NEAR co-founder Illia, also known as root.near, said on Oct. 3 that many new and existing developers have been building in the NEAR ecosystem over the past few weeks, while development tools and workflows have also become simpler. He said the key question for developers now is 「what to build, and how to get distribution」.
Consumer-facing and on-chain product ideas
Among the directions he listed was an AI Tamagotchi based on NEAR AI. In that concept, on-chain prompts would be used for verifiable inference, each character would exist as an NFT, and each one would be tied to NEAR to pay inference costs. The product would also include game mechanics such as feeding, customization and competition.
Illia also pointed to a universal payment component designed to let any merchant or application add a 「checkout」 button. Users would be able to complete payments with any wallet and on-chain assets, and the plan is to bring that component into commerce settings such as Shopify.
He also mentioned an AI encyclopedia combined with prediction markets, as well as a private OTC market built on NEAR Intents.
Trading, risk management and event tools
For financial use cases, Illia described a tool called 「Never get liquidated」 that would automatically manage lending and perpetual futures positions in order to reduce liquidation risk.
He also included applications for on-chain event registration and fund escrow, adding another use case tied to organizing and managing on-chain activity.
In trading and finance, he said NEAR Intents could also be used to build delta-neutral strategy tools, along with products that support private trading and social copy trading. In those products, users would be able to sell viewing permissions so that others could track their trading performance.
Privacy and enterprise use cases
Illia said NEAR AI could also be used in privacy-focused and enterprise applications. The ideas he listed included private code review tools, enterprise equity and fundraising management systems, private medical AI second-opinion services, private meeting note tools, and AI model evaluation platforms based on private test sets.
His list suggests that the ecosystem push he is describing spans both crypto-native consumer products and internal enterprise tools with privacy requirements.
Support and distribution channels
On ecosystem growth, Illia said developers can get support through NEAR Legion and should make sure their applications are compatible with Aurora Intent Connect, allowing users from different chains and wallets to participate without bridging.
He also said projects should expand their reach through community partnerships, product distribution channels such as Product Hunt, and the X platform.