[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]  george beall [@GeorgePBeall](/creator/twitter/GeorgePBeall) on x 4210 followers Created: 2025-07-18 15:32:57 UTC I’m excited to announce I’ve joined the Near Foundation leadership team as Director of DeFi as of July 1st. Over the last couple months, I was lucky to speak with countless teams, think about why I’m in crypto, and where we are going from here. Hopefully this post share a bit about my journey, my thoughts on the space, and why I am incredibly bullish on the future of @NEARProtocol. How did I get here? In 2013 my nerdy best friend in high school explained BTC to me as a payment network without middle men. I thought it was cool, traded a few hundred dollars on Mt. Gox, and played around with a small miner at his house. In 2015, I met @samkazemian and @travismo123, and became a cofounder of Everipedia (now We grew it to 4M users, launched one of the first points programs, and talked about the future impact of smart contracts. This is when I got sold on the fact blockchains would become a paradigm-defining piece of the tech industry. In 2017, while at Wharton, I dove into the ICO boom. Investing in projects and advising a few on marketing. I read most of the white papers and got sold on the idea of disrupting the middlemen of the finance industry. You can still read some of my 2018 articles about DeFi on Medium. In 2020, I was lucky enough to join @dillchen at @commondotxyz and get my first professional role in the crypto industry. Common powered the governance for @dYdX, @1inch, @AxieInfinity, @osmosiszone, @StargateFinance, and many more. It was a great opportunity to build relationships with the top DeFi teams and see DeFi underneath the hood. Common also supported Near governance, leading me to attend the first NearCon. In 2024 I joined @tarunchitra, @inkymaze, @mattdobel, and co at @gauntlet_xyz. This was an incredible opportunity to work closely with top DeFi protocols like Morpho, Jupiter, and Uniswap + top chains like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Near. I got to see how the DeFi pipes get put together to make liquidity flow. I also spent a lot of time sitting down with @chronear making the Near House of Stake a reality. Along the way I was fortunate enough to angel invest in many amazing projects like @Lombard_Finance, @defidotapp, @tryfomo, @RWA_xyz, @AftermathFi, Duality (acquired by @neutron_org), Catalyst (acquired by @lifiprotocol), Warlock (acquired) and others. I even became one of the early @echodotxyz group leads. This has been an incredibly rewarding job, as I got the chance to work closely with many founders and help them solve their problems. Lombard ended up bringing me on as their Head of Strategy, where I helped them grow from $500M to $2B in TVL and expand to multiple new chains. As I took a step back over the last few months to focus on what drives me, I realized a few things: 1) I really fucking love DeFi. It’s one of the best examples of PMF within crypto and has the opportunity to substantially improve people’s lives around the world. It’s also an incredibly fun puzzle to solve as you look for opportunities to play with composable money legos. Who doesn’t love legos?! 2) I find working with early-stage founders one of the most rewarding jobs possible. It takes a particular blend of crazy, hustle, intelligence, and optimism to be a founder. Times are not always easy, but the energy and enthusiasm that comes from helping founders is like a drug to me; I can’t get enough. 3) I want to help bring cutting edge technology to market. It's not enough to just get users, build hype, or launch a token. I sleep at night by creating long-term value and helping onboard users to sustainable, technical solutions. This brings me to today… Why Near? There are a lot of chains, but there are also a lot of outstanding problems with the blockchain ecosystem: UX sucks, financial opportunities are limited, accessing DeFi requires a blend of technical and financial sophistication, scams are rampant and not always easy to identify, etc. While many chains adopt a copy-pasta mentality and deliver hyped up marketing about future performance, Near has focused on building and shipping working tech. As I have spoken with chain teams, it has been clear @ilblackdragon and @BowenWang18 are some of the best engineers in the industry. Near currently offers 600ms block times and 1.2s finality, live on mainnet today. Near Intents and chain signatures are a drastic improvement over bridging and wrapping solutions. Furthermore, Illia is one of the godfather’s