NEAR’s New Token Utility and AI Economy | Illia Polosukhin

What if staking a token could keep an AI agent thinking? NEAR cofounder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain NEAR’s new staking-powered inference model, where yield funds access to confidential and verifiable AI. They unpack how NEAR AI Cloud, IronClaw, Intents, and the NEAR token fit into one integrated economy for autonomous agents, why AI outputs may need cryptographic proof when money is at stake, and how GPU compute could become a liquid global market. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔓NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK https://bankless.cc/near-pod 🔑BITKEY | GET 10% OFF USE CODE: BANKLESS | #bitkeypartner https://bankless.cc/bitkey ✈️COINBASE ONE CARD | EARN 5% BACK IN BITCOIN https://bankless.cc/coinbase-one-card 📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0 https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Private, Verifiable AI 4:57 Why AI Outputs Need Proof 9:13 From Staking Yield to Inference 16:16 NEAR’s Integrated AI Stack 20:01 NEAR as AI Money 24:27 Autonomous Businesses 28:51 Partners and Real-World Uses 33:26 What NEAR Ships Next 38:01 Where AI Value Accrues 40:56 The AI Operating System 48:07 Turning Compute Into a Market 51:48 Closing Thoughts --- RESOURCES Illia Polosukhin https://x.com/j0hnwang Near revenue https://revenue.near.org/ --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures