NEAR Protocol Adds Helius CEO Mert to Foundation Council

The NEAR Foundation has appointed Mert Mumtaz, co founder and chief executive officer of Solana infrastructure provider Helius, to its governing council. The appointment brings one of the most vocal builder advocates in crypto into a governance role on an alternative Layer 1 network, signaling closer philosophical and technical ties across competing ecosystems.

Mumtaz built a prominent profile in the crypto sector by developing developer tooling and RPC infrastructure for SOL, while frequently defending decentralized architecture and practical user experience on social platforms. His addition to the NEAR Foundation Council comes as NEAR Protocol accelerates its strategic pivot toward chain abstraction and user owned artificial intelligence systems.

The council oversees treasury allocation, core development grants, and ecosystem strategy for the NEAR blockchain. Members of the leadership team stated that bringing in an executive with deep roots in high throughput infrastructure will improve their execution speed. Mumtaz is expected to advise on developer acquisition, validator economics, and data availability scaling, areas where Solana infrastructure has historically excelled.

The appointment highlights an increasingly collaborative dynamic among Layer 1 networks in 2026. Rather than treating alternative chains purely as zero sum rivals, foundations are trading expertise to address shared bottlenecks in state management and execution. NEAR has spent the last year refining its fast finality and account aggregation technology, while Helius has optimized real time transaction pipelines.

Market participants greeted the news with curiosity regarding cross chain integrations between NEAR and Solana applications. While Mumtaz remains fully committed to his operational duties at Helius, his council seat provides NEAR Protocol with valuable input from one of the most active engineering leaders in the modern crypto ecosystem.