Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, has been a vocal advocate for NEAR Protocol, arguing the network has found product market fit by supporting fast-growing ecosystems and making strategic advances in AI and cross-chain capabilities.
Ternullo frames NEAR’s recent AI pivot not as a change in direction but as a return to the project’s original mission. “I would describe this not as a pivot but as a returning to roots,” he said. He describes the current position as the result of sustained technical work: “This is the result of five years of really top notch engineering and delivery.”
Central to his thesis is the idea of NEAR as infrastructure for agentic commerce — a future where autonomous AI agents conduct transactions at volumes and speeds beyond human capability. “We’re gonna have billions of agents that will do transactions at a frequency” beyond what humans can manage, he noted, positioning NEAR tokens as a native settlement asset for that environment.
NEAR Intents, the protocol’s cross-chain communication layer, is cited as evidence of product market fit, enabling smoother transactions across platforms and improving user experience.
On valuation, Ternullo argues the NEAR token is currently undervalued relative to its fundamentals, and that the most compelling investment case lies in vertically integrated products built within the ecosystem rather than at the base protocol level alone.
Source: NEAR Protocol’s Bet on AI-Driven Transactions and Cross-Chain Infrastructure