[NEAR Co-Founder: On-Chain Tools Expansion is Reducing Dependence on Centralized Exchanges] According to The Block, NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin stated that as on-chain trading and financial tools continue to improve, users' dependence on centralized exchanges is decreasing. (NEAR has now integrated cross-chain spot trading, perpetual contracts, tokenized stocks, and yield products via near.com, and plans to add features such as bank withdrawals, tax record-keeping, and selective disclosure for private transactions.) Polosukhin also mentioned that AI Agents could become a key interaction gateway for on-chain markets in the future, allowing users to make requests in natural language, with AI Agents executing the corresponding tasks. Recently, NEAR has also partnered with Monerium to expand the euro fiat channel and integrated tokenized stocks through Ondo Finance.