30s Summary

Illia Polusukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, revealed a new artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, NEAR.AI Assistant, capable of creating and launching meme-themed digital coins. Other features to be added include flight bookings and food orders. The assistant can also swap any asset to another by signing a transaction, a feature supported by Near Intents, a technology currently available in beta. Developers are encouraged to build upon this open-source technology, suggesting possible future applications in DeFi.

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Hey, did you hear about this? Near Protocol has just let loose an exciting new AI assistant that can quickly create and launch meme-themed digital coins and scour the net to buy stuff with regular money.

You can expect more cool features to roll out soon, like the option to make flight bookings or ordering takeaway food from everyday websites.

This awesome virtual assistant, known as the NEAR.AI Assistant, was kick-started by Near Protocol’s co-founder, Illia Polusukhin, at a conference in Bangkok. He also dropped some info about their plans for creating the largest open-source AI model in the world.

While flaunting the functions of this AI, Polusukhin managed to whip up a story, website, and logo for a new meme coin named Frog, before instantly putting it out on Near’s version of Pump.fun.

In an impressive show-off, the assistant was even able to find a custom T-shirt printer online and produce a demo website interface to make selecting and buying Near merchandise T-shirts from a third-party shop simpler.

Illia mentioned that you can’t use the assistant to make flight bookings just yet, but that option is coming soon. What’s more impressive? As this AI is an open platform, anyone can add new functions like booking flights and it will start working for everyone.

What makes this AI Assistant really stand out is its ability to let users swap any asset to any other by merely signing a transaction. Near Intents, a technology currently available in beta, supports native asset swaps between Bitcoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and Near Protocol (NEAR). This could potentially work with any blockchain using any wallet, offering swaps to cash via a dealer, which makes Web2 shopping possible.

The brains behind Aurora Labs, Alex Shevchenko, said that Solana and Telegram Open Network would be added before the year ends, with Dogecoin, BNB, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, and Tron to follow.

One top feature of the Intents technology as demonstrated by Shevchenko, involves AI agents working together to do tasks. For instance, if one AI agent can’t perform a specific task, it can request another AI agent to take over.

How does this work? Basically, the AI agents would strike a deal and pay in the needed currency and on the back end, market makers ensure the transactions go through, even tapping into centralized platforms, like Binance, for liquidity.

But the best part? This technology is open source and up for grabs to build upon. Developers can simply incorporate it into any wallet and use any market maker.

What does all this mean? It allows new possibilities for using Bitcoin in DeFi, like borrowing against the Bitcoin collateral or even against your whole portfolio of assets. Can’t wait to see what comes next!