The NEAR Blockchain Has Switched to Confidential by Default Mode

• NEAR Protocol has switched to Confidential by Default, with order details hidden by default.
• Confidential Intents is now the primary mode.
• With this approach, trades are executed via a private environment with a TEE bridge.

The NEAR Protocol blockchain has moved from optional to default privacy, project co-founder Illia Polosukhin said. This means users’ balances, deposits, swaps, yield, and payments will be hidden by default via the Confidential Intents mechanism. 

This feature was introduced in February 2026, and it became generally available in July. 

Confidential Intents is a private shard with a TEE bridge to the mainnet that hides trade parameters from the public mempool, protecting users from frontrunning and MEV attacks while preserving the ability to selectively disclose transactions to regulators or counterparties. The execution environment is run by a decentralized set of independent validators. More details:

Polosukhin’s statement, as well as a statement by Aurora Labs head of product Matt Henderson that he referenced, suggests that the default account is now a Confidential Account. Henderson also noted that it is not possible to switch back to the previous mode. 

In the discussion under his post, he was asked whether multiple access keys would be added and whether it would be possible to make deposits to old addresses. In the first case, Henderson stressed that the feature is in development, and in the second, he replied that yes, such assets will simply be labeled as Legacy assets. 

Notably, the Confidential Intents shard uses Trusted Execution rather than client-side generation of ZK proofs, as most privacy-focused networks do. This means the UX for users has effectively remained the same, without additional “friction.”

The mechanism itself runs on top of NEAR Intents — an abstraction system where swaps are executed by market makers competing for the best price, except now the core information is not shown in the public mempool until completion. 

According to NEAR Protocol data from July 2026, confidential transactions accounted for about 42% of the network’s total trading volume. 

The main reason for the shift to Confidential by Default, the team noted, is the high activity of MEV bots. At the same time, NEAR Protocol clearly distinguishes the new mechanism from various mixers. The July statement says regulators can gain access to the data upon an appropriate request, which is the key difference.

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