$NEAR +140% in a month. But what exactly is the market buying?
NEAR Protocol has entered the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization after rallying approximately 140% in 30 days.
Against this backdrop, two important factors have emerged.
First, Bitwise launched a spot product for NEAR in the U.S. under the ticker NRR. Investors can now gain exchange-traded exposure to the token without buying it directly.
Second, NEAR Intents, an interchain exchange protocol, has processed more than $31 billion in cumulative transaction volume. But volume is not the same as protocol revenue.
And there’s a detail that’s especially interesting to us: NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin is Ukrainian and co-authored the research paper Attention Is All You Need, which laid the foundation for the Transformer architecture—the technology behind today’s large language models.
So the connection between $NEAR and artificial intelligence has a real history behind it, not just a marketing slogan.
At the same time, NEAR Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit; the team reported that all funds had been fully returned.
I don’t see NEAR as just another AI token “riding a narrative.” The key question is whether real infrastructure usage will translate into lasting economic value for the token.
Its Ukrainian roots add a sense of pride to this story. But its market valuation still needs to be backed by results.
NEAR Protocol has entered the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization after rallying approximately 140% in 30 days.
Against this backdrop, two important factors have emerged.
First, Bitwise launched a spot product for NEAR in the U.S. under the ticker NRR. Investors can now gain exchange-traded exposure to the token without buying it directly.
Second, NEAR Intents, an interchain exchange protocol, has processed more than $31 billion in cumulative transaction volume. But volume is not the same as protocol revenue.
And there’s a detail that’s especially interesting to us: NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin is Ukrainian and co-authored the research paper Attention Is All You Need, which laid the foundation for the Transformer architecture—the technology behind today’s large language models.
So the connection between $NEAR and artificial intelligence has a real history behind it, not just a marketing slogan.
At the same time, NEAR Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit; the team reported that all funds had been fully returned.
I don’t see NEAR as just another AI token “riding a narrative.” The key question is whether real infrastructure usage will translate into lasting economic value for the token.
Its Ukrainian roots add a sense of pride to this story. But its market valuation still needs to be backed by results.