Illia Polosukhin Says NEAR May Cut Centralized Exchanges Out of Many Trades
Key Takeaways
- •Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, said the network may remove centralized exchanges from many trades, according to a COINOTAG report dated October 7, 2026.
- •In an updated statement, Polosukhin revealed that a centralized exchange deleted one of his own accounts even though he personally knew the company's chief executive, and he did not name the exchange involved.
- •Polosukhin previously co-authored the 2017 paper 'Attention Is All You Need,' which introduced the Transformer architecture that underpins much of modern artificial intelligence.
- •NEAR supports non-custodial trading through its chain abstraction and NEAR Intents tooling, which allows users to express desired trade outcomes across networks and settle them on-chain from self-custodied wallets.
- •The remarks included no timeline or estimate of how much trading volume could move on-chain, leaving whether the thesis will be realized an open question.
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, said the network may cut centralized exchanges out of many trades, according to a report published by COINOTAG on October 7, 2026.
Update (17:26 UTC): Polosukhin also offered a personal reason for the thesis — a detail absent from his main remarks. He said one of his own accounts at a centralized exchange was deleted even though he knew the company's chief executive, and that the login page told him the account no longer exists. The remarks did not name the exchange involved.
Who Is Illia Polosukhin?
Polosukhin co-founded NEAR Protocol, a proof-of-stake layer-1 blockchain that scales through sharding and emphasizes usability for both human users and AI-driven applications. Earlier in his career, he co-authored the 2017 research paper "Attention Is All You Need," which introduced the Transformer architecture that underpins much of modern artificial intelligence.
Centralized Exchanges vs. On-Chain Trading
Centralized exchanges operate on a custodial model: users deposit funds into exchange-managed accounts, trades are matched on internal ledgers, and access depends on the platform's own login and account systems. On-chain trading instead settles directly on blockchains through decentralized exchanges, automated market makers, and intent-based systems, allowing users to transact from self-custodied wallets.
NEAR has built infrastructure in this direction through its chain abstraction and NEAR Intents tooling, which is designed to let users express desired trade outcomes — such as swapping one asset for another across different networks — and execute them on-chain without custodial intermediaries. The thesis is therefore consistent with infrastructure NEAR has already built, though the remarks, as reported, included no timeline and no estimate of how much trading could move on-chain.
The Exchange Account Episode
Polosukhin cited the deletion of his exchange account as a personal reason for the thesis. The episode illustrates a structural difference between the two models: an exchange can unilaterally terminate access an account, while on-chain assets remain under the holder's own keys. Whether enough trading activity moves onto such on-chain routes to realize that thesis is the question his remarks leave open.
The report was first published by COINOTAG on October 7, 2026.
