NEAR has added a new job posting to its Agent Market for a Local Services Quote Agent, an AI agent designed to contact local providers, collect responses and return side-by-side comparisons of price and availability.

The listing appeared on the official NEAR DevHub channel and was also amplified by the project’s official social accounts. According to the post, the builder who takes on the job would keep ownership of the agent and retain the revenue it generates.

The job description frames the agent as a tool for gathering real quotes from local services rather than a general chatbot. It would reach out to providers, log the replies and organize the results so users can compare options more easily.

Builder-owned agents remain central to the marketplace pitch

NEAR has positioned the Agent Market around the idea that developers can publish agents, set their terms and keep ownership after the job closes. In the official posts, the company said builders keep the agent and can earn when it is hired.

The job board format also suggests a more structured approach to AI agent development, with specific tasks posted for builders to bid on. In this case, the task centers on a practical consumer workflow: collecting quotes from local providers and presenting them in a usable format.

NEAR did not say when the Local Services Quote Agent will be completed or who will take the job. The posting does, however, show that the Agent Market is actively listing new work and pushing the marketplace model as part of its product rollout.

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Monad said it has reached 1 billion transactions on its network, a milestone the project highlighted in an official post on X. The timeframe attached to the claim — 11 months — is part of the headline circulating with the update, but the post itself does not clearly spell out that period.

we really got 1 billion transactions on testnet before GTA 6 pic.twitter.com/bYrCHovN6i

— Monad (@monad) April 18, 2025

The figure points to activity on Monad’s testnet rather than mainnet. That distinction matters: a testnet can show developer and user engagement, but it does not by itself prove production usage or commercial adoption.

Monad has used recent public appearances and posts to emphasize network activity and developer interest around its ecosystem. Still, the transaction total should be read as a project-reported milestone, not as evidence on its own of demand, revenue or sustained onchain usage.

For readers following the chain, the main takeaway is narrow but concrete: Monad is claiming a large transaction count on its test environment, and the project is presenting it as a sign of momentum. The post does not provide additional breakdowns in the headline claim, such as the mix of user transactions, automated activity or the exact measurement method behind the total.

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Aptos said its Encrypted Mempool is now live on mainnet, giving users the option to encrypt transaction details before block ordering is finalized. The company said the feature is designed to reduce maximal extractable value, or MEV, which can include practices such as front-running and sandwich attacks.

In an official blog post, Aptos described the rollout as an opt-in feature at the transaction level. The network said the payload is encrypted on the client side, ordered while still encrypted, and only decrypted by validators after block finalization.

The company’s official account and Aptos Labs also confirmed the mainnet launch on X, with the Labs post adding that encryption happens before submission and that decryption takes place only after block ordering is complete. That sequence is intended to keep transaction contents hidden during the period when they could otherwise be observed and used for MEV extraction.

Opt-in design keeps the feature at the transaction level

Aptos framed the launch as a user choice rather than a default network setting. According to the company, Encrypted Mempool can be enabled per transaction, allowing users to decide when they want that added layer of protection.

The mainnet launch means the feature is no longer just a technical concept or test-stage mechanism. It is now part of the live Aptos network, with the practical effect depending on whether users choose to activate it for individual transactions.

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