The Solana infrastructure leader and privacy advocate joins NEAR Foundation’s governing body to help bring privacy to onchain markets
Today, the NEAR Foundation announced that Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, has joined the NEAR Foundation Council. The Council is NEAR Foundation's governing body, responsible for oversight of the Foundation and its most significant decisions.
Mert joins current Council members Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol; Diogo Mónica, Co-founder of Anchorage Digital; Chris Donovan, former COO of NEAR Foundation; and Bowen Wang, founder of NEAR One.
At Helius, Mert leads, and will continue to lead, the build-out of the infrastructure that teams including Phantom, Jupiter, Coinbase, and Bitwise use to build on Solana, from RPC nodes and data streaming to transaction delivery and validators. Mert is also a prominent voice in crypto's privacy renaissance, particularly around Zcash and shielded payments, where he has argued that people should be able to keep their money encrypted and still spend it anywhere, which aligns with NEAR Intents’ vision of universal, private markets.
Mert has repeatedly proven he can spot where the industry is going long before it arrives. He was an early user of NEAR Intents in December 2024, and a year later pointed out that it was already powering Zcash swaps, Ledger Live, and Infinex at a time when, as he put it, few people were aware of it. He has since called NEAR the market of markets for its role as industry-wide infrastructure connecting chains and liquidity. On the Council, Mert will bring market judgment and an operator’s technical rigor to the NEAR Foundation’s governance, including how the Foundation supports product development and go-to-market strategy, the key areas where he has publicly said NEAR has the most room to grow.
“There is no world in which crypto succeeds but distinct markets are gatekept exclusively through CEXes,” said Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius. “We already have that and it's called TradFi. For crypto to win, we need connected, unstoppable liquidity at planetary scale. A market of markets. Neither Solana, Zcash, or Bitcoin can win on their own, we must work together. And NEAR is how.”
Mert has already completed work that connects NEAR to other ecosystems around it. Helius listed both NEAR and ZEC on Solana through Orb, where ZEC now ranks among the top three assets by volume. Mert has also argued that this cycle's progress spans Solana, Zcash, and NEAR, and that the three ecosystems should build on each other.
NEAR is building where markets across every chain meet, for people and AI agents alike, with confidentiality as a core primitive. NEAR Intents has processed more than $33 billion in all-time volume, with confidential TVL now over $160 million. near.com is confidential by default. Users trade across chains from an account they control and keep their positions and history to themselves.
“Mert is a rare force in crypto, with a unique ability to be correct and vocal about it,” said Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol. “He was an early NEAR Intents adopter and advocate before most of the industry caught on, and the whole NEAR ecosystem and I personally have benefited from his candor and support. Mert's conviction, technical depth, and direct approach will be a great asset for the NEAR Foundation Council as we work to bring private assets and markets to every chain. His sharp perspective and shared belief in the vision will be a major advantage for NEAR in shaping what we build next.”
