The Pomp Podcast
Hosted by Anthony Pompliano
Illia Polosukhin is the co-founder of NEAR, a new application platform designed to bring blockchain to wide variety of mainstream applications.
5,964 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ilya Poloshukin is the co-founder of Near, a new application platform designed to bring blockchain to wide variety of mainstream applications. We spent a lot of time in this episode talking about the open web and what needs to happen for us to get there. I really hope that you enjoy this podcast episode. If you like these types of conversations, I also highly suggest that you check out our new YouTube livestream show, every Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. Eastern to 1 p.m. Eastern. We have it called The Best Business Show, and we talk about all kinds of current events. It's me and my brothers, it's a ton
of fun, and we promise you'll learn something. Just go on YouTube, search Anthony Pompliano, make sure you subscribe to the channel, and you'll get a notification every single time we go live at 11 a.m. on weekdays. Alright, let's get into this episode with Ilya. I hope that you guys enjoy this conversation.
Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
Alright guys, bang, bang, I've got Ilya here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.
Thank you for the lighting.
Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. How did you get into all this stuff?
Yeah, so my original background is in machine learning, and so I was actually doing an AI startup with my co-founder, and the interesting thing is we were employing people around the world and had faced an interesting problem, which is how do we pay people who live in China, Ukraine, Russia, and other places, and started looking at blockchain really as like a solution to global payments problem. So Bitcoin, Ethereum, looked at them, but busts them even though it was like beginning, mid-eighties. Team were too expensive for like small transactions that we wanted to send people around.
And so being, you know, technical guys who started looking really into kind of how everything else is evolving. And got kind of really excited about the space, but also interested in solving a specific set of problems. Uh, which kind of got us into this. And these are the problems of, you know, scalability. Like, how do we make payments really cheap? How do we make transactions really cheap? How do we make, uh, kind of smart contracts to achieve? But also how do we make them really usable for people?
And so as you started to think about that, where did the idea for Near come from? How did you think about it being different than anything else that was out there? And then how did you get started?
Yes. So, I mean, it was kind of an interesting, um. First, we just read a bunch about kind of what are the protocols? What are the folks doing in the space? So like we were thinking of this like crowdsourcing platform that we can build using blockchain. And kind of iterating through all of the protocols that were out there. Uh, kind of really digging in how they work and really breaking them. That was kind of our, our thing back then. And so, uh, obviously, you know, EOS, Ayota were really hot back then. So we kind of looked at them, realized all the flaws that they had in kind of design.
And kind of were exploring what other things have been built in and in progress, which a lot of the things by now launched, but back then were just ideas. And so, um, not finding really something that actually would provide answers. To like, how do we scale beyond, you know, something that's like maybe few millions people can use. But to something where we can actually use this, right? And I mean, I'm coming from Google, like, the co-founder is coming from, like, he worked at Microsoft, he worked at a shared database company.
And we're just like, hey, you know, it's it needs to scale horizontally. It cannot be like just one big computer processing everything replicated, right? It needs to actually be scalable. And so that's really was kind of the, you know, the moment where we're like, hey, you know, we know how these things should be built, at least in a centralized world. We are, you know, we're learning really quickly how decentralized kind of technologies work, and we don't see anyone else doing kind of like the solution to this problem, right? Of like, what is the scalability looks beyond kind of next, you know, year, but actually like um scalability that horizontally scales to how many people want to join and ideally everywhere in the world will join this.
And when you think about these technical decisions that you made, what are some of the trade offs that you had to make in order to uh kind of architect it this way? For sure. The, I think the critical trade off that we started with was around um going away from some of those things that um like people in in for example, Ethereum and Bitcoin right now, right, use proof of work. And I know the kind of Ethereum wants to transition, but like proof of work is fully permissionless from perspective of validating nodes and who can kind of uh participate in block production. And this adds a latency requirement to the whole network.
