Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz Joins the NEAR Foundation Council
The Solana infrastructure leader and privacy advocate joins NEAR Foundation's governing body to help bring privacy to onchain markets and will judge the upcoming NEAR Hackathon
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- NEAR Foundation's Council (NFC), the governing body responsible for oversight of the Foundation and its most significant decisions, today announced the appointment of Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius and privacy advocate. Bringing a proven operator's technical rigor, market judgment, and deep expertise in cross-chain privacy infrastructure, Mumtaz will help guide the Foundation's product strategy, ecosystem growth, and governance as NEAR expands its private onchain market vision. He will also serve as a judge for the upcoming NEAR Hackathon, starting November 1.
Mert joins current Council members Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol; Diogo Mónica, Co-founder of Anchorage Digital; Chris Donovan, former COO of NEAR Foundation; and Bowen Wang, founder of NEAR One. Leveraging his background as a technical operator and cross-chain builder, Mumtaz will help steer the Foundation's product development, go-to-market execution, and ecosystem strategy as NEAR advances its privacy-focused onchain vision.
"Mert is a rare force in crypto, with a unique ability to be both correct and vocal about it," said Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol. "He was an early NEAR Intents adopter and advocate before most of the industry caught on, and the whole NEAR ecosystem and I personally have benefited from his candor and support. Mert's conviction, technical depth, and direct approach will be a great asset for the NEAR Foundation Council as we work to bring private assets and markets to every chain. His sharp perspective and shared belief in the vision will be a major advantage for NEAR in shaping what we build next."
At Helius, Mert leads the build-out of the infrastructure that teams including Phantom, Jupiter, Coinbase, and Bitwise use to build on Solana, from RPC nodes and data streaming to transaction delivery and validators. An early user of NEAR Intents, Mert has since called NEAR the market of markets for its role in industry-wide infrastructure connecting chains and liquidity. Mert has proven he can spot where the industry is going long before it arrives, and as a vocal celebrant of the NEAR ecosystem, his voice on the Foundation Council will be a valuable asset in driving the NEAR ecosystem forward.
"There is no world in which crypto succeeds but distinct markets are gatekept exclusively through CEXes," said Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius. "We already have that and it's called TradFi. For crypto to win, we need connected, unstoppable liquidity at planetary scale. A market of markets. Neither Solana, Zcash, or Bitcoin can win on their own, we must work together. And NEAR is how."
Mert will also join the judging panel for the upcoming NEAR Hackathon, a two-week build sprint on NEAR's stack, including NEAR Intents and NEAR AI Cloud. Development runs November 1 to 14, with results announced by November 18. Mert judges alongside Illia Polosukhin; Eddy Lazzarin of a16z crypto; Avichal Garg of Electric Capital; Kain Warwick of Synthetix and Infinex; Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly; and Stepan Gershuni of cyber•Fund, with Claude Code and Codex reviewing as AI judges.
NEAR is building where markets across every chain meet, for people and AI agents alike, with confidentiality as a core primitive. NEAR Intents has processed more than $33 billion in all-time volume, with confidential TVL now over $160 million. near.com is confidential by default. Users trade across chains from an account they control and keep their positions and history to themselves.
Mert has argued that NEAR is a crucial component of this cycle's progress, his vision for a privacy renaissance is aligned with NEAR Intents' vision of universal, private markets. NEAR is excited to welcome him to the Foundation. For more information about NEAR Foundation, please visit https://near.foundation/.
Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz are available for interview on request
About NEAR:
NEAR is the open infrastructure powering the agent economy. NEAR's vertically integrated stack connects NEAR Intents for universal liquidity, NEAR AI for confidential and verifiable AI, and sharded blockchain infrastructure for 1M+ TPS scalability. near.com is NEAR's unified front-end: one account, 35+ chains, and confidential cross-chain swaps, perps, RWAs, and earn. With $30B+ in cross-chain volume and AI integrations with Abound, Brave Nightly, the Government of Bermuda, OpenMind, Venice AI, and more, NEAR is where agents transact. Learn more at https://www.near.org/.
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