A Solana infrastructure founder now sits on NEAR's governing council
Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz has joined the NEAR Foundation Council, putting a Solana infrastructure founder on a rival network's oversight body. NEAR has promised to repay about $3.8 million lost to an October 1 deposit bug, Bankless reported.
The Investor · Invest desk
NEAR lost about $3.8M to an Oct 1 deposit-system bug and says it will fully repay users. NEAR Intents has processed over $33B in all-time volume. Roughly one dollar was lost per $8,700 moved, at most about 0.0115% of that volume.
| Figure | Value | Note | Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lost to an Oct 1 deposit-system bug, about | $3,800,000 | 17 | |
| NEAR Intents all-time volume, over | $33,000,000,000 | Swaps across chains without bridges | 16 |
| Moved per dollar lost, roughly | $8,700 | Loss at most about 0.0115% of volume | 14 |
What happened
- Mumtaz sits alongside NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Mónica on the Council.
- NEAR Intents lets users swap across blockchains without managing bridges and, according to Bankless, has processed over $33 billion in all-time volume.
- Crypto Briefing reports that Helius has already helped enable integrations bringing NEAR into the Solana environment, through products such as Orb Markets.
- Mumtaz will also judge NEAR's hackathon, which runs November 1 to 14.
Why it matters
- exposure Mumtaz runs a business closely tied to Solana while sitting on NEAR's oversight body, and Crypto Briefing says the Foundation's handling of that overlap will matter for community trust.
- cost The team has promised full repayment, so the roughly $3.8 million comes out of whatever budget NEAR assigns, and that money is unavailable for other ecosystem work.
- contradiction Bankless stresses that Mumtaz will help guide product strategy, while Crypto Briefing describes a Council that oversees, separate from the executives who run operations, so the seat's reach is described two ways.
The sources show a relationship that predates the seat. Crypto Briefing reports that Mumtaz had already praised NEAR's technical team in public, even comparing its strengths favorably with Solana's [6], and Bankless quotes him calling NEAR "the market of markets" [3] and saying "If Solana is one continent... then NEAR is the silk road." [4] We think the defensible reading is that NEAR gave a title to a booster it already had.
The sources do not show that NEAR sought him out, and neither source ties the seat to NEAR Intents or to the October 1 bug. Bankless puts the appointment, the Intents volume and the loss in one summary [1][16][17].
The bug is small beside the product it hit. Set $3.8 million against more than $33 billion of all-time volume and the loss is at most 0.0115%, or roughly one dollar for every $8,700 moved [14]. The same loss is 40% of the $9.5 million Series A that Helius raised [15]. Neither ratio says how much sat in the deposit system on October 1, because the volume figure is cumulative.
One reading is distribution: Helius sells RPC services and tooling for Solana [9], so its CEO is a route to Solana developers, and we would expect NEAR to want that for a product that swaps across chains. A second is privacy. Bankless describes NEAR expanding into private onchain markets [7], Helius bought Light Protocol to strengthen its privacy features [11], and Crypto Briefing lists privacy, developer tooling and cross-chain capability as priorities for both ecosystems [18]. A third is goodwill, with no product consequence at all.
We lean to privacy first and distribution second, because both sources raise privacy and only Bankless mentions Intents. The counter-thesis is that Intents is where the $33 billion is [16], and a Council seat costs NEAR little to hand out.
We would call the lean wrong if the next NEAR-related release from Helius is an Intents integration with no privacy component. The same goes if the projects in the hackathon Mumtaz will judge [8] cluster around cross-chain swaps with no privacy angle.
What to watch
- Whether Helius ships NEAR-related products beyond Orb Markets, and whether they are Intents integrations or build on Light Protocol's privacy technology.
- Whether NEAR completes the repayment of the $3.8 million deposit-bug loss and says which budget funds it.
- Whether the NEAR Foundation publishes how the Council handles Mumtaz's Solana ties, and what the November 1-14 hackathon projects he judges are built around.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Mert Mumtaz, CEO and co-founder of Helius, has joined the NEAR Foundation Council.
- [2]
Mumtaz will sit alongside NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Mónica on the Council.
- [3]
Mumtaz has called NEAR "the market of markets," a neutral layer connecting chains like Solana, Zcash, and AI networks.
- [4]
Mumtaz said: "If Solana is one continent... then NEAR is the silk road."
- [5]
Helius has helped enable integrations that bring NEAR into the Solana environment through products such as Orb Markets.
- [6]
Mumtaz has publicly praised NEAR's technical team, even comparing its strengths favorably with Solana's.
- [7]
Mumtaz will help guide NEAR's product strategy, ecosystem growth, and governance as the network expands into private onchain markets.
- [8]
Mumtaz will also judge NEAR's November 1-14 hackathon.
- [9]
Helius sells high-performance RPC services and related tooling for the Solana network.
- [10]
Helius raised $9.5 million in a Series A round.
- [11]
Helius acquired Light Protocol, a deal aimed at strengthening privacy features across Helius's product lineup.
- [12]
Mumtaz runs a company whose business is closely tied to Solana and now sits on the oversight body of a separate ecosystem; Crypto Briefing says how the NEAR Foundation handles any overlap will matter for community trust.
- [13]
The Council oversees the foundation and signs off on its most consequential decisions; it is an oversight body separate from the foundation's executive team, which runs the day-to-day operation.
- [14]
The $3.8M loss is at most about 0.0115% of NEAR Intents' all-time volume of over $33B, or roughly one dollar lost per $8,700 moved.
- [15]
The $3.8M NEAR loss equals 40% of the $9.5M Series A Helius raised.
- [16]
NEAR Intents, which lets users swap across blockchains without managing bridges, has processed over $33B in all-time volume.
- [17]
NEAR lost about $3.8M to a deposit-system bug on Oct 1, which the team patched, and it says it will fully repay users.
- [18]
The appointment lands as both ecosystems work on three overlapping priorities: on-chain privacy, developer tooling, and cross-chain capability.
- [19]
Crypto Briefing says to track further cross-chain products linking NEAR and Solana, privacy initiatives drawing on Light Protocol's technology, and whether Helius expands its NEAR-related offerings beyond tools like Orb Markets.
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Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- bankless.comHelius CEO Mert Mumtaz Joins NEAR Foundation Council
1 article · October 15, 2026
- cryptobriefing.comNEAR Foundation adds Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz to its Council
1 article · October 15, 2026
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Topics
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- NEAR IntentsFollow
- Illia PolosukhinFollow
- Diogo MónicaFollow
- Mert MumtazFollow
- NEAR ProtocolFollow
- Near FoundationFollow
- HeliusFollow
- Light ProtocolFollow
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