And so talking with developers and being developers ourselves, if you want to build something that truly like interacts as an end user, you want to reduce latency as as much as possible, right? And we know this, you know, from like obviously social networks and all those companies who've built like Google optimizing the search, you know, to give results in like point three seconds. So what we, by choosing proof of stake first, uh and by actually um al- almost like sub-selecting committees at the like at at the block production level, we're able to achieve pretty much the fastest uh kind of consensus worldwide that's possible, right?
We are pretty much producing block every second and we have consensus like full finality every two seconds.
If everything functions normally. And so this is pretty much the fastest you can have, like a full consensus. Like it's faster than, you know, cost of a Polkadot. It's faster than some other chains who have like economic functionality, obviously. And so this allows developers to kind of build applications that look snappy. That are, you know, just work and, you know, when you pay with your kind of near. Uh, at the cashier, right, it just settles right away. And so that was one of the biggest uh kind of trade offs that obviously like does not fully align with sounds a kind of, you know, everybody should be able to participate in participating node.
Now, we have, because of the scalability, because of the sharding, as network grows, as we have more shards, we actually have more. Participants in the network naturally, because we need more machines to process work in parallel. And so it's, it's a scalability kind of that adds more nodes, not the desire for decentralization. So that's, that's kind of one of the trade offs. And then the other major trade off is on the developer side where the kind of in Ethereum and many other protocols. All of the applications are so called synchronous, which means when you are making a transaction, if something goes wrong, the whole transaction gets reverted.
This is why flashbots are possible, flash loans are possible and many other things. And we went away from this because you are not like just theoretically, it's impossible to scale to multiple machines and maintain the synchronicity. Uh, in kind of normal way. And so we are actually running applications in parallel asynchronous, the same way as, you know, in internet services are running in parallel. And so this creates different trade offs for developers when they're building applications.
When you think about the idea of an individual running a node, do you worry at all about like centralization? Or do you think that um the trade off? Is kind of valuable, right? Like, how do you think about when it is valuable and when it is?
I think right now is proof of stake. Sadly, the state is that most people, like, there's only a kind of smaller subset of people who are able to run nodes, because you actually have a pretty high requirements on online, on kind of latency, on a few other things. Um, and so I think over time, this will improve and kind of with with kind of more stability of internet, more stability on power, etc. But like, right now, there's very few people who are running like, you know, node in their kind of home for proof of stake, which is different from proof of work where your node goes offline, nobody cares, right? It it's kind of doesn't affect the network.
And so I think right now, the kind of just because of this requirement, we're kind of in the state where there's, you know, a subset of nodes, like a subset of providers who are running nodes, and everybody else delegates, so everybody else participates through the economic activity, but not through uh running physical hardware. And I think this economical activity is still very valuable, and it's actually allows to distribute stake to actually figure out which node are more resilient, because people doing some due diligence on where they put the money. So I would say some of this is shifting more on on kind of money allocation side versus hardware running side.
Uh, at the same time, I think like over time, we'll just see expansion of this and growth of this as well. And and so it will become more uh popular. So I think like right now, we're just in kind of this like transition state where it is, you know, maybe a little bit centralized, but you know, it's still hundreds and hundreds of of actual providers. And then there's, you know, tens of thousands to hundreds of other people who economically kind of select, sub-selecting these things. Uh, and then over time, I think it will shift as things become more robust.
And are there certain type of applications or uh projects that you think are better suited for uh this protocol versus others? Like, are there certain things that you guys are targeting?
For sure, yeah. So kind of the vision that we formed uh kind of after starting on this journey is so-called kind of Open Web. And this is idea that um really spanning from the the goal that I think the whole space has of giving control of, you know, money, which what Bitcoin started with, of data and of governance of the applications that people using, right? And so kind of that's our mission. I mean, I I would just say that a lot of people in the in the space in general shares this mission. But kind of how this realizes is through a whole set of applications and protocols
that allow pretty much to move most of the existing interactions that people have on internet to this new way of doing it, right? Where there's no central party that kind of owns your data. There is no central party that owns your money and as a user, you have ownership and you have ability to kind of impact where these situations are evolving. So to give you this concrete example, we have right now Facebook. Facebook owns all of the data that users provide, right? Like and literally in terms of service, they just own it. They can do whatever they want with it. Um and that's not really beneficial for the user, even if they don't care about this.
