Near co-founder says liquidity remains the biggest challenge for tokenized stocks

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin said the network wants to connect tokenized equities directly with liquidity from traditional markets, positioning NEAR Intents as an aggregation layer between crypto and venues such as Nasdaq. Speaking with Ashton Addison on the Crypto Coin Show, Polosukhin said liquidity remains one of the biggest limitations facing tokenized equities as more stocks and funds move onchain. “There’s a little bit on Solana, there’s a little bit on Ethereum, there’s a little bit on Base,” Polosukhin said, arguing that liquidity has become increasingly fragmented across networks and platforms. The problem becomes more apparent for larger trades. Polosukhin used Nvidia as an example, saying that purchasing $10 million worth of the stock is relatively straightforward through Nasdaq, but executing an equivalent tokenized trade onchain remains difficult because available markets are much thinner. NEAR is trying to address that gap through NEAR Intents, which allows users to specify the asset and amount they want rather than manually navigating individual chains, bridges and liquidity pools. Under the model described by Polosukhin, a user seeking $10 million of tokenized N...