In this round of public chain market rotation, the veteran Layer1 project NEAR has emerged from an independent and strong market trend, becoming one of the mainstream assets with the highest market attention. As of now, NEAR has quoted $2.71, with a monthly increase of over 100%, achieving a doubling of the price. Why has NEAR, which once faded out of mainstream view, been able to make a strong breakthrough in the short term? Behind the fading of early public chain popularity and the counter trend outbreak, there is a deep resonance of four core narratives: the landing of privacy transactions, dynamic sharding upgrades, deep cultivation of AI ecology, and continuous influx of institutional funds, which has opened up a new valuation space for it.

1、 Privacy transactions have been fully implemented, becoming the default core requirement for users

The privacy track is the core trigger for the outbreak of the NEAR market this round. On March 31st, NEAR officially launched its confidential trading function. Less than two months after its launch, privacy trading has evolved from a single function to a core product of the platform, completely changing the ecological trading structure. The latest official data shows that in the past 30 days, the NEAR privacy transaction volume reached $87 million, the public transaction volume was $122 million, and the total transaction volume of the entire network was $209 million. The proportion of privacy transactions was as high as 41.63%, approaching half of the total transaction volume of the entire network.

This set of data sends a strong market signal: privacy protection is no longer a niche demand in the encryption market, but a necessity for users. Traditional on chain trading has obvious shortcomings, as wallet balances, asset paths, trading timing, counterparty information, and trading intentions are fully disclosed and easily captured by on chain analysis tools, posing great trading risks to ordinary users, market makers, and institutional investors. The core mechanism of "confidential intent" created by NEAR completely solves this pain point.

This mechanism can complete cross chain transaction execution in a restricted visibility environment before transaction settlement. Users do not need to rely on third-party privacy tools or build complex bridging paths to automatically achieve transaction privacy protection, greatly reducing the threshold for privacy transactions. Compared to other privacy solutions in the industry, NEAR's privacy capabilities are deeply integrated into the default transaction process, balancing convenience and security. It is not only suitable for ordinary users, but also meets the privacy needs of developers and institutional traders, giving rise to a new on chain business paradigm.

Market users generally evaluate that when nearly half of the platform's transactions actively enable privacy protection, it means that privacy is no longer an additional function, but the core color of NEAR's product system, and it is also its core differentiation advantage compared to other public chains.

2、 Dynamic sharding upgrade, unlocking unlimited horizontal expansion capability

While the privacy narrative continues to ferment, the heavyweight upgrade of NEAR's underlying technology provides solid fundamental support for the market. On May 21st, NEAR officially announced that it will soon launch the Dynamic Reshardening feature as a core upgrade to the Q2 2026 core protocol 2.13 version, completely filling the gaps in traditional sharding technology and fulfilling the high scalability vision of the project at its inception.

Previously, although NEAR was equipped with the Nightshade sharding architecture, the entire sharding expansion process relied on manual operation. The entire process, from sharding proposals, protocol upgrades, validator coordination, community voting to network wide updates, takes weeks or even months and cannot adapt to the rapid fluctuations in market demand. The new dynamic sharding mechanism has achieved disruptive innovation. The system can automatically monitor core indicators such as network congestion, user increment, status data growth, TPS pressure, etc., and automatically split and add shards according to business needs. The entire process does not require manual intervention or protocol hard upgrades, truly realizing the automatic horizontal expansion of blockchain.

Based on years of technological iteration, the NEAR sharding system has completed multiple leapfrog upgrades: from an initial sharding of the main network in 2020, gradually iterating to 9 sharding by 2025, with the addition of private privacy sharding layout, the network carrying capacity continues to improve. Based on the million TPS optimization and sharded smart contract technology completed by 2025, NEAR can currently stably support the efficient operation of 70 shards, with an overall network throughput 10 times higher than the original system, and performance far exceeding traditional mainstream payment networks such as Visa.

In addition, the 2.13 version upgrade will also incorporate post quantum encryption capabilities to resist the risk of traditional encryption algorithms being cracked by future quantum computers, and to build a strong network security barrier from the bottom, providing protection for long-term large-scale commercialization.

3、 Deeply cultivating the integration of AI and Web3, seizing the core track of AI agency economy

Different from most popular public chains that follow the trend, NEAR is one of the few leading Layer1 projects in the industry that has long been deeply involved in AI infrastructure and anchored in AI agency economy. Its unique AI narrative has become the core incremental logic for its valuation uplift.

