SAN FRANCISCO, CA – For years, the crypto industry has searched for its next breakout moment \u2014 something on the scale of DeFi summer or the NFT boom. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has quietly embedded itself into daily life. Developers use ChatGPT as a co-pilot. Consumers rely on AI assistants to draft emails, plan travel, and increasingly manage workflows. Crypto, by comparison, still feels infrastructural.<\/p>\n
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR, believes that divide is about to collapse \u2014 but not in the way many expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe users of blockchain will be AI agents,\u201d Polosukhin said in an interview. \u201cAI is going to be on the front end, and blockchain is going to be the back end.\u201d<\/p>\n
His framing cuts against much of crypto\u2019s recent experimentation with AI, which has largely centered on speculative tokens, memecoins and agent-themed trading bots. Instead, Polosukhin argues that AI will become the primary interface layer for everything online, including crypto, abstracting away wallets, explorers and transaction hashes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to make your AI hide all the blockchain,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that we have [blockchain] explorers is effectively a failure, because we don\u2019t abstract the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this view, blockchain doesn\u2019t disappear \u2014 it recedes. AI agents interact with protocols directly<\/a>, executing payments, managing assets, coordinating services and even voting in governance systems. Humans, meanwhile, interact with the AI.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is the front end, not just for blockchain, but for everything,\u201d Polosukhin said. \u201cIn a few years, it\u2019s going to be just AI, like the operating system.\u201d<\/p>\n That shift, he argues, could explain why crypto hasn\u2019t had an \u201cAI moment\u201d comparable to the consumer explosion of generative tools. \u201cBlockchain is inherently financial,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will be limited to finance, but everything we do in our life is finance.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than competing with AI platforms, crypto\u2019s role may be to provide neutral financial rails beneath them: settlement, ownership, verifiability and programmable incentives.<\/p>\n