And like e- even worse is when somebody else wants to build some social kind of plugin or whatever. Now they need to ask Facebook for the user's data for this plugin, right? And and and half of the times Facebook doesn't want to give it because it's kind of their proprietary data now and they want to use it themselves. And so we have this world where Facebook right now pretty much can monitor what does a new uh cool applications and pretty much implements them faster because they have all this data already. And and pretty much like almost travel all the competition. There's a lot of like this privacy competition, all of these things kind of they they all work around this current state. And so Open Web is this idea that, well, actually, let's transition the data, let's just transition the ownership to the user.
Uh. So we have, let's say, an open social protocol. Where all your kind of social data is. And now you go to one application, go to another, it's maybe. Uh, you know, your work social. Network or your friends' social network or whatever, a bar, local bar. App and they have access to this data and they can pretty much show you whatever the slice and functionality they want on top of it. And so that completely opens up data side, it gives ownership to the user, it creates a lot of kind of competition among the applications, how they want to surface it. And it gives ownership to the user, because now they can select which applications to use, and these applications should create mechanics around the. Economy, right?
Of how to attract users, how to give them this ownership and how to. Excite them kind of and and and drive more. Uh, more usage. So like, this is kind of the vision we have, this is like, and we have set of concrete steps, how to get there. Blockchain is step one, there are number of steps, you know, that include like better identity. And that end up in this set of like new applications, it's pretty much powering the world, right? And. And ideally, like, you know, half billions of users actually using them. So that that's kind of the. Uh, like the vision that we aiming for. And so. Like what near is built for is kind of this is like, you know, how do we get to billions of users using applications?
That are rooted at the end in this kind of. Uh, root of trust, right? Blockchain is. And so when you think about that open web vision, is that something that needs innovation at the protocol layer? Uh, is it something that needs kind of reimagination of what the applications are? Like, what do you think is the biggest hurdle going from where we are in this like weird transition period between a web two, web three? To that kind of full, uh, featured, uh, future vision? So I think like with blockchain, we kind of already there, right? Uh, and so that that's probably like already over the hurdle. The next step is creating this like common protocol. Like I call for example, for social. Like we need a social kind of network protocol where.
The data of the users is kind of organized in a specific way that everybody knows how to access, right? So let's say we have that social protocol. It can on its own have an economic incentive for people to join and to create more connections and to bring their friends and and kind of create more activity there. And so that will in turn kind of bring people who want to build products, who want to use this data, right? Uh, obviously, there probably will be like first of like first application that kind of uh partners together with with the developers of protocol. But this is kind of the idea is like by building more open protocols, which have on its own motivation for users to use it.
Uh, we then have more um more of these apps that are excited to plug in into this existing u- usage, right? And and have on its own some business models as well. And so I think like innovation that needed now is on this like common protocol side, like designing them in a way that's like extendable and and is, you know, future proof in some ways or like at least upgradable. And bringing people and bringing motivation, right? Bringing this like ownership economy, pretty much like what right now in DeFi, you have all this liquidity mining. We need like, you know, social graph mining and whatever, like tweet mining, etc., right? Like ideas where how do we align incentives of the kind of network growth with kind of the ownership of this platform?
And then the third step will be like building this kind of combinatorial application to plug in multiple of these different protocols into new experiences.
And when you think about um kind of how this plays out, it seems like this multi-chain world uh moves forward. Talk a little bit about the various protocols, how much of them will be uh super specific to a use case versus kind of much more general purpose, right? It it almost feels like uh that's a debate that hasn't been settled yet.
Yeah, I think there's been a lot of debate and I think we'll see how it will play out. I think the definitely what we see right now is that Ethereum kind of captured this financial side of things, right? And it became like a, you know, a financial center that everybody's connected to. So NEAR has, for example, a decentralized trustless bridge that connects to Ethereum. And kind of we have sounds of financial activity of NEAR happening on Ethereum. And then, you know, sounds of liquidity from Ethereum comes to NEAR to some applications, right? And so that I think is, you know, they already solidified this. And also by doing this, actually kind of drove off all of the other activity that was interested in participating.