of modern AI. He co-authored the “Attention is all you need paper” and while much of the crypto x AI industry has been focused on attaching memecoins to AI buzzwords, he has been shipping novel, working technology. Crypto x AI will eventually be more than a meme, it will be a 10X level up in the UX of DeFi and crypto more broadly. Which brings me to… What’s next? There are a number of major initiatives within the Near Foundation that I am excited, but I will focus on a few big ones. 1) Near Intents Growth We are already seeing more chains, protocols, applications, and wallets integrate Near Intents as a solution to allow users to access BTC, ETH, SOL, ZEC, XRP and other assets all from a single platform. No more bridges, no more multi-wallet flows, no more wrappers. Just simple swaps the way the Lord intended. Near Intents has seen a huge spike in weekly volumes, and I would expect this trend to continue as the asset availability, liquidity, and integrations continue to improve. 2) Resurgence of Near L1 DeFi While Near L1 DeFi has avoided the copy-pasta and incentive farm games of other chains, it has built trust as an incredibly secure smart contract environment. Now is the time to lean into this security and build out more DeFi applications, user flows, and market opportunities. A few native projects I am excited to see come to life are @TemplarProtocol, and @moremarketsxyz. Also, we are continuing to partner with @Frax and @SkyEcosystem on stablecoin growth. Lastly, we have a few [REDACTED] partners deploying soon. If you want high yield and cheap swaps, Near will be your home. 3) Productization of DeFAI Earlier this year DeFAI was a meme, but in the NEAR future, you will begin to see real use cases of AI making DeFi more accessible and efficient, while eliminating middlemen. More on this soon. Let’s chat My DMs are open if you are: - An LP looking for yield - A DeFi builder looking for support - A protocol looking to integrate BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ZEC, or other assets - Interested in integrating AI agents into your product - Interested in learning more about Near Thank you to everyone who has believed in me, given me a chance, and bet on me thus far. The future is near!  XXXXXX engagements  **Related Topics** [nearprotocol](/topic/nearprotocol) [Post Link](https://x.com/GeorgePBeall/status/1946231727963443318)
[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]
george beall @GeorgePBeall on x 4210 followers
Created: 2025-07-18 15:32:57 UTC
I’m excited to announce I’ve joined the Near Foundation leadership team as Director of DeFi as of July 1st.
Over the last couple months, I was lucky to speak with countless teams, think about why I’m in crypto, and where we are going from here.
Hopefully this post share a bit about my journey, my thoughts on the space, and why I am incredibly bullish on the future of @NEARProtocol.
How did I get here? In 2013 my nerdy best friend in high school explained BTC to me as a payment network without middle men. I thought it was cool, traded a few hundred dollars on Mt. Gox, and played around with a small miner at his house.
In 2015, I met @samkazemian and @travismo123, and became a cofounder of Everipedia (now We grew it to 4M users, launched one of the first points programs, and talked about the future impact of smart contracts. This is when I got sold on the fact blockchains would become a paradigm-defining piece of the tech industry.
In 2017, while at Wharton, I dove into the ICO boom. Investing in projects and advising a few on marketing. I read most of the white papers and got sold on the idea of disrupting the middlemen of the finance industry. You can still read some of my 2018 articles about DeFi on Medium.
In 2020, I was lucky enough to join @dillchen at @commondotxyz and get my first professional role in the crypto industry. Common powered the governance for @dYdX, @1inch, @AxieInfinity, @osmosiszone, @StargateFinance, and many more. It was a great opportunity to build relationships with the top DeFi teams and see DeFi underneath the hood. Common also supported Near governance, leading me to attend the first NearCon.
In 2024 I joined @tarunchitra, @inkymaze, @mattdobel, and co at @gauntlet_xyz. This was an incredible opportunity to work closely with top DeFi protocols like Morpho, Jupiter, and Uniswap + top chains like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Near. I got to see how the DeFi pipes get put together to make liquidity flow. I also spent a lot of time sitting down with @chronear making the Near House of Stake a reality.
