NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin has published a wide-ranging wishlist of applications he wants developers to build on the network, spanning AI-powered virtual pets, private trading tools and cross-chain payment rails. The October 3 post on X reads less like a roadmap announcement and more like an open invitation: with building on NEAR now dramatically easier, the bottleneck has shifted to deciding what to build and how to get it in front of users.
“Building itself got easier”
Polosukhin said new and returning developers had been shipping on NEAR over the preceding couple of weeks, and that friction in the development process had fallen to the point where product selection and distribution are now the real challenges.
“Building itself got easier too, so it’s really about what to build and how stand out to get distribution,” he wrote.
His answer is a list of 13 application ideas plus five distribution suggestions, and it offers an unusually candid look at how a major protocol founder thinks about consumer crypto in 2026.
AI Tamagotchi with a crypto wallet
The most eye-catching consumer pitch is an “AI Tamagotchi” — digital characters represented by non-fungible tokens that each carry a NEAR balance to pay for their own computing. NEAR AI would run verifiable inference from a prompt encoded onchain, while players feed, dress and eventually battle their pets in competitions.
The payment mechanism is not hypothetical. On July 31, NEAR introduced staking-based AI payments that convert locked tokens into monthly computing credits across 43 AI models, including models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Users keep ownership of their staked tokens and recover them after unstaking, with the locked balance determining available credits.
Payments: checkout buttons and event deposits
On the payments side, Polosukhin proposed a universal checkout widget letting customers pay through NEAR Intents using whatever wallet and blockchain they already hold assets on. His suggested go-to-market is direct merchant adoption, with Shopify named as a potential distribution target.
For events, he pitched a registration system that holds attendees’ deposits in escrow until the host checks them in — attendees who show up split the contributions of those who do not. The model extends an earlier project called Kickback across multiple blockchains and assets.
Private trading and “never get liquidated”
Several ideas target traders. Polosukhin identified counterparty discovery as the weak point in NEAR Intents’ existing “private deals” feature and proposed a marketplace where participants could post available deals for others to fill. For social trading, he suggested selling viewing keys that expose a trader’s profit and loss while keeping the underlying activity private.
More provocatively, he floated an application labeled “Never get liquidated” — using NEAR Intents to manage lending and perpetual futures positions for interest income while managing liquidation exposure. He also described a “Delta neutral anything” strategy pairing spot holdings with perpetual positions under a NEAR contract.
He was careful to present both as concepts rather than demonstrated guarantees, but they point at where he sees Intents going: a general-purpose settlement layer for sophisticated positions.
Private AI for code, health and meetings
The list extends into private AI tooling. Polosukhin proposed an agent that privately reviews pull requests through NEAR AI with verifiable execution, a healthcare frontend that encrypts medical data end-to-end before requesting a second opinion, and a private transcription app modeled on Granola where users keep records locally with backups encrypted under their own keys — funded by NEAR staking instead of subscriptions.
He even pitched an AI encyclopedia whose facts become ongoing prediction markets, borrowing the Augur model, plus a benchmarking system for testing AI models against private datasets without exposing the material.
Distribution advice and the Bitwise backdrop
On distribution, Polosukhin recommended Aurora’s Intent Connect — which lets users of other chains interact with NEAR applications without bridging — alongside NEARLegion, cross-community promotion, Product Hunt and X. Aurora Labs already demonstrated the pattern on September 17 with one-signature Sui execution, where NEAR Intents supplied liquidity and settlement for users who never need to obtain SUI for fees.
The pitch also lands at a consequential moment for the token. On September 29, Bitwise launched its U.S. NEAR ETF on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR with a 0.75 percent management fee, holding NEAR directly and planning to stake its holdings. Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan cited NEAR Intents as settlement infrastructure for AI agents handling payments and swaps — precisely the vision Polosukhin’s 13 ideas are designed to populate.
For developers, the takeaway is blunt: the infrastructure excuses are gone, and one of the network’s founders has just handed out a menu. The next few months will show whether anyone takes the order.
cross chain payment rails is the one idea on the list with existing demand. everything else needs user education, payments just needs lower fees
13 ideas and 5 distribution tips, so basically a co-founder admitting nobody can get users. respect the honesty but this is a founder problem not a dev problem
hard disagree, a founder publicly ranking ideas AND distribution channels is exactly the founder work. devs do not need another SDK, they need someone to say what is worth building
agreed. most foundations put out grants for yet another dex. a ranked list with distribution tips is more actionable than 90% of what gets posted
hard disagree, a founder publicly ranking ideas AND distribution channels is exactly the founder work. devs do not need another SDK, they need someone to say what is worth building
founder problem or not, the staking credits for 43 AI models from July is real infrastructure. the ideas list is bait, the rails already shipped
an ai pet with its own wallet is the most accidentally bullish thing illia has posted. kids will manage a portfolio before they can read
An AI pet that pays its own compute bills is the first consumer crypto pitch in ages that sounds like a product and not a spreadsheet. The distribution suggestions matter more than the 13 ideas though
hard agree, the shopify checkout button alone would do more for NEAR than the tamagotchi. merchants dont care about chains, they care about fees
The AI Tamagotchi is the only idea on that list my non crypto friends would actually try. Everything else needs a wallet explainer first
13 ideas is ambitious but the ‘never get liquidated trading’ one is just… a limit order with extra steps? still love the energy from the foundation
worse than a limit order, the never get liquidated pitch is basically the maker vault thesis from 2018 again. will say the tamagotchi paying its own compute is the one idea here that could actually onboard normies
Sanna called it, the never get liquidated thing is just stop losses with a marketing budget. the cross chain payments rails idea is the sleeper here imo
limit order with extra steps lol exactly. though if it stops normies from getting liquidated on 100x i guess its fine
he’s right that building got easier tho, i shipped a shim over a weekend last month. distribution is 100% the wall now
same, shipped a NEAR component over a weekend last month. the 5 distribution tips are the actual gold here, any hackathon can produce 13 ideas