NEAR's AI genes have natural advantages, and project co-founder Illia Polosukhin is a co-author of the foundational paper "Attention Is All You Need" on generative AI. She has worked at Google and is deeply involved in the core AI community. The top-notch founding team background enables NEAR to have far superior technical knowledge and industry resources in the AI+blockchain integration track compared to its peers.

At the infrastructure level, NEAR officially launched the main network NEAR Intents layer in October 2024, which serves as the core foundation of the chain abstraction architecture and connects seamless value circulation channels for multi chain assets, AI agents, and on chain services. In May 2025, NEAR Intents will complete a functional upgrade, supporting users to directly exchange over a hundred types of tokens into privacy asset ZEC through a single transaction, simplifying complex cross chain routing, reducing the threshold for multi chain privacy interaction, and accurately adapting to the core needs of users for privacy assets and minimalist operations.

At the terminal product level, NEAR has established a complete AI product matrix: Near.ai integrates AI, blockchain, and AI Agent ecosystems to create a multi chain AI interaction portal, equipped with device side anonymity technology, and integrated with mainstream big models such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc., to avoid data leakage risks in enterprise AI work; Near.com is creating an AI powered Web3 super portal that significantly reduces the threshold for blockchain usage, allowing ordinary users to operate on chain services as conveniently as using Web2 products.

With the acceleration of the commercialization process of AI agents, NEAR, which has native privacy attributes, ultra-high scalability, and minimalist interactive experience, is gradually becoming the core settlement infrastructure of AI agent economy and the core target of capital market layout AI+Web3 track.

4、 Compliance agency funds continue to flow in, and the valuation system is comprehensively reshaped

At the same time as technological iteration and ecological implementation, the continuous increase in compliance institution funds has provided stable upward support for the NEAR market, completely breaking away from the purely speculative nature of individual investors.

In July 2025, Bitwise NEAR pledged ETP officially landed on the Xetra Exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, providing a compliant and convenient NEAR configuration channel for global institutional investors. This product not only supports institutions to allocate NEAR assets like buying stocks, but also generates an annualized return of about 5.5% through pledging, combined with daily liquidity protection from the exchange, possessing the triple advantages of allocation, appreciation, and circulation.

The latest data from May 2025 shows that within a single week, the net inflow of Bitwise NEAR pledged ETP funds to European investors reached $3 million, and the product asset management scale has exceeded $36 million. Unlike short-term speculation by individual investors, this batch of funds comes from compliant institutional channels, representing traditional capital's long-term recognition of NEAR technology implementation, ecological progress, and track value.

Market analysis indicates that the continuous influx of institutional funds will completely rewrite NEAR's valuation logic. Previously, the value of NEAR was underestimated for a long time, but with the continuous implementation of AI chain abstraction, privacy transactions, and underlying expansion, coupled with the continuous layout of compliance funds, the market is re pricing the long-term ecological value of NEAR.

5、 Prediction of future market trends: Valuation space under multiple scenarios

Under the resonance of the four core narratives, NEAR's market attention and valuation expectations continue to rise, and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes ranks NEAR alongside HYPE and ZEC as the core layout of counterfeit assets. Based on ecological progress and market environment, NEAR's future market can be divided into three scenarios.

In an optimistic scenario, if the overall sentiment of the cryptocurrency market improves, NEAR continues to attract developers to settle in, and the scale of AI ecology and privacy transactions steadily increases. With the advantages of technological iteration and narrative, NEAR prices are expected to break through the range of volatility, with an upward target range of $3.5-5.

In a neutral scenario, if there is no significant catalyst in the macro market and ecological progress steadily advances, NEAR will enter the valuation digestion stage, with a high probability of fluctuating and consolidating in the range of 2-3 US dollars, waiting for a new round of fundamental catalysts to land and start a second breakthrough.

In a pessimistic scenario, if the popularity of the AI track fades and the overall cryptocurrency market rebounds, NEAR will rely on core support to stabilize and fall back, with a key support range of 1.5-1.7 US dollars and strong defensive resilience.

Conclusion

From a former silent player in the public chain track to a strong leader that has doubled within the month, NEAR's comeback is not a short-term market hype, but the result of long-term technological accumulation and deep ecological cultivation. Privacy transactions have become a barrier to differentiated products, dynamic sharding solves the pain points of underlying expansion, AI+Web3 integration seizes the future track, and compliance agency funding continues to support, forming a closed loop of the four core logics.

With the timely implementation of core upgrades such as dynamic sharding and post quantum encryption in Q2 2026, coupled with the continuous explosion of AI proxy economy, NEAR has completely overcome the internal competition of traditional public chains and opened a new valuation upward cycle with its unique narrative of "privacy+high performance+AI integration".