Alex Shevchenko: NEAR & ZEC Are Set To Explode (Huge Catalysts Coming)

**Robbie** (0:00)
All right, we are here with the man himself, Alex Shevchenko, the co-founder of NEAR Intents.
Also brought to our attention a rap song that was generated by someone in the NEAR community. So we're gonna see if we can tee that up for you guys. Alex, welcome to the show, man.

**Alex Shevchenko** (0:18)
Rob, thanks for inviting me, as always. Super happy to be here.

**Robbie** (0:24)
Absolutely, well, it's a pleasure to have you. We've had you on the show before, and it just seems like every five billion or so through the NEAR Intents protocol, we bring you back, we ask you how the last five billion went, and then we'll get you back in a couple of weeks to hear how the next five billion went.
But I mean, yeah, just to speak to the absolutely incredible nature of how NEAR Intents has grown. So kudos to all the hard work and the success. Yeah, tell us, how's the last few billion volume gone through NEAR Intents? How's that been going?

**Alex Shevchenko** (0:57)
Yeah, I would say it's kind of a little bit more relaxed at this moment in time. It's a little bit less about trying to prove anyone that the thing that you're building is important and interesting. It is more about like polishing things. You know, like in the knife making, you're first making a knife and then, but then you need to sharpen it. You need to sharpen it to the point when it cuts the paper. And so I'm feeling right now that we are sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and making like everything work in absolutely incredible, extremely robust.
Yeah, that's kind of all of the things. So there are not a lot of, there are some visual changes and there are some changes to the protocol itself, but many of these are not very observable by the people who are using the protocol, though they are very, very important.

**Robbie** (1:53)
Well, one of the things that we've heard quite a lot about as of recently, and the primary reason we wanted to bring you up here today is to talk about the sharpest edge in the knife right now. One of the most recent features that I think people are really excited about is Confidential Intents, because this just adds a new dimension to Near Intents.
There's quite a lot of questions that I have around confidentiality, why it was important to bring now, these sorts of things, but maybe you could just start by giving us the one-senses version, the short and sweet Confidential Intents, just became available. What is possible now that they weren't able to do before with Near Intents?

**Alex Shevchenko** (2:35)
So in one sentence, I can only say that Confidential Intents are bringing normality into crypto.
And the reason for this is that up until this point in time, all of your financial operations have been visible on-chain, and the privacy solutions that were available, they were only limited to a very small set of tasks, which are covering just transfers. With Confidential Intents, what we are trying to do is to wrap all of the DeFi primitives into the private mode, and make sure that everybody are able to enjoy the same level of privacy that they are getting from the traditional financial applications, like banks, and they are able to get it in a decentralized non-gustodial setup with crypto.

**Robbie** (3:26)
Very cool. Very, very cool.
Even though you guys have had Confidential Mode on NEAR Intents for a little while, this was the generally accessible mode. You mentioned it was originally for transfers. Now it's open, it's to the public, anyone can use it, protocols, developers, users, everyone.
What are some of your favorite things that you've seen people do that previously wasn't possible? Now are there integrations that you're excited about? Looking forward, what does Confidentially in the stack really mean?

**Alex Shevchenko** (3:59)
Yeah, so I think that traditionally, like crypto, I've read this tweet from Jesse today. He was thinking about the future of base and all the stuff. But one thing that he said there is that, like, yeah, I can agree that crypto is a better money, right?
And we have been miserably, miserably failing in producing a product that is at least on par with cash, so that everybody from doing a payment, everybody are able to take a look into the blockchain and see what I have been using, what are my positions, what is happening. And now you cannot even, if you are Charles Hoskinson, you cannot liquidate easily your position, because everybody are tracking your wallets, so the same is happening with Michael Saylor, right? So that's kind of the problem. So the use cases that people started to bring directly on near.com, which is not the perfect tool, for example, for business style use cases, yet, yet not the perfect tool.