Talos Becomes First Institutional Trading Platform to Connect Liquidity from a Solver Network

NEW YORK, November 9, 2026—Talos, the premier provider of institutional digital asset infrastructure, technology and data supporting the full investment lifecycle, today announced an integration with NEAR Intents, a cross-chain liquidity network. Institutional clients can now request quotes and execute swaps against the NEAR Intents solver network using the same request-for-quote workflow they already use for spot blocks, over-the-counter options and ETF creation and redemption, with assets signed from their existing custody relationships.

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have played an increasingly important role in spot trading: Monthly DEX spot volume on Ethereum grew to over $26 billion in October 2026, according to Talos data. Sourcing liquidity onchain has historically required a desk to run a second operating model alongside its primary one: separate custody arrangements, separate counterparty exposure, wallet and gas token management, plus a reconciliation process disconnected from the firm's existing books. For a desk with an established control framework, the liquidity on offer has rarely justified standing up a parallel process to reach it.

How NEAR Intents solver liquidity is sourced

NEAR Intents operates on a competitive quoting model rather than a liquidity pool. A client submits a request to swap one asset for another. A network of liquidity providers, called solvers, then bids to fill it. To win the flow, a solver has to price better than the others bidding on the same order, and it can source inventory across more than 30 blockchains and centralized venues internationally. The solver carries its own inventory risk. The NEAR Intents infrastructure handles routing and cross-chain mechanics. The client sees a price and a fill.

Per the NEAR Intents public explorer, the network has settled approximately $37 billion in cumulative volume since its inception, including roughly $4.8 billion over the past month.¹ NEAR reports swap settlement typically in under one second and network fees below one cent.

How Talos handles intents

An intent is a signed message rather than an instruction to a venue. Talos built a delegated signing service to support the unique key structure this necessitates. On quote acceptance, Talos software constructs the intents message, routes it to the client's custodian for approval and signature, and submits the intent to NEAR to be acted on by a solver. The signing layer is custodian-agnostic, and Talos is looking forward to rolling this out to a wide range of custodians.

NEAR Intents settles swaps through a verifier contract designed so that either every leg completes or none does. Bridging and gas management are handled by the NEAR Intents infrastructure: the desk does not need to manage them separately.

Positions established through NEAR Intents appear alongside the rest of a client's book. Onchain balances, staked and delegated positions and holdings across custodians and centralized venues consolidate into one portfolio view, so a new venue does not introduce a separate reconciliation process.

“This is what institutional access to DeFi should look like: no new custody, no new workflow, and competitive cross-chain pricing on every order,” said Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Defuse Labs, developer of NEAR Intents. “Talos connects some of the largest trading desks in digital assets. NEAR Intents is now the route that brings their flow onchain, into the markets and liquidity the rest of DeFi runs on.”

“Talos clients asked for access to solver-sourced liquidity without standing up a second operating model to reach it,” said Daniel Packham, VP and Head of Provider Network at Talos. “Competitive quoting is becoming a real source of institutional liquidity, and it now reaches clients through the same Talos request-for-quote workflow they use for spot blocks, options and ETF creations and redemptions.”

The institutional venue set in digital assets is expanding rapidly. Each new execution paradigm, whether an onchain perpetual futures venue, a competitive quoting network or a tokenized settlement rail, arrives with its own mechanics and its own demands on custody, signing and reconciliation. Talos and partners like NEAR are working to absorb those mechanics into a single workflow.

Talos clients can request API access at partners.near-intents.org. For fee schedules and onboarding, contact partnerships@defuse.org.

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 $36B+ 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 www.near.org.

About Talos

‍Talos provides institutional-grade technology and data that supports the full digital asset investment lifecycle, including liquidity sourcing, price discovery, trading, settlement and portfolio management. Engineered by a team with unmatched experience building institutional trading, portfolio and data systems, the Talos platform connects institutions to key providers in the digital asset ecosystem – exchanges, OTC desks, prime brokers, lenders, custodians and more – through a single interface. For more information, visit www.talos.com.

^{Disclaimer: Talos offers software-as-a-service products that provide connectivity tools for institutional clients. Talos does not provide clients with any pre-negotiated arrangements with liquidity providers or other parties. Clients are required to independently negotiate arrangements with liquidity providers and other parties bilaterally. Talos is not party to any of these arrangements. Services and venues may not be available in all jurisdictions.}

^{1 Source: https://dune.com/near/near-intents}

Media contact
media@talos.com