Illia Polosukhin, founder of NEAR and co-author of 'Attention Is All You Need,' on why confidentiality will let crypto become daily commerce — plus, some Near lore.
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Before co-founding NEAR Protocol, Illia Polosukhin was on the eight-person Google Brain team that wrote the transformer paper — the architecture behind every large language model running today.
He never mentioned it. When Kain Warwick found out two weeks ago, via a crypto AI chatbot, his reaction was: you have to be kidding me.
That backstory sets the tone for a conversation that moves from how transformers actually came together, to why confidentiality is what unlocks on-chain commerce for real businesses, and what NEAR is doing to keep criminals off its network without becoming a surveillance layer.
The hosts also get into the Ethereum Foundation's identity crisis, why Illia thinks decentralization is a tool and not a goal, and what the economy looks like when AI handles execution and blockchain handles coordination.
Host:
Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix
Taylor Monahan, Security Expert
Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins
Guest:
Illia Polosukhin — Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol - https://x.com/ilblackdragon
Timestamps
🧠 00:52 The transformer paper: how Illia ended up on 'Attention Is All You Need'
🔗 05:57 Confidential Intents: how NEAR brings privacy to assets across every chain
💵 15:05 Why private stablecoins are the missing piece in on-chain commerce
🛡️ 24:58 Shield: NEAR's AI system scanning chains in real time to block illicit funds
🔓 25:46 The Litecoin MimbleWimble hack and what went wrong with the disclosure timeline
⛓️ 40:03 Multichain Advisors: [ad copy TBD — placeholder] at multichainadv.com
🎯 40:39 Coinbase One: boost newly staked assets 40% through May 31 at https://coinbase.com/unchained
🏛️ 42:24 What Vitalik's “smaller ship” post reveals about the Ethereum Foundation
🤝 48:33 How NEAR pitched its sharding work to the EF twice and got turned away
🛋️ 55:24 Tay compares the EF to Google and says "don't be evil" is a non-goal
🌐 63:45 Why Illia thinks decentralization is a tool, not a goal
🤖 68:22 How organizations change when AI agents can do the work
💀 78:34 Illia thinks DAOs “never worked” because of the credit assignment problem
📊 79:55 Illia's close: Markets solve what organizations can't
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