- NEAR’s Confidential Intents hide trade details, helping users avoid MEV attacks and strategy copying in DeFi markets.
- Private shard execution lets institutions trade onchain discreetly without complex wallets or zero-knowledge setups.
- Retail users, whales, and enterprises gain privacy for swaps, payments, and cross-chain transfers on NEAR.
NEAR Protocol has introduced Confidential Intents, a feature enabling confidential execution of cross-chain transactions. This innovation addresses a critical pain point in DeFi where all transaction details—size, pair, direction, and timing—are publicly visible.
Consequently, MEV bots and frontrunners exploit this transparency, performing sandwich attacks and copying strategies before settlements occur. Confidential Intents aims to change this by providing a restricted-visibility environment powered by a NEAR private shard. Users can now execute transfers, deposits, and withdrawals privately, with swaps support coming soon.
The new feature integrates seamlessly in the NEAR.com app, allowing users to toggle between a Main Account and a Confidential Account. This setup provides flexibility for retail traders, power users, and institutional participants who need discretion in managing cross-chain positions.
According to NEAR Protocol, “This is a serious unlock for institutional capital to finally move onchain without sacrificing discretion.” Hence, it promises to reduce MEV extraction and prevent strategy copying.
How Confidential Intents Works
Confidential Intents operates on a NEAR private shard, a dedicated execution environment managed by decentralized, permissioned validators. The private shard connects to NEAR mainnet via a TEE-based bridge, ensuring cryptographic integrity without requiring complex wallet setups or client-side ZK proof generation.
Transactions executed in this environment remain confidential, while users can move funds between public and confidential accounts at any time. Moreover, this design allows institutions and enterprises to maintain selective disclosure, supporting compliance requirements without revealing positions publicly.
Besides DeFi traders, Confidential Intents unlocks use cases for enterprises and applications. Businesses can keep payroll, vendor payments, and liquidity positions private, while developers can manage hidden state for inventories, maps, and sealed-bid mechanisms. Additionally, retail users stop losing value to frontrunning, and whales can execute trades without signaling their strategy to the market.
