Raider

Crypto has thousands of blockchains, but getting them to work together remains one of its BIGGEST challenges. NEAR co-founder @ilblackdragon believes he's found a way to solve it. From connecting blockchains to enabling AI agents to transact onchain, NEAR is building something much bigger. But what does this mean for near:native and for crypto as a whole? New Insider interview OUT NOW: youtu.be/q6DJCivzLyE

You can't claim to believe in financial freedom while depending on permission-based infrastructure to move your money. If the money is permissionless, shouldn't the means of exchanging it be too? This is something I think the crypto industry needs to think about more seriously. Crypto was never supposed to be another version of the financial system we already had. The whole point was to create an alternative. One where people could own their money, move their assets freely and participate in a financial system without needing permission from a bank, government or corporation. Bitcoin introduced that idea to the world. Not because humans suddenly became trustworthy, but because we could build systems that didn't require us to trust them in the first place. And that's an important distinction. Don't blame the technology for what humans choose to do with it. People will always find ways to manipulate systems, protect their interests and exercise control over others. That's human nature. But the technology itself can be designed to minimise the power any individual or institution has over everyone else. That's what decentralisation is supposed to achieve. Where I come from, this isn't some abstract conversation about financial sovereignty. I'm Nigerian. I've watched a reckless government preside over an economy where the local currency has lost so much of its value that simply preserving what you earn has become a challenge for ordinary people. For many Nigerians, crypto became more than an investment opportunity. It became a way to access a global financial system, protect value, move money and participate in an economy that wasn't restricted by the limitations of our local financial infrastructure. When your currency is constantly losing purchasing power and access to your own money can come with unnecessary restrictions, the ability to hold and move an asset without asking anyone for permission means something entirely different. But here's something I think we sometimes overlook. What good is having permissionless money if the avenue through which you exchange it is permissioned? What good is self-custody if you eventually have to surrender your assets to an intermediary before you can swap them? What good is financial freedom if a company can decide that you're no longer allowed to participate? We cannot claim to have built an alternative financial system while recreating the same gatekeepers, restrictions and dependencies we set out to escape. This is why @THORChain matters. You don't need to create an account, submit your passport, take a selfie or provide your home address before using the protocol. You don't need to deposit your assets into a centralised exchange and trust someone else to hold them for you. You interact directly with the protocol from your own wallet and swap native assets across different blockchains. No central exchange needs to approve your participation. No company needs to take custody of your funds. Behind it is a decentralised network of node operators facilitating and securing the swaps, with transactions settled on-chain and independently verifiable. And this is the part I find particularly important: THORChain isn't trying to become another institution that people have to trust. It's building infrastructure that allows people to exchange value without having to place that trust in a central intermediary. Of course, decentralisation doesn't mean every human interaction becomes fair or that every problem disappears. But it changes where power sits. Instead of concentrating it in the hands of a company, it distributes the responsibility across an open network. That's the direction crypto was supposed to take. Not recreating the traditional financial system with blockchain branding. Not building more sophisticated gatekeepers. Not making financial participation conditional on somebody else's approval. We wanted money that could move freely, that belonged to its owners and that wasn't controlled by a single authority. And if the money is supposed to be permissionless, the infrastructure through which we trade it should be permissionless too. That's why I have so much respect for what THORChain is building. Financial freedom cannot be built on permission-based infrastructure.