Everclear x NEAR's Cross‑Chain Clearing, Sub‑Cent Global Payments, Circle Gateway for Unified USDC, and AA Afterhours S2

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We are welcoming you to our weekly digest! Here, we discuss the latest trends and advancements in account abstraction, chain abstraction and everything related, as well as bring some insights from Etherspot’s kitchen.

The latest news we’ll cover:

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Everclear x NEAR Foundation to Scale Cross‑Chain Clearing

NEAR Foundation has made a strategic investment in Everclear, a protocol designed for cross‑chain clearing and settlement of stablecoins and other digital assets. This collaboration includes the deployment of solver capital to unlock liquidity and support Everclear's growing volume needs.

The partnership will integrate Everclear with NEAR's technology stack, primarily its "Intents" and Chain Abstraction infrastructure. This integration is intended to enable near‑instant, low‑fee liquidity rebalancing across networks and automation of settlement flows without dependence on centralized exchanges.

Everclear has recently surpassed $1 billion in total transaction volume and supports operations across more than 23 chains, including Solana. The protocol reportedly processes transactions of up to $5 million with minimal fees. It has achieved over 111% growth in Q2 2025, representing more than 50‑fold expansion since January.

NEAR co‑founder Illia Polosukhin highlighted the shared goal of unifying liquidity across human and AI-driven users, emphasizing Everclear's role in NEAR's intent‑based interoperability vision. Everclear CEO Dima Khanarin stated that the collaboration aims to scale Everclear's monthly volume to billions, anticipating that the cross‑chain clearing market could exceed $1 trillion in the near term.

Sub‑Cent Fees Power Global On‑Chain Payments

According to this X post, real-world applications of sub-cent blockchain fees are no longer theoretical. Thanks to roll-ups and ERC‑4337-powered smart wallets, on‑chain payments are now faster and cheaper than ever, already benefiting users from Nairobi to Stuttgart.

Optimism's Isthmus upgrade reduced calldata overhead by ~60%, Arbitrum Nitro compresses standard transfers to ~$0.02, and zkSync's Airbender zkVM enables block finality in 35 seconds, pushing costs below half a cent. Layer-2s provide the infrastructure, while account abstraction eliminates signature prompts and gas hassles via paymasters.

These advancements aren't just technical. A Nairobi driver receives USDC tips nightly with gas fees below $0.01. A Filipino freelancer skips Western Union by invoicing in stablecoins, and in Stuttgart, Bosch IoT sensors settle rewards via on‑chain DePIN protocols with sub-cent latency.

Looking ahead, machine-to-machine payments are gaining ground. Haust Turbo enables finality in under a second, powering devices like drones and EV chargers to transact autonomously. Peaq's DePIN network already supports over 850K such devices. Regulatory clarity is also advancing: the U.S. GENIUS Act explicitly approves roll-up use for "payment stablecoins," launching pilots with Shopify and Uber.

While challenges like sequencer centralisation and bridge risks remain, innovations like danksharding and zk accelerators continue to push costs downward.

Circle's Gateway for Unified Cross-Chain USDC Balances

Circle introduced Circle Gateway, a new infrastructure primitive that enables instant access to a unified USDC balance across chains. Now live on testnet for Ethereum, Base, and Avalanche, the system promises sub-500ms access times without bridges, delays, or liquidity fragmentation.

Circle Gateway addresses a key friction in Web3 UX: fragmented capital across chains. Instead of prepositioning funds or relying on cross-chain bridges, users and developers can now access their entire USDC balance seamlessly across supported networks. This allows for faster liquidity deployment, reduced capital requirements, and consistent application logic across chains.

Key features include instant access (<500ms) to cross-chain USDC, non-custodial control, users sign every transfer themselves, and trustless withdrawals. The design supports applications that want to serve users on multiple chains with a single integration while maintaining asset sovereignty and interoperability.

The company also acknowledged the foundational work of several chain abstraction projects that contributed to the design of Gateway, including Across Protocol, OneBalance, Rhinestone, and Socket. These systems helped shape the technical and conceptual framework that Circle adopted for cross-chain liquidity provisioning.

AA Afterhours S2 to Break Down ERC-4337 Smart Wallet Trends

ERC4337's AA Afterhours kicked off its second season with Kofi, a data scientist and creator of Bundlebear, an open-source dashboard tracking ERC-4337 adoption. The episode dives into how smart wallets differ from EOAs and what the data reveals about usage, infrastructure, and authentication trends.

Kofi explains that unlike EOAs, ERC-4337 wallets create user operations, which are bundled and submitted to an entry point. Analysing them requires identifying accounts, apps, and labeling infrastructure like bundlers and paymasters. Bundlebear doesn't just show raw data - it provides human-readable insights into which accounts, apps, and infra players are actually useful or spammy.

He highlights growing demand from developers for actionable intelligence: what infra has market share, how much paymasters are spending, and which apps are leading in retention. According to Bundlebear's dataset, passkeys - biometric authentication stored in secure enclaves - are gaining popularity over traditional seed phrases, hinting at better UX in smart wallet onboarding.

Kofi also notes the ecosystem's collaboration: many teams willingly share wallet labels, helping Bundlebear become a community-led source of truth, like an L2Beat or DeFiLlama, but for smart accounts. This transparency enables better capital and dev resource allocation across the ecosystem.

However, Kofi warns of volatility. Usage spikes around airdrops, but retention remains a concern. What the space needs now is a cohort of sticky apps that drive recurring smart account activity, not just temporary metrics boosts.

Ultimately, Kofi sees Bundlebear's role as a decision-making compass for ERC‑4337 teams, highlighting what's real, what's sustainable, and where the ecosystem should double down.

Watch the full episode here.