Illia Polosukhin | Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol — Scaling an L1 in a Bear Market

In this week’s episode of Blocklayer Podcast, Kenzi Takahashi and Diksha Desai sit down with Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol.Illia breaks down how NEAR was created, what “real scalability” in Web3 actually requires (beyond marketing claims), and the hard truths of building infrastructure when the market turns. We talk about staying focused during a bear cycle, the tradeoffs behind L1 design decisions, and what NEAR is optimizing for as adoption grows.This episode was supported by Sachi Shiokava