NEAR Launches Confidential Intents for Cross-Chain Position Management

NEAR has introduced a new feature called Confidential Intents, which is designed to provide restricted visibility for users managing cross-chain positions. The solution targets a broad spectrum of participants, including institutional investors, enterprises, and advanced decentralized finance (DeFi) users.

The feature is built on a NEAR private shard, a separate execution environment maintained by a decentralized set of permissioned validators and connected to the NEAR mainnet via a trusted execution environment (TEE)-based bridge. Transactions initiated through near.com or integrated third-party applications execute within this private shard, ensuring that deposits, transfers, and swaps remain confidential.

Confidential Intents allows users to toggle between a Main Account and a Confidential Account, enabling privacy on demand across various transactions. This approach aims to prevent issues such as miner extractable value exploitation and frontrunning, while also supporting selective disclosure and auditable execution.