Bankless Nation, there's been pockets of growth in different corners of the crypto industry.

The improved UX of the Zodal wallet has been a main driver of Zcash adoption and the growth of the ZEC's shielded pool.

Venice AI user growth is accelerating as more people want private access to self-sovereign AI inference.

I've personally been using Infinex as my dominant

crypto wallet, simply because it has solved all the major UX issues that has plagued Ethereum for

years. What do all of these different platforms have in common? They're all using near intents.

Near Intents appear to be a breakout use case for the near layer one, a layer one that has seemingly struggled to define and differentiate itself throughout the years,

has finally found product market fit supporting some of the fastest growing ecosystems in the industry.

So go to ChatT or Cloud, whatever you use, or Venice, for that matter,

and ask your chatbot about all the projects that have integrated Near Intense in 2026. Just go do it for yourself. It's a long list. So naturally, this

piqued my curiosity. What does NIR have to do with these pockets of growth in crypto and

is NIR itself, its own pocket of growth? In order to get more clarity on the state of NIR

and what's going on, I went and I found today's guest as perhaps the most articulate person in NIR's investor circles to fill me in in what's going on with NIR and what the future may hold for the protocol if the NIR team executes.

Sal Ternello is the CEO of Sovereign, a NASAC listed AI infrastructure company built around a Near Treasury strategy.

It's one part near treasury company, but also a commercialization partner for the NIR ecosystem.

A for-profit entity focused on helping the NIR ecosystem establish and grow its commercialization

efforts.

Sal is an expert at articulating the growth story for Neer, so that's what you're going to hear

today on the podcast. I like bullish content. So that's your disclaimer. I'm sure that there is a

bare case for Neer 2. One might be that crypto-native infrastructure that is simply infrastructure

for other crypto projects is just not a hot category at the moment. And some people fear it may never be. Maybe another bearer case is that Nears Ironclaw is a very distant third behind Hermes and OpenClawn the race for AI agent frameworks. All of this is to say is that maybe there's a bear case for Neer 2, but that's not what you're going to hear on the podcast today because the bull case I think is pretty pretty good too. So let's go ahead and hear that bull case from my guest, Sal, Trenello. Sal, welcome to Bankless. Thanks, man. Appreciate you're having me. Sal, everywhere I go lately, I'm poking around in different corners of the crypto industry, there seems to be near there somehow. And here's what I mean by that.

Infinex is using near intense and chain signatures

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