NEAR Foundation is pleased to congratulate crypto platform Infinex on a successful integration of NEAR Intents and Chain Signatures, which allows users to swap and bridge Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and XRP across multiple blockchain networks with unprecedented ease.
Originally announced at NEAR's [REDACTED] conference in November, the integration is now live. It addresses long-standing interoperability challenges in bringing assets without native smart contract functionality like BTC, DOGE, and XRP into decentralized finance, and crucially, it does so without compromising on decentralization. Adding NEAR tech under the hood of an interface designed to make everyday crypto transactions effortless, Infinex now offers a significantly improved user experience for owners of these cryptocurrencies, eliminating the friction of managing multiple chains—while maintaining users' custody of their own assets.
"Crypto is still deeply fragmented," said Infinex founder Kain Warwick, reflecting on the current state of Web3 liquidity and the present collaboration. "By enabling NEAR Intents we're moving closer to a unified blockchain experience that gives all asset owners the functionality they need to access everything on-chain has to offer, while retaining full self-custody. Chain abstraction is critical to making this possible."
Illia Polosukhin, NEAR's co-founder, emphasized the shared vision behind the partnership. "I am excited to see Infinex tackle the important work of onboarding users into self-custody with a strong focus on user experience," Polosukhin said. "NEAR has been pushing this vision of chain abstraction and ease of use since the start in 2018, so it's great to partner with a prolific builder like Kain and the team at Infinex to make this vision a reality for the next generation of users."
How Infinex Uses NEAR Chain Signatures + Intents to Simplify Crypto UX
The Infinex integration leverages two key pieces of NEAR tech:
- Chain Signatures, a multi-party computation (MPC) protocol that allows users to sign transactions on third-party blockchains from a single account, permissionlessly. This allows users to seamlessly interact with assets on any chain without the need for bridging or wrapping, while preserving custody. It also includes a "Multichain Gas Relayer," which removes the need to have the native gas token of another chain to transact.
- NEAR Intents, a revolutionary transaction framework that simplifies blockchain interactions for users, services, and AI agents. Rather than users handling complex cross-chain transactions themselves, they declare a desired outcome—their "intent"—and a specialized network of solvers (including both AI agents and traditional market participants) competes to execute that intent in the most optimal way possible. Building on NEAR's chain abstraction technology, NEAR Intents enable decentralized, cross-chain DeFi infrastructure, and seamlessly integrate multiple blockchain networks without relying on traditional bridges, reducing associated risks, costs, and wait times.
The partnership between NEAR and Infinex brings BTC, DOGE, and XRP to Infinex's core Swidge (i.e., swap-and-bridge) feature, with more assets coming soon. Swidge enables seamless cross-chain swaps of more than 100,000 assets across 13 chains, including EVM, Solana, and the non-smart-contract blockchains added with this integration, all in a few clicks.
For Infinex's Warwick, unlocking access to the considerable value held in crypto like BTC and DOGE means not only supporting the chains, but shedding complexity. "Bitcoin and Dogecoin weren't built for DeFi—but that shouldn't make them inaccessible," he says. "With NEAR Intents and Swidge, we've removed the usual pain points like bridging, gas, and poor UX. Infinex is now more powerful for legacy holders and more seamless for everyone."
Watch Kain and Illia discuss DeFi, chain abstraction, and NEAR Intents
For more information, and to explore what's now possible on-chain, visit infinex.xyz.
