The Rollup How To Prepare For The AI Freight Train - Illia Polosukhin
Feb 26, 2026
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and blockchain developer, talks about privacy-first agent marketplaces, decentralized inference and why blockchain should be AI’s backend. He covers formal verification to harden code, agentic hosting and market design, plus how AI could reshape labor, currencies and consumer distribution.
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Host Agents Privately And Bundle Inference
- Build private, secure agent hosting and bundle inference so users can run personal agents without exposing data or managing complex infra.
- Illia cites agent.nira plans ($0, $20, $200) and an agent market that lets agents earn and outsource work.
300 Agents Already Solving Real Work
- Near already has an active agent economy with hundreds of agents offering services like software and marketing.
- Illia mentions over 300 agents on the platform providing tasks and running competitions for software and fraud-finding.
Inference Is Infra Not The Product
- Decentralized inference is necessary infrastructure but not the headline; agent capabilities changed demand for coordination layers.
- Illia compares decentralized inference to SWIFT and says agents now require payments, coordination, and marketplaces provided by blockchains.