NEAR’s Co-Founder Just Pitched 13 App Ideas — From AI Pets With Wallets to a Shopify Crypto Checkout Button

NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin just published a 13-item wishlist of applications he wants developers to build on the network — and it reads like a crypto-infused product catalog: an AI Tamagotchi with its own wallet, a crypto checkout button for Shopify, and private AI tools for doctors and coders.

By Keisha Williams | October 3, 2026

In an X post on Oct. 3, Polosukhin — who co-founded NEAR and co-authored the research behind modern AI language models — said new and returning developers had been building on NEAR over the preceding couple of weeks, and that building itself “got easier.” His conclusion: the real questions now are what to build and how to stand out to get distribution. To help, he sketched 13 application ideas plus five suggestions for reaching users. For regular investors, the post matters because it signals where one of crypto’s most AI-focused chains intends to spend its attention next.

The Hook: AI Pets That Pay Their Own Computing Bills

The most eye-catching proposal is an “AI Tamagotchi” — a digital pet represented by a non-fungible token (NFT), which is a unique on-chain record of ownership. In Polosukhin’s design, each character carries its own NEAR balance that funds AI inference — the behind-the-scenes computing that makes the pet “think.” NEAR AI would run verifiable inference from a prompt encoded on-chain, meaning anyone can check that the AI actually ran as claimed. Feeding and dressing features could come first, with battle arenas and competitions later.

The idea isn’t pure fantasy. Infrastructure for paying AI with staked tokens already exists: on July 31, NEAR introduced staking-based AI payments that convert locked tokens into monthly computing credits, covering 43 AI models at launch — including models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Users keep ownership of their staked tokens and can recover them after unstaking.

On-Chain Evidence: The Payments Plumbing Already Exists

Several of the 13 ideas lean on NEAR Intents — the protocol’s settlement layer that lets users pay or swap across different wallets and blockchains. For merchants, Polosukhin proposed a universal checkout widget that would let customers pay through NEAR Intents using whatever wallet and chain they already hold assets on. His suggested distribution target: getting the button into Shopify, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms. Think of it as a “pay with crypto” sticker that works no matter which chain your money lives on.

For event organizers, he pitched a registration system that holds attendees’ deposits in escrow — money held by a smart contract (think vending machine: it only releases funds when conditions are met) — until the host checks them in. Attendees who show up would split the funds of no-shows. The model draws on an earlier project called Kickback, extended across multiple blockchains. Wallet compatibility is improving too: on Sep. 17, Aurora Labs announced one-signature Sui execution through its Intents Connect product, letting users of other chains act in Sui apps without bridging funds or buying SUI for fees.

The Core Conflict: Great Ideas, Crowded Lane

The tension in Polosukhin’s post is honest: building on NEAR got easier, but distribution is the bottleneck. His private-application ideas are the most ambitious — an AI agent that reviews private code with verifiable execution, a medical second-opinion frontend that encrypts health data end-to-end before sending it to NEAR AI, and a desktop transcription app modeled on Granola that keeps user records local. Each would put sensitive data handling on crypto rails — a strong use case, but a hard one to win trust in.

The trading ideas are similarly bold. Polosukhin proposed a marketplace where participants can advertise and fill over-the-counter “private deals” on NEAR Intents — today users need to know their counterparty. He also suggested selling viewing keys for social trading: a trader could show profit and loss publicly while letting paying followers peek at the positions they’d copy. And under the label “Never get liquidated,” he outlined using NEAR Intents to manage lending and perpetual futures positions — presenting it as an application idea, not a guarantee.

Market Implications: Wall Street Is Already Watching

For investors, the subtext is that NEAR is positioning itself as settlement infrastructure for AI agents — the plumbing AI software uses to pay and get paid. That thesis already has a mainstream seal of approval: on Sep. 29, Bitwise launched its U.S. NEAR ETF on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR, with a 0.75% management fee. The fund holds NEAR directly and plans to stake its holdings, with rewards accruing through its net asset value. Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan explicitly cited NEAR Intents as an example of settlement infrastructure for AI agents handling payments and swaps.

The Verdict

Polosukhin’s post is a wish list, not a product launch — none of the 13 ideas ships today, and execution risk is real in every category he names. But the direction is clear: NEAR wants to be the chain where AI agents hold wallets, pay for computing, and settle trades across blockchains. If even two or three of these ideas get built and find users — the checkout widget and the AI pet economy look closest to existing infrastructure — the network’s usage story strengthens. For a chain whose ETF just hit the market two weeks ago, that narrative could matter as much as any single product. Distribution suggestions like Aurora wallet connections, NEARLegion, Product Hunt and X show the team knows the hard part starts now.

The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.