Just because like, you know, the, the, the, on one side is pricing out activity, on the other side it's, it's also a lot about tooling and other things that kind of are there. I think we see a lot kind of in Polkadot and Cosmos worlds where people build specialized chains for a specific use case. Right? And so there, we definitely made super interesting to see how this will evolve. From my perspective, I mentioned that before to folks is like building a chain, like specialized application, specific chain is like building a data center. It's like you build, you know, you find a place, you build a data center, you put power in, you put cooling, you know, you put servers. And then you launch the application, right?
And so it justifies if you know already that you will have a lot of demand for this application and that you know exactly what you're doing, right? So if Facebook does it, it makes sense. If a startup does it, it doesn't, the startup should just launch it on AWS today. And then when it grows enough, can I consider doing it? And so smart contract chains are more like AWS right now, right? And that's kind of how we position NEAR is like, you know, come, launch, super easy, super cheap. Grow with us and then figure out if there's options to transition it into app-specific chain if you have enough usage to justify it. And so we actually have one of the ecosystem projects, Octopus Network, that are allowing
to launch app chains connected to Near, for example, in those cases.
So when you think about Near today, is there a world where it will follow kind of the Layer 1, Layer 2 architecture that Bitcoin and Ethereum have? Or do you think that it will be kind of continue to be scalable at the Layer 1?
So I would say it's more like, there's a lot of scalability at Layer 1, and there's a, like, this kind of, when your application is like, completely doesn't fit, then you go kind of app-chain route, right? So like, when you know exactly what you're doing and you have already usage, you can go app-chain route and kind of connect to Near and like, least security and have a bridge and everything. There is some ideas, like, for privacy and for some other kind of more specialized cases, you may want to have a Layer 2. So like, zero knowledge proofs, for example, that can compress some like, private transactions, private exchanges and stuff like this. This is where it actually makes sense to have Layer 2s.
But I would say right now, even with Ethereum, you can kind of see that the boundary between Layer 2 and like, sidechains and other chains is actually being kind of almost removed, because people don't care as much about the differences in security, like nuances of like, yes, this security is like Ethereum security, but you need to wait seven days, and this security is like, you know, some other set of validators, and people just want to use stuff and like, and solve their problems and maybe make money. And that's kind of the main drivers. And so I think this, this boundary of like... The chains will and layer twos, et cetera, will be removed by more better products around users.
And so I think like with near, that's kind of one of the things we're trying to figure out is like, how do we offer more um like clear user experience across the board, right?
When you think about Bitcoin and near, uh, there's a number of uh, protocols for uh, side chains or second layers, et cetera, that are adding this interoperability. Do you see Bitcoin and near ending up getting connected in some way or having interoperability?
Yeah, for sure. I think we we may have a project already working on on bringing Bitcoin uh uh to near pretty much. So and then you can do it through Ethereum right now, right in the Rainbow Bridge. So for sure, like, I think Bitcoin is kind of this reserve currency of blockchain now. And uh, it makes sense to use it across various ecosystems as a as like a financial instrument. And they get a source of liquidity and so so it's like lend lending collateral, et cetera. And so definitely connecting it to near and starting to use it across across the ecosystem is important.
Got it. And so what are you most excited about as uh, as you continue to uh, kind of build this out? Like, what are the the things that get you the most excited when you wake up in the morning?
So uh, like our kind of short term, in just like open that like long term vision, right? Our short term um, focus and and kind of what I'm excited about is this idea of like creator economy triangle. And this is idea that there's a set of D five primitives, a set of kind of creator N F T uh, applications. And then a set of community tools and um, kind of instruments. As working together creates pretty much uh, new opportunities for people around the world for creative who have time around various things to pretty much participate in this new econ- new global economy, right? And so like.
