TL;DR
- Confidential Intents is now publicly available to all developers. Any builder or protocol using the NEAR Intents 1Click Swap API can provide confidential cross-chain execution to their users today.
- Confidentiality is already what users choose. Over $1.5B in ZEC has settled across NEAR Intents, and over 40% of volume across near.com used Confidential Mode within weeks of launch.
- This is the confidential execution layer the agent economy will run on. Confidential Intents unlocks confidentiality at the execution layer for both DeFi users and AI agents transacting across chains.
Confidential Intents is now generally available, bringing NEAR’s confidential execution layer to the entire blockchain industry. Any integration partner that uses NEAR Intents or developers building on Intents can now bring confidential cross-chain execution to their users through NEAR Intents’ easy-to-use 1Click Swap API, with no privacy infrastructure required.
Today’s launch opens the same confidential infrastructure that has attracted users to near.com’s Confidential Mode to any project that wants to give their users confidentiality. The privacy renaissance is here, and runs on NEAR Intents. a16z Crypto, in its 2026 outlook, argued, “Privacy will be the most important moat in crypto this year.” Confidential Intents, now in general availability, is the layer that DeFi protocols and developers can integrate to serve this fast-growing demand.
The Growing Demand for Privacy
Privacy is becoming a default expectation across crypto. On Zcash, shielded transactions climbed from roughly 30% of activity in early 2025 to an all-time high of 59.3% in February 2026, as wallets began routing users into encrypted execution by default. The shift tracks a broader reality: as more value moves onchain and onchain analytics grow more capable, more of that value wants to move confidentially.
That demand already runs on NEAR Intents. Over $1.5B in cumulative ZEC volume has moved across NEAR Intents. That volume reflects demand for privacy-focused assets on NEAR Intents. Confidential Intents applies confidential execution to any asset on those same rails, and it is now open to any team building cross-chain products.
near.com shows the same pattern at the application layer. Within weeks of Confidential Mode going live, confidential execution accounted for roughly 42% of near.com volume. Confidential balances currently hold over $30 million. These patterns prove that when confidentiality is an option, users choose it.
Confidential execution is how serious markets have always worked. In traditional equity markets, dark pools emerged nearly half a century ago so institutions could execute large block trades without signaling intent and moving the market against themselves. The same dynamics apply onchain, where visible order flow becomes a liability and large positions get copied or targeted for liquidation. These are measurable costs, and they are why institutional-scale capital has stayed on venues that offer confidential execution by default. Confidential Intents brings that property to cross-chain DeFi, where users access markets directly through their own wallets.
The Advantages of Confidential Intents’ Privacy Architecture
Confidential Intents reflects a set of deliberate architecture choices that separate it from other approaches to onchain privacy. The design is covered in depth in How Confidential Intents Works. The architectural choices that matter most for cross-chain builders and businesses are these:
Encryption over proof generation: a faster, simpler experience for your users. ZK-based privacy systems require users to generate client-side cryptographic proofs for each transaction, which adds computational overhead, wallet complexity, and limits the set of supported operations. Confidential Intents provides confidentiality through a private-shard execution environment instead. The result is a standard user experience with no client-side proof generation, state sync, or additional wallet setup.
Individual encryption, not pooled obfuscation: your users retain individually encrypted transaction histories rather than participating in a shared anonymity pool. Mixing services accept funds from any source and pool them to break the link between origin and destination, leaving users to inherit whatever risk comes with the shared pool. Confidential Intents takes the opposite approach. Assets are screened at ingress, and each user's data is encrypted individually on the private shard rather than mixed with others'. Order size, timing, counterparties, and strategy are not publicly visible onchain.
Selective disclosure: compliance without surrendering confidentiality. As more of the world adopts crypto, more of it falls under regulation, and users increasingly need to share transaction history with counterparties like banks or off-ramp providers. Confidential Intents plans to roll out a selective disclosure feature for exactly this: users hold an account-level view key for their confidential data and can choose to share it with an auditor, tax advisor, compliance officer, or other party for a limited, time-scoped period. Disclosure is user-initiated, while remaining subject to applicable law, regulatory obligations, and NEAR Intents’ compliance and security controls. Combined with screening at ingress, this approach is intended to support the long-term sustainability of Confidential Intents.
How Integration Works
Confidential Intents runs behind the same 1Click Swap API that partners already use. There is no new infrastructure to stand up and no confidential-specific SDK to learn. The confidential rail is a parameter, not a rebuild.
For existing integrators, turning it on is a single change: pass the confidential parameter in the 1Click Swap integration already in place, and confidential flows are live. For new projects, integrate the 1Click Swap API and pass the confidential parameter from the start. Either way, the quote → deposit → swap flow is identical to a standard swap. The confidentiality layer operates underneath.
That is the whole integration. A team already routing cross-chain volume through NEAR Intents can offer confidential execution to its users today, and a team starting fresh reaches the same capability through one standard integration.
Confidential Rails for the Wider Intents Ecosystem and Agent Economy
Confidential Intents is built for any team shipping cross-chain experiences where users demand confidentiality.
On the application side, wallets can offer confidential swaps and transfers inside existing user flows. DEXs and aggregators can reduce trade signaling and unnecessary public visibility. And multichain asset managers can let users rebalance across chains confidentially. Trading and DeFi apps can keep positions, counterparties, and activity off the public chain, and payments and consumer apps can support confidential cross-chain transfers.
The same rail extends to institutions and enterprises. Trading desks can protect strategies from public view and keep large transactions from signaling the market. Treasuries can shield liquidity positions and vendor payment flows, and enterprises can run onchain payroll or protect supplier terms without exposing salaries, rates, or relationships. In each case the requirement is identical: cross-chain execution that settles without broadcasting the details to competitors or counterparties. Confidential Intents delivers that through a single API parameter, on rails that have already moved more than $22 billion in cross-chain volume.
The need for confidentiality will only expand with the AI economy. As agents transact continuously across chains on behalf of the people and businesses they represent, confidential execution will become a strict requirement: anything sensitive an agent touches, a trade, a credential, a private dataset, has to run without publicly exposing it to competitors, counterparties, or the public ledger. NEAR Intents is already the universal liquidity layer moving value across chains. Confidential Intents adds the confidentiality that agentic finance will require. The rails being opened to developers today are the same rails the agent economy will settle on tomorrow.
Start Building With Confidential Intents Today
Confidential Intents is live and publicly available to all integrators. Any partner using the 1Click Swap API can turn on confidential execution with a single parameter, and any team can integrate from scratch through one standard API. Head to: https://docs.near-intents.org/integration/distribution-channels/1click-api/quickstart
Want our team’s expert support in bringing confidential execution to your users? Fill out the integration form.