The Mediator: NEAR CTO Eric Winer on our AI-Agent Future

At a clip erstwhile countless crypto projects are awkwardly pivoting toward artificial intelligence, Eric Winer has spent implicit a decennary gathering bridges betwixt cutting-edge exertion and mundane users. Now, arsenic CTO of NEAR AI, he's pursuing a imaginativeness wherever AI agents negotiate, communicate, and transact connected our behalf — a imaginativeness that could fundamentally reshape however we interact with the integer world.

Winer speaks with the measured enthusiasm of idiosyncratic who has repeatedly been aboriginal to technological revolutions. Having joined the Winklevoss twins arsenic Gemini's archetypal technologist successful 2013 and helped motorboat 1 of the earliest NFT marketplaces earlier the word "NFT" became commonplace, helium present confronts what whitethorn beryllium his astir ambitious challenge: creating a decentralized ecosystem of AI agents that preserves idiosyncratic sovereignty successful an progressively AI-mediated future.

Eric Winer is simply a talker astatine Consensus 2025. This interrogation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

CoinDesk: You've been successful crypto for implicit a decennary now. How did that travel pb you to focusing connected AI?

Eric Winer: I've been successful the crypto satellite for 11 years now. Eleven years agone I met the Winklevoss twins done communal acquaintances. They hired maine arsenic the archetypal technologist astatine Gemini, which was the archetypal regulated Bitcoin speech successful America astatine the time. Our ngo from the CEO was to instrumentality this fantastic blockchain exertion (really conscionable Bitcoin astatine the time) and use immoderate grown-up engineering astir it truthful that it could beryllium efficaciously adopted by institutions, governments, and radical broadly.

Back successful 2013-2014, Coinbase was around, but it was benignant of a rinky-dink Silicon Valley startup astatine a clip earlier determination was truly overmuch of a fintech civilization adjacent successful California. So it wasn't peculiarly built well. We were gathering Gemini successful New York City with radical who knew however wealth worked and trying to physique not conscionable for cryptography enthusiasts, but for the masses.

I've ever been trying to get blockchain exertion implicit the adoption obstruction to scope a spot wherever radical would beryllium utilizing it, possibly nether the hood, to marque the satellite much businesslike and springiness radical much sovereignty, adjacent if they don't cognize it.

CoinDesk: And that led you to NFTs earlier astir radical had adjacent heard the term, right?

Eric Winer: Within Gemini, we acquired a institution called Nifty Gateway, which was fundamentally the 3rd NFT startup aft OpenSea and CryptoKitties. We launched what was the archetypal NFT marketplace targeted astatine "normies" successful March 2020. It ended up increasing by astir 1000% period implicit period for a fewer months, going from selling a 1000 dollars of NFTs to selling a 100 cardinal dollars of NFTs successful a day.

This exposed a batch of radical to the satellite of collectibles and creation online, close successful the mediate of the pandemic. From determination they got spot by the NFT bug and past by the crypto bug, bringing them into the blockchain ecosystem arsenic a whole.

Personally, I deliberation the committedness of NFTs got unluckily co-opted by the crypto and speculation crowd. Nifty Gateway ne'er utilized the word "NFT" connected its website oregon successful its materials erstwhile it launched. We fought against that adjacent becoming what it was called. NFT is conscionable a thing, but online. We were selling art, selling tickets. Having to delegate a method moniker and enactment that into the public, I think, was really counterproductive astatine the extremity of the day.

CoinDesk: Many crypto projects look to beryllium awkwardly pivoting toward AI without a wide vision. What makes NEAR AI's attack different?

Eric Winer: Near AI is simply a fascinating institution due to the fact that the founders of Near really started by gathering an AI company. They started arsenic an AI company, trying to bid models to constitute codification astir 2017-2018. It was a small aboriginal for that to beryllium effectual astatine the time.

AGI has ever been the imaginativeness here. Near AI is little a "crypto x AI" institution than it is an AI institution that's vision-aligned with the aforesaid intent of Near. Near's imaginativeness is for users to ain their ain data, ain their ain determination making, not beryllium beholden to corporate, financial, oregon governmental interests, and beryllium capable to determine wherever their wealth goes and however their decisions are made.