It's not really DeFi, it's just some like tools that, you know, allow to issue tokens, list them, create, create initial offerings, etc. The NFT is really about kind of creating this connectivity between the creator and the fanbase and the people around and the community. And then the community side, which, which I'm especially excited is the whole like DAO structures and ability to organize people, ability to make decisions, ability to kind of create wealth as well for this, for these communities. And so, we've been working, like, we and, and projects and ecosystem been working on this, create a triangle
to really fill in with projects in each one and really interconnect them and start bootstrapping, kind of bringing creators, bringing folks who, with communities who are excited to launch and, you know, like, a community can pretty much create, like with Discord, you know, creating gating with a token, they issue a token, then they maybe create some NFTs, uses NFTs to like, maybe create lending, borrow something, you know, distribute to users and like create this kind of economy that they didn't, didn't have before, right? Like imagine Facebook groups, like with bank accounts, with ability to kind of create wealth, with ability to vote on things, with ability to invest.
Like that's kind of, like that's already here, right? We're already, we're already seeing this happening. We have like over 150 of these DAOs active and near and like it's exciting to see kind of this playing out and, and I think like this on its own will kind of showcase new ways of how people can organize beyond companies or beyond kind of nonprofits to something new, completely new and completely global. So that, that's the part I'm super excited about.
What's the biggest challenge right now for you?
I think the challenge, uh, one is a Bigger challenges is definitely kind of breaking out into the uh normal people, like kind of non-crypto people, right? Like I think in crypto, in crypto world, like, like people are willing to do kind of complicated things. And and they're kind of excited sometimes to do it. Uh we've been building for like normal people for, you know, our, our experience is very similar to like login, this kind of Google login, this Facebook, it's like login this near. You know, you set up, you use, you, you can use obviously kind of secure ways, like ledger, seed phrases, but you can use like emails, SMS. And kind of have a progressive way of, of increasing security of your account.
And the lingo that people use on its own is detracting people, right? So like when we say DAO, like we all know what DAO is. But then when, when I talk with like even some of my technical friends who are not in blockchain, they have no idea what that is, right? So we've been looking, what, what is the way to replace that? Like, for example, digital cooperative is something that the cooperative people know is digital, okay? You know, it has bank account, it can invest, but it's still a corporation of people, right? So like, how do we even change the way we talk about this thing such that it's more um interesting to people and they're willing to kind of invest a little bit of time to learn uh what they can do, like what are the new things they can do?
What about in terms of the folks that you guys are trying to bring on, et cetera? There are certain roles that you're looking to fill, any sort of, uh, you know, qualifications, past experiences?
For sure, yeah, I mean, we, we're hiring a president board, right? Uh, like this is huge ecosystem that needs people for almost every single job. Um, the, everything from, you know, man- managing projects, like one of the projects that I am working on, for example, is creating a governance for the near ecosystem itself, right? I think that's a critical piece kind of for long-term success because uh
Like, we believe in innovation, we believe in iteration and kind of making progress. And the bigger ecosystem, the harder it is to coordinate kind of all of the parties who have kind of different interests and different views on things. And so really bringing them together and creating alignment is important. And so really looking actually for help here was like project managers and and people who are interested in Alice and people who are excited to kind of organize this like governance at uh this kind of decentralized global level. Uh, we're definitely looking for more, you know, developers, like always Rust, solidity. Um, the, you know, most of our ecosystem is built in Rust, but we are like with some of the things launching.
Uh, that supports C V M. There's also things that, you know, that bridge together the ecosystems with Ethereum. So, um, kind of a lot, a lot of jobs open there.
Got it. And then when you think about the other things that uh that are built, being built in the space, is there anything that you're trying to get built on uh on the platform or anything that you'd like to invite people to specifically focus on?
Yeah, for sure. So I actually gave a talk uh like a week ago and and we're actually gonna have a hackathon uh starting tomorrow, uh well, starting Friday twenty twenty seven uh twenty seventh. Um, but the, the general idea is like, there's a set of this like common protocols, right? So I mentioned like social, but there's like similar things can be built for reputation, for certification, for music, for for video, et cetera. That are pretty much will spur out like lots of innovation at the application level if available. Similar how like Uniswap has became like almost like this huge enabler for DeFi ecosystem, right?
