Over two packed weeks, NEAR went on an Asia sprint from Seoul to Singapore, bringing the message of Blockchain for AI to some of the region’s most influential stages and conversations shaping the future of Web3.
Seoul: Building Smarter Connections
NEAR kicked off in Seoul during Korea Blockchain Week with the Coffee Session on Consumer Apps Powered by AI, produced in collaboration with Rhea and Public AI. This event spotlighted how AI is redefining the Web3 experience, making consumer applications more intuitive, intelligent, and accessible to a global audience. Builders, founders, and investors joined for an afternoon of open dialogue around usability, interoperability, and the steps needed to bring AI-powered apps into everyday life.
That same day, Amos Zhang, Founder of MetaWeb and long-time friend of the NEAR ecosystem, joined the “What’s Next? Narratives from DePIN to AI and Beyond” panel during Bridge the Block Korea Day at KBW, which gathered South Korea’s Web3 trailblazers and global leaders for a day of collaboration and insight. Amos also shared his perspective on the AI Investment Panel at Open Intelligence Day, offering a look at how investor attention is shifting toward infrastructure and applications built at the intersection of AI and blockchain.
To close out the week, NEAR partnered with Nansen and Hashed for the NEAR x Nansen: DeGenAI “Fork That” Happy Hour, featuring the panel AI Trends in Crypto: Real-World Impacts and Future Opportunities. Moderated by Aurélie Boiteux from Nansen, the conversation brought together Amos Zhang of MetaWeb Ventures and SJ Baek from Hashed for a lively discussion on how AI is reshaping products, ecosystems, and investment strategies. The panel explored how NEAR is empowering builders through grants, tooling, and infrastructure, and how collaboration across protocols, analytics providers, and venture firms is accelerating innovation across the AI and Web3 frontier.
While NEAR’s footprint in Seoul was intentionally lean, the impact was unmistakable. Across panels and partner events, NEAR helped ignite the conversations that matter most to the future of intelligent, decentralized technology, setting the tone for what came next in Singapore.
Singapore: Turning Momentum Into Movement
Fresh off the conversations in Seoul, NEAR arrived in Singapore for Token2049 with a full slate of programming that combined insight, collaboration, and celebration.
The week began with the Do MORE With Less Summit, an exclusive gathering that showcased how crypto can be simpler, more accessible, and more powerful than ever. George Beall, Director of DeFi at NEAR Foundation, joined a panel titled Super-Apps and the Fintechification of Everything, exploring how integrated financial experiences are redefining the next generation of Web3 products.
Lane Rettig, Head of Research at NEAR Foundation, also spoke at DeCompute 2025 on a panel about Transaction Privacy. The conversation centered on privacy as a foundation for the next phase of blockchain and AI, and how NEAR’s stack supports secure, verifiable, and private computation at scale.
Privacy itself saw a resurgence in Singapore. With Zcash surging in value and sparking renewed attention on privacy-preserving systems, NEAR’s role in that narrative became clear. What powered that revival was NEAR Intents, the privacy-preserving on-chain last mile for Zcash. It was a moment that underscored how NEAR’s technology is quietly enabling key innovations across the ecosystem.
Later that evening, NEAR co-hosted the NEAR x SwapKit x THORSwap Happy Hour, bringing together partners and builders to celebrate the power of self-custody and seamless multi-chain experiences. The event fostered meaningful exchange among founders, developers, and investors who are actively shaping the decentralized future.
The momentum continued with the NEAR x Caladan “Fork That” Happy Hour, which brought together researchers, founders, and investors exploring the intersection of AI and open infrastructure. Conversations centered on how on-chain intelligence, verifiable inference, and decentralized compute are unlocking new categories of products and coordination.
Throughout the week, Lane Rettig took on a marathon of appearances that underscored NEAR’s depth of research and thought leadership. He joined the Hack Seasons Conference Singapore for a panel titled Is AI the Logic and Intelligence Layer Web3 Needs?, delivered a keynote at DePin Day Singapore titled AI Isn’t Monolithic, keynoted Open Intelligence Day, and participated in a 499 Scaling Summit panel on The Capital-Efficient DeAI Agent: A Lend-Lease Model for Compute.
From privacy and intelligence to infrastructure and interoperability, NEAR’s message in Singapore was clear: the future of blockchain is intelligent, interconnected, and builder-driven.
Looking Ahead
From Seoul’s focused builder sessions to Singapore’s high-energy stages, NEAR’s two-week run across Asia reflected a turning point in the industry conversation. AI and privacy are no longer distant concepts; they are the twin pillars defining the next phase of blockchain.
In Seoul, the focus was on usability and the builder experience. In Singapore, that evolved into a broader message about intelligence, privacy, and coordination across open systems. Across both weeks, one idea came through consistently: the technologies that win will be those that make blockchain simpler, smarter, and more human.
With NEAR Intents quietly powering breakthroughs like privacy-preserving transactions for Zcash, and with researchers and founders across Asia building on NEAR’s infrastructure, the path forward is taking shape. What began as conversations in Seoul and Singapore now points toward a more connected, intelligent ecosystem that NEAR is uniquely positioned to lead.
Next stop: NEARCON 2026 in San Francisco.
