ZOLANEAR

ZOLANEAR is the project identity behind ShadeLink, a verifiable cross-chain automation platform built during the Zypherpunk privacy hackathon in December 2025. The project won the NEAR Protocol bounty ($5,000 USD) at that event and was submitted by a single developer, Jakub Pawlak. ShadeLink is designed to let users define conditional, trustless workflows across multiple blockchains — specifically NEAR Protocol, Solana, Zcash, and Ethereum — without surrendering custody of their private keys to any centralized service.

The Problem ShadeLink Addresses

Moving assets across chains today requires switching wallets, manually initiating bridge transactions, waiting for finality, and then executing follow-up actions on the destination chain. Users who want to deploy idle capital from NEAR into a Solana lending market, for example, must manage multiple steps across different interfaces. Centralized bots that automate this process require users to hand over private keys, introducing significant custodial risk.

ShadeLink targets this friction directly: a user creates a "Link" — a parameterized automation rule — and the platform executes the full workflow automatically once conditions are satisfied, all without ever holding or exposing the user's signing keys.

How It Works

ShadeLink's automation logic runs inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) powered by Intel SGX via Phala Network. TEEs provide hardware-level isolation: code executing inside the enclave cannot be tampered with, and its outputs can be cryptographically verified by third parties. This means users can confirm that ShadeLink's automation logic ran exactly as specified, without trusting the operator.

Transaction signing is handled through Multi-Party Computation (MPC), which distributes the signing process so no single party ever holds a complete private key. The platform creates unique derived wallet addresses for each user, ensuring that automated transactions cannot be linked to the user's primary on-chain identity or mixed with other users' funds.

The bridging layer between chains is built on NEAR Intents, NEAR Protocol's chain-abstraction infrastructure. NEAR Intents allow assets on one chain to be committed as intents that resolve across any supported destination chain. ShadeLink monitors for confirmation that intent-bridged funds have arrived on the destination chain and immediately triggers the follow-up action — a lending deposit, a swap, a collateral top-up — without requiring user interaction.

The system also supports relayers and meta-transactions for gas sponsorship, meaning users do not need to hold native gas tokens on the destination chain to complete an automated transaction.

Key Features

Shielded Yield Loops: Users can route privacy-enabled assets such as Zcash (ZEC) through DeFi protocols without linking their source wallets to the destination activity. ZEC is bridged via NEAR Intents into a fresh, one-time-use Solana wallet that has no on-chain association with the user's primary addresses, then deposited into a yield protocol.

Cross-Chain Yield Optimization: Capital held idle on NEAR can be automatically deployed into higher-yield opportunities on Solana. The demonstrated example routes NEAR stablecoins into Kamino Finance's lending markets on Solana, with ShadeLink handling bridging, finality detection, and deposit execution as a single automated workflow.

Just-In-Time Liquidity: Users with collateralized positions in Solana DeFi protocols can set up emergency liquidity Links that automatically bridge additional collateral from another chain if their health factor approaches a liquidation threshold.

Intent-Based Swaps: ShadeLink can automate asset purchases on chains the user does not natively hold tokens on. The Devfolio submission demonstrated purchasing the Solana-native ZCAT memecoin from NEAR-held funds entirely through automated intent execution.

Supported Networks and Integrations

ShadeLink currently supports four chains: NEAR Protocol, Solana, Zcash, and Ethereum. On the Solana side, demonstrated integrations include Kamino Finance for lending and Jupiter DEX for token swaps. The NEAR Protocol integration is primary, with NEAR Intents serving as the chain abstraction and bridging mechanism throughout the system. Zcash support introduces private asset bridging, though the project notes that Zcash intent transactions are slower due to limitations in programmatic transaction hash availability during development.

Security Model

ShadeLink's security rests on three pillars. First, the automation logic is non-custodial: user private keys are never transmitted to or stored by the platform. Second, TEE-based execution provides verifiable computation — the integrity of the automation code can be cryptographically attested. Third, per-user derived addresses prevent fund mixing and limit the on-chain traceability of automated actions back to the user's primary identity.

The project follows NEP-413 standards for user signing authority on the NEAR side. As of the December 2025 hackathon submission, the Shade Agent ran on NEAR testnet without Phala attestation active, meaning production-level TEE attestation had not yet been deployed. No independent third-party audit of the codebase has been publicly reported.

Team and Status

ShadeLink was built as a solo project by Jakub Pawlak, a developer operating under the handle @dawgster. The project website is live at zolanear.xyz and a demo application is accessible at zolanear.up.railway.app. The project's Twitter account (@Zolanear_) has not published recent activity. The GitHub repository listed in the Devfolio submission was not publicly accessible at the time of writing.

ZOLANEAR/ShadeLink occupies an emerging niche in Solana's expanding cross-chain privacy infrastructure: it connects NEAR's chain-abstraction capabilities with Solana's DeFi depth, using privacy-preserving execution to do so without custodial risk. As both NEAR Intents and Solana's confidential transaction infrastructure mature, the pattern ShadeLink introduced — TEE-verified, MPC-signed, intent-driven automation — represents a credible architectural direction for private cross-chain DeFi.