Summary
- NEAR's value increased by 28% in just 24 hours, and nearly 45% over the week, leading altcoin performance.
- This surge follows the introduction of three significant upgrades: confidential treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic scaling.
- Despite recent altcoin gains, many users estimate only a 12% chance of an "altseason" occurring by July, reflecting ongoing cautious sentiment.
NEAR Protocol’s token experienced a remarkable 28% increase within a 24-hour period, contributing to a total weekly rise of almost 45%, driven by a series of announcements related to privacy, AI, and scalability that were made between May 20 and May 22.
This price surge surpasses gains from Worldcoin's 12% and Venice Token's 8% during the same timeframe, according to data from CoinGecko. This uptick occurs despite Bitcoin's decline from approximately $82,000 to $77,000 over the past week.
The recent price movement is partially attributed to a shift in capital following months where Bitcoin dominated liquidity, as noted by Sammi Li, CEO of crypto exchange Ju.com. According to Li, NEAR has emerged as "one of the more obvious beneficiaries" as funds transition into larger-cap altcoins, emphasizing the project's established focus on AI, which aligns with market demand for AI-related investments.
Overview of NEAR Protocol Upgrades
This price increase is a result of a strategic push involving three key developments: confidential on-chain treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic network scaling, positioning NEAR as a potential foundation for AI agents and confidential financial transactions.
On Wednesday, Trezu introduced Confidential Treasuries, a service that provides private on-chain multisig, payroll, balance management, and cross-chain payments for over 35 chains. This offering utilizes NEAR's private sharding and Intents infrastructure. According to NEAR's official communication, $68 million has been transferred confidentially from near.com in the last month.
Additionally, NEAR AI launched automatic anonymization for personally identifiable information (PII) in prompts sent to closed models, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. This new system ensures that sensitive data remains on the user's device, addressing enterprise concerns about AI inference costs and potential data breaches.
Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR, has been actively sharing news about these upgrades on social media, linking them to what he terms the forthcoming "agentic market," where specialized AI agents will compete based on outcomes through intents.
"Dynamic resharding is on the horizon for NEAR Protocol, which will enhance scalability to support the growth of NEAR Intents and agentic commerce," Polosukhin tweeted on Thursday. "As the number of AI agents conducting transactions on-chain increases, we will require more scalable infrastructure. This upgrade will allow NEAR to scale to over 70 shards, surpassing Visa's throughput capabilities."
Confidential inference ensures end-to-end encryption, meaning no one else has access to your prompts. However, this currently only applies to open weight models.
For those wanting to use closed weight models, they can do so through @near_ai, which will eliminate all sensitive information… https://t.co/hwgoTeLaxx
— Illia (root.near) (🇺🇦, ⋈) (@ilblackdragon) May 21, 2026
The dynamic resharding upgrade, expected in June 2026 as part of network upgrade 2.13, will allow shards to automatically split when they reach a designated state size.
Li warned that prices can fluctuate "much faster than fundamentals" once momentum builds, noting that part of the rally is driven by narrative and traders pursuing strength. Nevertheless, she considers the ongoing caution to be a positive sign: a careful sentiment often prevails even as the market improves, which she believes is "usually not a bad sign."
On the prediction market Myriad, which is owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, users remain skeptical about the likelihood of an upcoming altseason, assigning only a 12% chance for it to begin by July. This figure has not changed in May, highlighting the "fearful" sentiment reflected in the Fear & Greed Index.
Looking forward, Li does not anticipate that all altcoins will experience simultaneous growth. She predicts that capital will likely concentrate on projects with compelling narratives and established ecosystems, suggesting that the market has become "much more selective than in previous cycles." If Bitcoin remains stable, she believes there is potential for quality altcoins to outperform in the coming months, a trend that "often begins while skepticism prevails."