NEAR Protocol's token surged 28% in a day, driven by major upgrades in privacy, AI, and scalability, despite cautious market sentiment.
Summary
- NEAR Protocol’s token surged by 28% in a day and nearly 45% over the week, leading altcoin performance.
- This growth follows the rollout of three major upgrades focused on privacy, AI, and network scaling.
- Despite the recent altcoin surge, users predict only a 12% chance of a widespread "altseason" by July, reflecting cautious market sentiment.
NEAR Protocol has seen its token value climb 28% in just 24 hours and almost 45% over the past week, driven by significant announcements regarding privacy features, artificial intelligence, and scalability from May 20 to May 22.
This performance outpaced competitors like Worldcoin and Venice Token, which saw increases of 12% and 8%, respectively, even as Bitcoin fell from around $82,000 to $77,000 during the same period.
The price increase is partly attributed to a shift in capital away from Bitcoin, which had dominated liquidity for months, as noted by Sammi Li, CEO of the crypto exchange Ju.com. She highlighted that NEAR has become a clear beneficiary of funds moving into larger-cap altcoins, especially given its strong emphasis on AI.
Key Upgrades to NEAR Protocol
The rise in NEAR's price is linked to three strategic upgrades: confidential treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic scaling, positioning the protocol as a potential leader in AI and secure financial transactions.
On Wednesday, NEAR introduced Confidential Treasuries, which offer private on-chain multisig, payroll, and cross-chain payment solutions for over 35 networks, leveraging the private sharding and Intents infrastructure of NEAR. The platform has reportedly facilitated $68 million in confidential transfers in the last month alone.
Additionally, NEAR AI has launched a system for automatically anonymizing personally identifiable information (PII) sent to closed AI models, including those from Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. This feature ensures sensitive data remains on the user's device, addressing concerns about AI inference costs and data security.
Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR, has been actively promoting these developments on social media, linking them to the emerging "agentic market" where AI agents will compete based on specific outcomes.
He also mentioned that a dynamic resharding upgrade is forthcoming, which will enhance NEAR's scalability to support a growing number of AI agents on its network. This upgrade, set for June 2026, aims to enable NEAR to handle over 70 shards, surpassing Visa's transaction 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," Polosukhin noted.
Li cautioned that while prices can shift rapidly once momentum builds, the current cautious sentiment could be a positive indicator for market stability. On the prediction market Myriad, users assign only a 12% chance of an altseason starting by July, a sentiment that echoes the broader cautious outlook reflected in the Fear & Greed Index.
Looking ahead, Li does not expect all altcoins to rise simultaneously. She anticipates that capital will flow into projects with strong narratives and established ecosystems, suggesting a more selective market compared to previous cycles. If Bitcoin maintains stability, quality altcoins may outperform in the coming months, often beginning this trend amid prevailing skepticism.
