NEAR and Aptos are joining forces on two critical layers of Web3 infrastructure: liquidity and data.
Together, these initiatives seek to abstract away blockchain complexity for users and unlock new possibilities for builders through:
- NEAR Intents integrates Aptos: enabling simple, instant cross-chain transfers
- Near x Shelby partnership: bringing a new decentralized hot storage network, co-developed by Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto, into NEAR’s AI ecosystem to power real-time data serving, AI workloads, and per-access monetization at scale
Aptos and NEAR Intents
This integration marks a major milestone for NEAR’s Chain Abstraction stack. Aptos – one of the largest global stablecoin user bases – is now able to tap into NEAR Intents, bringing seamless cross-chain liquidity.
Users can use NEAR Intents to swap Bitcoin, Ethereum and 20+ chains directly into APT and native USDT on Aptos, without needing to understand wallets, touching a bridge or worrying about network specifics. For Aptos developers, the 1-Click Swap API makes it easy to integrate NEAR Intents directly into projects, unlocking seamless liquidity from Bitcoin, XRP, and beyond.
By partnering with Aptos, NEAR demonstrates how Chain Abstraction removes friction for users at scale – and why NEAR Intents is becoming the universal liquidity layer for crypto.
Hot storage for the AI native web
Shelby is web3’s first decentralized, cloud-grade hot storage protocol purpose-built for sub-second reads, programmable logic and on-demand monetization through read incentives. Co-developed by Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto, it delivers Web2-grade performance for, on-demand, value-generating workloads like AI agents, streaming content, and interactive dApps.
Shelby moves beyond the cold, archival model of existing decentralized storage solutions into a new performance tier where data is served, not just stored. Cold storage is for archives, Shelby is for action – delivering high-speed access while keeping data decentralized, verifiable, and designed for incentive-driven revenue models in line with Web3 values.
This is where the NEAR partnership comes in. NEAR’s ambition is to become the infrastructure layer for the agentic economy: a network where millions of AI agents can transact, coordinate, and access the data they need instantly. Hot storage is a missing piece of that puzzle.
NEAR AI will benchmark Shelby in live agent memory workloads – proving how fast, programmable storage can expand what AI and next-gen applications can do. Meanwhile, Shelby will also explore using NEAR Intents for future Shelby payments. Together, NEAR and Shelby are laying the groundwork for an agentic internet that operates at global scale.
Experience Chain Abstraction in Action
The NEAR and Aptos partnership lays the foundation for deeper stablecoin-powered applications, agent-driven finance, and AI-native infrastructure. And while Shelby’s mainnet launch is on the horizon, you can already see the power of Chain Abstraction today: Swap assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP for Aptos in one click: no bridges, no manual steps.