Like one small application, literally this was, you know, six hundred lines of code uh as a, as a protocol level. Became this like huge movement of DeFi, right? Uh, and then it took some time to build it up, but like generally this is kind of the enabling power of this protocols that you can build. And so I invite everyone to kind of participate in hacks on, build them, reach out to me. Uh, super excited and thi- these protocols can pretty much be powering like this next billion people before Bill will be using this open web. So there's like huge fact to be made here.
Is there anything that uh you think that you believe that everyone else would disagree with you on? Like, like, do you have any thoughts that uh uh kind of are completely outside of what I'd consider the mainstream?
I think the, the, the thing that probably everybody agrees, but no, nobody actually does anything is the fact that like we cannot use MetaMask and, and like, you know, zero X addresses as, as a way to onboard people into crypto. That's just not, not a thing, like this should not be a thing. You, if you go to like, go to your parents and ask them to figure this out, right? They will not be able to. And so you, you want the kind of normal ways to onboard people, which maybe like provide some kind of progressive security for this and, and require um, kind of over time to, to kind of expand, like pretty much educate people over time instead of requiring them to figure out what private keys are and what this addresses are.
Had before even they got into the application, right? And so like, this is my strong belief and we've, you know, we've built things to kind of address this problem. But I, I, it's really surprising to me when people actually near or from crypto and are like, where's MetaMask? Like how, where, where, why, why is my address is just like, you know, their name dot near? And I'm like, that's the whole, like, they just don't feel secure actually because they, they, they, their experience is so easy, right? And so that is, I think people need to change their mind in, in the blockchain ecosystem that like blockchain needs to be hard because that's on, that's, that's kind of been. Like this before and we should start actually focusing on making it really easy for people to use.
Got it. Before I end, I always ask everyone the same three questions. The first one is, what's the most important book that they've ever read?
I think the recent one that I think is super important uh is Extreme Leadership. The it's been a it's been an interesting and ve- very exciting, especially in audiobook format. And so, yeah, if you haven't checked it out, that's uh that's been a really cool kind of way of thinking more about like how to take responsibility and how to uh kind of manage teams as well.
Sleep schedule, if uh if you had to kind of describe how that's changed over uh the last few months or a year, how is your sleep schedule been?
Well, I've been in China for the past year and a half, and so that uh was very suboptimal sleep schedule. Because having meetings with Pacific and with Europe requires to stay very late. But now that I'm in Europe, it's a little bit better. So uh going to sleep at like twelve one and waking up at the eight nine. Tend to get seven or eight hours of sleep.
That's not too bad. That's better than most people. So you're uh you're doing all right. Um, what about aliens? Are you a believer or non-believer?
So I don't believe that aliens visited us already because I feel like if if they if and and and like I totally accept that there can be other life forms existing in the universe. Like that's, you know, just prob- probability theory. But if they visited us, we probably would have already connected with them in some way. Unless they're like in completely different dimension or whatever, and then then it's not really as as useful uh conceptually anyway.
What one question do you have for me to finish up?
Uh, I think I'm I'm curious. Do you like, what's your prediction on when are we gonna have a billion users on chain?
A billion users on chain? Definitely in the next five years. Potentially in the next three, I would say, but definitely in the next five. Uh, I would say uh it's kind of almost a no-brainer at this point. You agree?
We'll be pushing for that. Well, that that's that's our goal. So three to five is our goal.
Oh, three to five. Perfect. We're right, uh, right on, uh, on line there. I think it'll happen. All right. Where can we send people to find out more, uh, about the project or, uh, to find you on the internet?
Uh, near.org is our website. You can find lots of information. They just launched like another set of educational materials as well. And I'm on Twitter, I L Black Dragon, or follow near protocol and you'll see my tweets as well.
Awesome, man. Well, let's thank you so much for taking that time to do this and I will definitely do it again in the future.
Thanks a lot.
Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