Whether that's done via a blockchain oregon done via an AI model, you person to person both. If we don't person a user-owned AI effort going, past we'll suffer the crippled due to the fact that everybody volition commencement utilizing ChatGPT for everything successful their world, and immoderate ChatGPT uses for payments is immoderate you'll usage for payments. Then blockchain loses due to the fact that you didn't triumph the AI conflict – not the crypto x AI battle, but the existent existent AI battle.

Near AI does person interactions with blockchains, including Near, due to the fact that we deliberation that Near and different blockchains are a bully mode of doing things. But we're chiefly an AI institution that sees crypto arsenic a technology; we are not a crypto institution trying to shove successful AI.

CoinDesk: What precisely does NEAR AI connection arsenic a level close now?

Eric Winer: Near AI arsenic it exists close present is mostly an cause hosting platform. It's really 1 of the easiest ways to get an AI cause moving online. You upload immoderate beauteous elemental Python codification oregon TypeScript code, and boom, it's hosted online with a idiosyncratic interface, embeddable into immoderate website.

It tin beryllium backed by immoderate unfastened weights models, though by and large, we delegate the existent exemplary cognition to different providers similar Fireworks and Anthropic that are retired there. The peculiar condiment of our model is that it makes it casual for those AI agents to speech to different AI agents, whether connected our level oregon off.

The different happening that isn't unrecorded yet, but volition beryllium by the clip statement rolls around, is that we are heavy invested successful TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments). We deliberation it's precise important that you cognize wherever your information is going, that it's not being harvested by these models for training, that adjacent america arsenic operators of a unreality strategy are not capable to look astatine your data, analyse it, oregon bargain it if we wanted. So we're putting each those agents and each the underlying models into these trusted execution environments truthful that you tin usage them with confidence.

CoinDesk: Your imaginativeness seems to halfway connected AI agents communicating with each other. What does that aboriginal look similar to you?

Eric Winer: What we're trying to physique wrong Near AI is an ecosystem of AI agents that speech to each other. "AI agent" is simply a precise overloaded word astatine this point. Most of the clip erstwhile you spot thing talking astir itself arsenic an AI agent, it's truly a acceptable of guidelines and tools for an AI exemplary to enactment connected your behalf. Like, "I've got Llama oregon Claude oregon GPT models, and I'm going to instruct it to station connected Twitter connected my behalf." To bash that, it needs the quality to entree Twitter and immoderate wide guidelines astir however to work and station tweets.

But that's not however I needfully deliberation astir agents. I deliberation astir agents mostly successful presumption of however they interact with the remainder of the satellite connected your behalf. My AI cause is posting connected Twitter, managing my calendar, looking astatine each my messages and emails, deciding which are spam, which to reply to, which to aboveground to maine – conscionable similar an adjunct successful my beingness should be.

The aboriginal that we envision, which I deliberation is going to hap inevitably, is simply a satellite wherever astir of our entree to the net and to the remainder of the satellite is mediated by our idiosyncratic AI assistants.

CoinDesk: That's a remarkably antithetic imaginativeness from astir crypto projects. How does it reshape our fiscal systems?

Eric Winer: If it's my AI cause talking to, say, Amazon's AI agent, and they're going to bargain thing and negotiate, they're much apt to rationally take a crypto-based outgo method and astir apt an AI-based quality solution method and AI-based credit. We reshape the fiscal strategy not by gathering a amended 1 and trying to person radical to usage it, but by gathering a amended 1 and trying to person AIs to usage it that's easier for AIs and for the radical operating them.

I deliberation that's the crypto adoption play now: we physique a satellite of AIs talking to AIs connected your behalf, and past we person the AIs that blockchain and decentralization is simply a amended satellite for them and for america than the 1 we've got.

CoinDesk: So successful your view, AI could really beryllium the catalyst that drives blockchain adoption, alternatively than the different mode around?

Eric Winer: I deliberation successful the future, and astir apt not excessively acold successful the future, you'll spot that imaginativeness that everybody seems to privation – the ace app, the 1 spot you spell wherever everything you bash online truly becomes an AI assistant. It's giving you a contented feed, it's taking enactment connected your behalf, it's spending wealth connected your behalf.

And it's not conscionable doing it alone. It's not conscionable hitting APIs and browsing websites – it's talking to different AI agents. It's besides handling your interpersonal, person-to-corporate, oregon person-to-governmental communications. That needs to beryllium a decentralized ecosystem overmuch similar the net is to immoderate grade a decentralized system, but possibly we tin bash 1 amended connected apical of blockchain-based registries.