$NEAR Protocol, a unified commerce layer for digital assets, presented a new blockchain and AI infrastructure stack focused on cross-chain execution and confidential compute. The update was introduced at NEARCON in San Francisco. The event gathered representatives from OpenAI, Google, Intel, AWS, Oracle and Brave.
The release includes near.com, a consumer super-app built on $NEAR Intents. It connects more than 35 blockchains through one account and allows cross-chain swaps, peer-to-peer transfers and optional confidential transactions without manual bridging.
Confidential Intents adds restricted visibility for cross-chain transfers, deposits and withdrawals. Transactions remain verifiable onchain but details can be shielded. The feature targets institutions that require privacy to reduce frontrunning and strategy copying.
$NEAR also introduced IronClaw, an open-source AI agent runtime operating inside encrypted enclaves on $NEAR AI Cloud. Agents can run continuously with hardware-level protection of credentials. In parallel, the Confidential GPU Marketplace enables TEE-secured compute for enterprise and government workloads.
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