The head of one of Solana's largest infrastructure firms is joining NEAR's governing council as the network expands its push into private, cross-chain markets.
What's the Scoop?
New Council Member: Mert Mumtaz, CEO and co-founder of Helius, has joined the NEAR Foundation Council and will sit alongside NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Mónica.
His Role: Mumtaz will help guide NEAR's product strategy, ecosystem growth, and governance as the network expands into private onchain markets. He'll also judge NEAR's November 1–14 hackathon.
Cross-Chain Ties: Though he runs Helius, a major Solana infrastructure company, Mumtaz has been a vocal NEAR fan, calling it "the market of markets," a neutral layer connecting chains like Solana, Zcash, and AI networks: "If Solana is one continent… then NEAR is the silk road."
NEAR's Momentum: NEAR Intents, which lets users swap across blockchains without managing bridges, has processed over $33B in all-time volume. It also lost about $3.8M to a deposit-system bug on Oct 1, which the team patched, and it says it will fully repay users.
Quantum and AI Fears: The day before, Mumtaz and Polosukhin joined threadguy's roundtable on whether AI or quantum computers could break crypto. The takeaway was that coins are safe for now, and smart contract hacks are the bigger near-term risk. Mumtaz said most chains could upgrade if they had to, and that Zcash was "the best prepared."
