DFINITY Founder Dominic Williams Accuses NEAR Intents of Using Proprietary Cryptography

DFINITY founder Dominic Williams has accused NEAR Intents of using DFINITY’s proprietary cryptographic technology. According to Foresight News, Williams said his investigation found that a key component of NEAR Intents uses ECDSA additive key derivation and presigning algorithms described in a DFINITY paper published in 2022.Williams said the algorithms were developed by DFINITY for integrating the Internet Computer with Ethereum. They allow multiple computers to generate a public key and sign transactions without any single node holding the full private key, he said. Williams also alleged that NEAR hired a person dismissed by DFINITY in the summer of 2021 to lead related work and deployed the algorithms across about eight servers.Williams said NEAR’s Chain Abstraction and Intents features rely on the technology for cross-chain asset custody and swaps. He alleged that the system is not truly decentralized and carries a backdoor risk.He also said NEAR recently attempted on GitHub to downgrade the algorithm to a slower version. Williams said Confidential Key Derivation, released in 2025, has principles similar to DFINITY’s vetKeys technology from 2023. He said DFINITY’s work is licensed only for use with the Internet Computer, arguing that NEAR’s use raises legal issues, and added that the technology could have been shared through fair cooperation if the parties had negotiated in advance.