How To Prepare For The AI Freight Train - Illia Polosukhin

The Rollup · Feb 26, 2026 · 32m

Illia Polosukhin breaks down why AI needs blockchain as its backend, how formal verification could rewrite every line of code online, and what a post-labor economy looks like.

We cover:

- The Near.com Unified Interface Launch

- Why Financial AI Needs Verifiable Privacy

- The AI Agent Marketplace Explained

- Chinese Open-Source Models vs. US Frontier Models

- Cloud Inference Without the CapEx or Data Exposure

- Will AI Break the Power Grid?

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:12 NEAR's Unified Commerce Layer

02:39 Agentic Chain Abstraction

04:50 Convergence of AI & Crypto

07:49 Why Blockchain Is Built…