NEAR Intents Aims to Unify Liquidity for Tokenized Stocks
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin highlighted liquidity as the primary challenge for tokenized stocks, particularly as more equities and funds transition onchain. He emphasized that fragmented liquidity across networks like Solana, Ethereum, and Base complicates large trades. For example, purchasing $10 million worth of tokenized Nvidia stock is far more complex onchain compared to traditional venues like Nasdaq due to thinner markets.
NEAR is addressing this issue with NEAR Intents, a system designed to aggregate liquidity from both crypto and traditional markets. Users can specify the asset and amount they want, allowing solvers to source or mint the assets, such as through Ondo. This approach connects onchain users directly to Nasdaq’s liquidity, unifying demand across multiple venues.
The integration of Ondo Stocks with near.com and NEAR Intents in September introduced 20 tokenized US stocks, ETFs, and commodity-linked products, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. At the time, Ondo’s platform had surpassed $1 billion in total value locked and $26 billion in cumulative trading volume. NEAR Intents aims to route demand across various networks rather than concentrating liquidity on a single blockchain.
Polosukhin believes this aggregation model will become increasingly vital as more real-world assets move onchain. NEAR Intents could serve as an aggregator for liquidity from onchain markets, centralized exchanges, and traditional financial venues, ultimately unifying liquidity across all trading platforms.