NEAR AI thesis: what Jensen Huang's touch signals
Thread1,133 words
31-part thread arguing NEAR is a leading crypto x AI base layer, combining sharded low-fee execution, chain signatures for agents acting across chains and the NEAR AI lab pursuing user-owned AGI. Expects GPU DePINs and agent apps to build on it.
Key claims
NEAR supports 2M+ daily active users
Chain signatures let agents sign across major chains
NEAR AI aims for community-owned AGI
This is @ilblackdragon.
A few months ago he was touched by Jensen Huang, CEO of @nvidia.
Why did this happen?
I investigated the case and came to a shocking conclusion.
Few understand the impact of what @ilblackdragon is secretly building.
AI thesis on $NEAR 🧵 ⤵️ t.co/XBEq5p1jlE
1/ This is not your average thread anon.
AI is a trillion $$$ narrative and the AI bull case for $NEAR is still under the radar.
This can be your chance to be early.
What does Jensen Huang see in @NEARProtocol and what does it mean?
2/ Blockchain and AI are technologies that complement each other in a very powerful way.
I'm convinced that autonomous, AI-powered agents are the end game of Web3 UX and a requirement for blockchains to be competitive at global scale.
However, AI also needs crypto. 🤖 ✨
3/ Why?
To unleash the full potential of autonomous AI agents, these agents need access to efficient resource market places, or more generally speaking, they need programmable, permissionlessly accessible, economic plumbing.
x.com/zerokn0wledge_/status/1825942660412023039
4/ Blockchains can provide this infra, and @NEARProtocol specifically can provide it more efficiently than most other L1s or L2s in the market.
$NEAR is a sharded (multiple parallel execution instances), high-performance chain with low fees, high data throughput & fast finality.
5/ With additional shards on the network, the network can scale even further and grow with the challenges that AI-powered use cases might pose.
Already today, the network is battle-tested and consistently supports > 2M daily active users across applications in diverse verticals.
6/ The high speed, fast finality, low fees and robust infrastructure make @NEARProtocol an ideal economic layer for the Crypto x AI stack.
But there is more to it. 👇
7/ AI agents are complex computer programs or systems designed to act autonomously in a specific environment and that strive to achieve certain predefined goals.
8/ What's powerful about bringing them onchain, is that these agents can not only make decisions autonomously anymore.
They then also have the resources & the decentralized trust layer to implement their decisions & engage in economic activity onchain (among each other or apps).
9/ The way that works, is to give an AI agent control over a smart contract wallet with programmable permissions that allows the agent to transact and move funds around.
10/ Agents is a term used for systems with varying degrees of complexity and sophistication.
Simple agents are trigger-based trading bots for example.
Autonomous agents can act more dynamically over certain timeframes and perform various actions.
11/ The problem is, that while some agent-based solutions have started to emerge on specific chains, today's crypto world is inherently multichain and with the modular expansion, the fragmentation of liquidity and users across ecosystems is only going to increase.
12/ This introduces significant complexity for both users and builders.
The solution that is being celebrated as the endgame of UX all over CT today, is Chain Abstraction.
x.com/zerokn0wledge_/status/1815325831117287914
13/ >100 players with different approaches on various level of the stack strive to solve this.
@NEARProtocol is one of them and that bears huge potential for AI agent powered use cases.
> Visual credit to @therollupco.
14/ What do I mean?
The power lies in equipping AI-powered, autonomous agents with control over $NEAR accounts that, using chain signatures*, can sign transactions across all major blockchains.
* ) Learn more below.
x.com/zerokn0wledge_/status/1815785310925844662
15/ Soon, applications will emerge that have prompt-based frontends and that will feel like talking to ChatGPT.
Through text you will be able to instruct your agents and fully automate your on-chain workflows or portfolio management activities.
16/ Many of those apps will be built on @NEARProtocol and it could be what finally makes blockchain competitive on a global scale.
But what about other high-performance blockchains?
17/ Yes, there will be other chains that will try to build up a similar narrative.
I also believe that in this huge market, more than one ecosystem can succeed, so @NEARProtocol will not be the only player.
18/ However, $NEAR is ahead of the competition.
The @NEARFoundation has set up a dedicated R&D lab (NEAR AI) and is investing heavily in enabling AI use cases.
This encompasses core infrastructure investments, like data collection, crowdsourcing, curation & rewarding creators.
19/ It also covers access to computing resources, innovative monetization methods, verifiability of training and inference for provenance, agentic infrastructure, and more.
20/ NEAR AI's efforts include developing open-source models for the use of builders that can leverage these models to power their agents or apps they are building.
The ultimate end goal however goes much further.
NEAR AI aims to develop community-owned AGI (see screenshot).
21/
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to a hypothetical machine capable of understanding and learning any intellectual task that a human can.
An immensely powerful technology.
22/ NEAR AI is led by @AlexSkidanov and @ilblackdragon.
Which brings us back to the original question:
Why did Jensen Huang touch @ilblackdragon?
Or in more serious terms:
Why does $NEAR get the attention of the big boys in the AI game?
23/ @nvidia is the world's leading GPU manufacturer and largely dominates the market.
The increasing demand for high performance GPUs to handle AI training & inference workloads, has sent $NVDA soaring and making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
24/ The touch obviously doesn't mean much.
The fact that the @NEARProtocol co-founder got a chance to speak at the @nvidia conference and engage with the CEO publicly however, strengthens the position of $NEAR in the AI space.
What that means for the $NEAR ecosystem? 🚀
25/ I expect a lot of growth in the DePIN space, with decentralized GPU networks making compute permissionlessly accessible and serving as the base layer infra on top of which more complex models are trained and deployed.
26/ These DePIN networks can leverage @NEARProtocol as payment layer infrastructure and efficient market places they need to make compute available in a highly liquid manner.
27/ The compute will power open-source models, and the autonomous agents built with them, leveraging @NEARProtocol as the programmable economic infrastructure to enable highly efficient agent-driven apps and economies.
28/ @NEARProtocol's blockchain infra will also allow for novel ways of monetizing AI models and hence incentivizing builders, which bears huge potential to attract talent to the $NEAR ecosystem beyond the NEAR AI hiring spree.
29/ Overall, I'm convinced, @NEARProtocol will be among the leaders once the AI narrative is back in full force.
Just wait until people understand what @ilblackdragon has been building that enabled the infamous touch to happen in the first place.
The end game is loading. ⏳
NFA, but highly recommend you to DYOR anon. 🤖 ✨
That's a wrap! I hope you've found this thread helpful!
Like/Repost of the below post is also highly appreciated! ⤵️
13 more images on X
How the call played out · since 21 Aug 2024
Prices as of 23 Oct 2026This piece takes a view on $NEAR, so that move is read against the call.
+24%
Moved with the call · over 2.2 years
- At publication
- $4.00
- Now
- $4.95
- vs BTC
- −11%
- After 1 month
- +9.0%
- After 3 months
- +45%
- After 1 year
- −37%
- High since
- +101% 07 Dec 2024
- Low since
- −76% 12 Feb 2026
Since then
Zero has written 36 more pieces on NEAR Protocol and NEAR AI and $NEAR since this one.
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- NEAR DCML explained: confidential, verifiable and monetizable AI via TEEsCovers $NEAR
Daily closes in USD from DefiLlama and Yahoo Finance. Only a bullish or bearish thesis is read as a call; explainers, maps and mentions are context. Not financial advice.