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.
illia co-authoring the attention paper and now pitching checkout buttons is quite the arc. distribution finally outranks tech in this industry
people forget illia co-authored the attention paper behind the LLM stack. when that guy says build AI pets on your chain, thats not random shilling
co-authored transformers and still has to pitch tamagotchis to get dev attention, thats the real signal on where consumer crypto is at lol
Private AI tools for medical records are the quiet winner in that list. Tamagotchi gets the clicks but doctors pay real money for compliance tools
compliance tools pay but hospitals move at glacier speed. shopify checkout ships in a quarter, the HIPAA stack ships in 3 years
private AI for medical records only works if the privacy stack actually ships first. otherwise its a compliance lawsuit with a roadmap
nobody is putting live patient records on chain lol. the pitch is private inference, data stays where it is. different problem than the lawsuit you are imagining
Petra is right about the medical angle. Doctors will never touch it if the data leaves the device, and most of these chains still phone home more than anyone admits.
a shopify checkout button beats all 13 ideas combined. illia shipping the transformers paper and still fighting for merchant integrations says everything about where crypto distribution is stuck
a shopify checkout button for crypto is the only idea on that list that prints money. merchants don’t care about chains, they care about not losing sales
Shopify merchants already lived through the 2021 crypto checkout integrations and quietly dropped them over refund headaches. The button is easy. Settling to fiat without the merchant eating the risk is the actual product.
refund risk killed the 2021 shopify buttons and nothing changed since. unless settlement is instant fiat for the merchant it stays a gimmick
Been in ecommerce since 2014. Merchants will try the checkout button for a month, then turn it off when conversion numbers come in. Refund disputes killed it last time and nothing about that math changed.
AI pets with wallets sounds dumb until you remember tamagotchi sold 90 million units. dumb wins.
90 million units and no wallet, no chain, nothing. slap crypto on it and kids learn yield before long division, dumb wins is right
dumb wins until the pet burns its own NEAR balance on inference and the kid is sad. there is a ceiling on that pitch
co-founders posting wishlists instead of roadmaps is either refreshing honesty or a sign nobody internal wanted these. could be both
wishlists instead of roadmaps usually means the roadmap got cut. in this market ill take honesty either way
the never get liquidated trading app is just a margin call scheduler with extra steps. still the most honest item on the whole 13 idea list tho
13 ideas and the comments are all fighting over the shopify button lol. illia knew exactly what engagement bait to lead with
the AI tamagotchi paying its own inference bills is the most 2026 sentence ever written. the pet goes broke and the kid learns what gas fees are, character building tbh
an AI pet with its own wallet that can burn its own balance on inference is either the best or worst feature ever shipped, no in between
The AI Tamagotchi with its own wallet sounds gimmicky until you realize that is basically how a whole generation will first touch non-custodial keys. onboarded by a digital pet. honestly genius distribution thinking.
My kid would absolutely lose the seed phrase within a week and then hold me responsible for killing their pet. The custody UX for that use case is the actual unsolved problem.
checkout button for shopify is the only idea on that list with a real revenue story. everything else is waiting for users that don’t exist yet