Along the way I was fortunate enough to angel invest in many amazing projects like @Lombard_Finance, @defidotapp, @tryfomo, @RWA_xyz, @AftermathFi, Duality (acquired by @neutron_org), Catalyst (acquired by @lifiprotocol), Warlock (acquired) and others. I even became one of the early @echodotxyz group leads. This has been an incredibly rewarding job, as I got the chance to work closely with many founders and help them solve their problems.
Lombard ended up bringing me on as their Head of Strategy, where I helped them grow from $500M to $2B in TVL and expand to multiple new chains.
As I took a step back over the last few months to focus on what drives me, I realized a few things:
I really fucking love DeFi. It’s one of the best examples of PMF within crypto and has the opportunity to substantially improve people’s lives around the world. It’s also an incredibly fun puzzle to solve as you look for opportunities to play with composable money legos. Who doesn’t love legos?!
I find working with early-stage founders one of the most rewarding jobs possible. It takes a particular blend of crazy, hustle, intelligence, and optimism to be a founder. Times are not always easy, but the energy and enthusiasm that comes from helping founders is like a drug to me; I can’t get enough.
I want to help bring cutting edge technology to market. It's not enough to just get users, build hype, or launch a token. I sleep at night by creating long-term value and helping onboard users to sustainable, technical solutions.
This brings me to today…
Why Near? There are a lot of chains, but there are also a lot of outstanding problems with the blockchain ecosystem: UX sucks, financial opportunities are limited, accessing DeFi requires a blend of technical and financial sophistication, scams are rampant and not always easy to identify, etc.
While many chains adopt a copy-pasta mentality and deliver hyped up marketing about future performance, Near has focused on building and shipping working tech.
As I have spoken with chain teams, it has been clear @ilblackdragon and @BowenWang18 are some of the best engineers in the industry. Near currently offers 600ms block times and 1.2s finality, live on mainnet today. Near Intents and chain signatures are a drastic improvement over bridging and wrapping solutions.
Furthermore, Illia is one of the godfather’s of modern AI. He co-authored the “Attention is all you need paper” and while much of the crypto x AI industry has been focused on attaching memecoins to AI buzzwords, he has been shipping novel, working technology.
Crypto x AI will eventually be more than a meme, it will be a 10X level up in the UX of DeFi and crypto more broadly.
Which brings me to…
What’s next? There are a number of major initiatives within the Near Foundation that I am excited, but I will focus on a few big ones.
- Near Intents Growth
We are already seeing more chains, protocols, applications, and wallets integrate Near Intents as a solution to allow users to access BTC, ETH, SOL, ZEC, XRP and other assets all from a single platform.
No more bridges, no more multi-wallet flows, no more wrappers. Just simple swaps the way the Lord intended.
Near Intents has seen a huge spike in weekly volumes, and I would expect this trend to continue as the asset availability, liquidity, and integrations continue to improve.
- Resurgence of Near L1 DeFi While Near L1 DeFi has avoided the copy-pasta and incentive farm games of other chains, it has built trust as an incredibly secure smart contract environment. Now is the time to lean into this security and build out more DeFi applications, user flows, and market opportunities.
A few native projects I am excited to see come to life are @TemplarProtocol, and @moremarketsxyz. Also, we are continuing to partner with @Frax and @SkyEcosystem on stablecoin growth. Lastly, we have a few [REDACTED] partners deploying soon.
If you want high yield and cheap swaps, Near will be your home.
- Productization of DeFAI Earlier this year DeFAI was a meme, but in the NEAR future, you will begin to see real use cases of AI making DeFi more accessible and efficient, while eliminating middlemen. More on this soon.
Let’s chat My DMs are open if you are:
- An LP looking for yield
- A DeFi builder looking for support
- A protocol looking to integrate BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ZEC, or other assets
- Interested in integrating AI agents into your product
- Interested in learning more about Near
Thank you to everyone who has believed in me, given me a chance, and bet on me thus far. The future is near!
XXXXXX engagements
Related Topics nearprotocol