Nillion has integrated with NEAR Protocol to enhance privacy tools for developers. This collaboration aims to create a new global substrate where people are empowered with knowledge and ownership of their world through the intersection of AI and blockchain technology. NEAR Protocol's co-founder, Ilia Polosukhin, has been a key figure in this initiative, emphasizing the importance of a trustless, user-owned paradigm, noting there are only 7,000 full-time crypto developers. The integration focuses on privacy-preserving applications, including private AI inference, federated learning, and secure DeFi solutions. Kendall Cole from Proximity Finance highlighted that AI agents are expected to be the most common consumers of blockchains, further shaping the future of AI and blockchain. This partnership opens up new avenues for privacy-preserving applications within the NEAR ecosystem, particularly in AI solutions. The consumer app layer of AI x crypto remains an exciting and under-explored area.