Why Every Chain, Wallet & App Is Integrating NEAR Intents | Kendall Cole

**David** (0:04)
Bankless Nation, Kendall Cole, is a co-founder of Proximity Labs. That is a research and development firm focused on the NEAR ecosystem. Kendall, welcome to Bankless.

**Kendall Cole** (0:12)
Yeah, thank you for having me, David. Excited to be here.

**David** (0:15)
Kendall, we've got a lot to talk about. I want to start with this one. How many stable coins will there be?
I'm reminded of the same kind of conversations, how many layer 2s will there be on Ethereum? And once upon a time, I was like saying, there will be thousands of layer 2s. And there are quite a lot of layer 2s on Ethereum, but a few of them are very large, typical Pareto distribution. How do you think about in the future, how many stable coins will there be broadly?

**Kendall Cole** (0:42)
So yeah, I guess similar to believers in L2 proliferation, I do think that will become true for stable coins, certainly in the immediate term, if not in the long term.
I think that we probably won't see many more brands, branded stable coins like a USCC or USCT, they get really big. I mean, we might see some like OUSD is kind of an interesting initiative from the Bridge Crew. But I don't think that's gonna make sense for users. I think what's gonna actually happen is that a lot of different players are gonna issue their own stable coins, but they're not really gonna promote them as an independent brand. They're gonna show them as USD, or maybe as some kind of indication they're a stable coin, but they're not gonna care that the user knows the full name and the ticker of that particular stable coin. It's just gonna be used as like a piece of, almost like a database entry for the fact that you have a stable...

**David** (1:34)
An accounting tool.

**Kendall Cole** (1:35)
Yeah, exactly.

**David** (1:36)
It's an asset and a ledger.

**Kendall Cole** (1:37)
It's an asset and a ledger, yeah.
But I do think that a lot of different institutions for a variety of reasons are gonna issue their own stable coin. Okay.

**David** (1:46)
There's the stable coin conversation. So maybe a few stable coins are kind of like the Bitcoin and the ETHs. They're going for the money. They're going for the liquidity, the network effects, the brand, the trust.
We kind of know who those are. I think as you kind of just alluded to, OUSD from Open Standard is like this new entrance trying to penetrate that market. But anything downstream from that is like trying to turning into just like tokenized supposites. Like your tokenized supposite is not gonna be money, but it is a useful tool, backend efficiency upgrade from Wall Street. But what about the chains? Because there's Tempo, there's Arc, there's Stable, there's Plasma. Similar answer or how do you think about this kind of thing?

**Kendall Cole** (2:28)
So, I would say less, way less on the chains. Like I'm not super, I mean, obviously like certain chains, they have a really unique distribution situation. So like Tempo is definitely the best example. I mean, obviously Circle, they have a lot of influence. And so I think they can probably get a lot of different groups to be using their chain. I think the hardest part is gonna be like chain, the best positioning for chains, I think is credible neutrality. And most of these newer initiatives are like kind of very specific to either an issuer or like some type of player in the broader ecosystem. And I think that that aspect of their sort of background and story and ultimately value accrual mechanism is going to like hinder their ability to be that kind of credibly neutral layer and actually like work with all of these different players. So, some of them will do well. Yeah, I think Tempo, Arc, like a few of those are going to do well.
I think like Plasma is kind of taking more of the approach that actually like NEAR is sort of taking where like they built a blockchain that's really designed to serve like a different product, like a very specific product in Plasma 1 So maybe they have a shot there as well. But yeah, I think like generally just having like, if you're backed by an issuer or you have like way too much of an entrenched interest, well, that helps you get in that initial distribution. But I think ultimately it's going to be difficult for you to be that credibly neutral air and work with a lot of different parties. So like, I don't actually think we'll see that many of those do as well. And I think, you know, really people are going to use the usual suspects, Ethereum, Solana, some of the major L2s instead.