fees that feel like toll booths every ten feet.
That’s why most people give up and just leave their crypto on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or Binance.
Now, imagine there was a chain that connects all these islands.
Now, think about where things are headed and the rise of AI agents. The future will likely be a place where robots move money autonomously. Where systems will settle payments across borders without a human approving each step.
For that to work, chains need to communicate. The infrastructure needs to catch up to the vision.
And whoever builds it will matter a lot.
Near: AI-Ready Infrastructure
That's where the NEAR Protocol (NEAR, “C-”) comes in.
NEAR was co-founded by Illia Polosukhin — who, before building a blockchain, was one of the authors of a 2017 research paper called "Attention Is All You Need."
That's the paper behind modern AI, the foundation for ChatGPT, Claude and everything that followed.
Think about that: The person leading NEAR's AI infrastructure didn't read a whitepaper and start a token. He helped write the playbook for the technology taking over the world.
That's a different kind of credibility.
The protocol itself is fast and cheap. It uses sharding to scale without slowing down.
Think of “sharding” like splitting a congested highway into parallel lanes so traffic doesn't back up. The approach lowers fees and creates a developer-friendly environment built for actual usage.
But the real story is NEAR Intents.
This feature is what can abstract away all the hoops DeFi users must jump through to move from one ecosystem to another.
All you have to do is tell it your intent. For example, you’d enter "Swap my Bitcoin for USDC." Then, solvers such as market makers, trading algorithms and other users compete to fill it.
The matching happens off-chain, so it's fast and private, with the final settlement secured by the blockchain.
And in the end, you get the best deal. Without needing to be an expert in navigating DeFi.
Right now, NEAR Intents connects 39 blockchains and 87 different assets. The most traded are the ones you'd expect — stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), the largest L1s — Bitcoin (BTC, “A-”), Ethereum (ETH, “B+”), etc. — and Zcash (ZEC, “B-”) for those who want privacy built in.
And because it runs through a simple API, any app can plug in. Not just crypto apps but web2 sites as well. E-commerce. Payments. Anything that needs to move value from point A to point B.
The model is proving itself. Despite muted activity across the broad market, Near’s total fee generation is rising. That’s evidence of real useage, not just hype.
That's what blockchain is supposed to feel like. You don't know what chain you're on. You just get the outcome you asked for.
The NEAR token runs underneath all of this.
Validators stake NEAR to keep the network secure and earn rewards. Gas fees, cross-chain swaps, AI agent settlements — all of it gets paid in NEAR. And the market makers and node operators who power NEAR Intents hold NEAR to participate.
In February 2026, NEAR updated its tokenomics so more of that economic activity flows back to the protocol layer directly.
Simply put, the more the system gets used, the more value accrues to the token.
Bottom Line
I'm not going to tell you NEAR is a sure thing. Nothing in this space is.
And indeed, NEAR is roughly 93% off its all-time high at the time of writing. It trades near $1.35.
But here's what I believe: In a world with hundreds of competing blockchains, the ones that survive won't be the fastest or cheapest in isolation.
They'll be the ones that make everything else work better.
NEAR is building for that world. And the person leading it helped build the AI revolution we're already living in.
That combination is hard to ignore.
Which is why I’ll be interested to hear what Near’s CPO George Xian Zeng has to say next week at Consensys Miami 2026.
Right after the 2026 Weiss Investment Summit, your Weiss crypto team will head down to get the latest from industry experts on AI, blockchain infrastructure, tokenization, regulation and everything in between that could impact your crypto investing.
And of course, we’ll share all our timeliest and most action-packed insight with you right here.
Best,
Beth Canova
