Near Protocol Says Privacy Is Critical in AI Agent Era, With Blockchain Becoming a New Operating System

Minseung Kang

Summary

Illia Polosukhin said privacy is emerging as critical infrastructure in an economy centered on AI agents and that blockchain will become a new operating system.
He said blockchain's complete transparency is limiting broader real-world adoption and that on-chain data exposed in everyday payments could become a real risk.
To address that, Near introduced privacy technology combining trusted execution environments (TEE) and multi-party computation (MPC) to guarantee users' data sovereignty, and said it will be the decisive factor in turning crypto and AI into core business infrastructure.

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*Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, delivers a keynote speech at the BUIDL Asia 2026 conference on April 16. Photo: Kang Min-seung, Blomingbit reporter*

"If on-chain data remains fully exposed in a world where AI agents handle finance, healthcare and work on our behalf, it will become a threat to everyday life. Blockchain will become a new operating system as the infrastructure that solves that problem."

BUIDL Asia 2026 was held at Sofitel Ambassador Seoul on April 16. In a keynote address, Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin said privacy is emerging as critical infrastructure in an economy centered on AI agents. AI agents are autonomous artificial intelligence systems that analyze data, make decisions and take actions on behalf of users.

AI has moved beyond chatbots and is evolving into agents that act on their own, Polosukhin said. The industry is also shifting rapidly toward structures in which multiple agents collaborate.

AI has already reached the stage where it searches for information, makes payments and carries out tasks for users. In that process, existing digital activities are being consolidated into a single interface.

Polosukhin said blockchain's "complete transparency" is now limiting broader use in daily life. When someone pays for coffee with a crypto wallet, location and activity data can be exposed immediately.

That structure can pose a real risk in environments where agents handle micropayments and data processing.

To address that, Near has introduced privacy technology that combines trusted execution environments, or TEE, with multi-party computation, or MPC. The system is designed so that even hardware providers and network operators cannot view the underlying data, he said.

The goal is to fully guarantee users' data sovereignty. A trusted execution environment is a technology that performs computation in a secure area isolated from external access while keeping data protected. Multi-party computation is a cryptographic technique that allows multiple participants to generate a joint computational result without directly sharing their data.

Polosukhin said many Fortune 500 companies remain hesitant to adopt AI because of concerns over data leaks. Privacy will be the decisive factor in turning crypto into a practical means of payment and AI into core business infrastructure, he added.

NEAR