TL;DR

NEAR’s investment thesis is shifting from a high-performance Layer 1 to chain abstraction, cross-chain settlement, and AI agent infrastructure, aiming to capture greater growth opportunities within the multi-chain ecosystem.

NEAR Intents claims to have completed over $13 billion in cross-chain settlements, but there remains a significant gap between settlement volume and the protocol's actual revenue.

The maximum annual inflation rate for NEAR has been reduced from 5% to approximately 2.5%, while developer gas refunds have been eliminated and fee burning has been expanded, resulting in improved tokenomics compared to the previous cycle.

Over the 30 days leading up to September 1, NEAR-related products generated approximately $3.48 million in total fees, but net protocol fees amounted to only about $757,500, indicating that value capture is still in its early stages.

The founding team has genuine expertise in AI and distributed systems, but AI products, partnership projects, and user growth have not yet demonstrated sustained commercial revenue.

NEAR still lags behind Ethereum and Solana in terms of liquidity, developer base, and application ecosystem, and faces competition from Sui, Aptos, and other cross-chain infrastructure.

The overall derivatives market is currently bullish, but open interest has declined, suggesting that recent price gains may be partially driven by short covering.

NEAR is better viewed as an optional investment with high elasticity and high execution risk, rather than a core asset with established cash flow and a network moat.

NEAR is undergoing a significant strategic shift.

In the past, NEAR competed primarily as a high-performance Layer 1, highlighting its strengths in sharding scalability, low fees, and fast confirmations. Today, it aims to reposition itself as the foundational infrastructure for multi-chain transactions and AI agents—enabling wallets and agents to automatically handle cross-chain transfers, swaps, and payments without users needing to understand the complexities of blockchain.

NEAR Intents has provided preliminary transaction data in this direction, and the AI business has garnered market attention due to the founding team's technical background. Meanwhile, NEAR has reduced inflation, increased fee burning, and is exploring the use of product revenue for token buybacks.

The issue is that these advancements have not yet fully translated into sustained demand for NEAR tokens. Trading volumes can grow rapidly, but the actual revenue captured by the protocol may remain limited; AI products can utilize NEAR’s technology without requiring users to hold NEAR tokens.

This makes NEAR a representative cryptocurrency: its technological direction is becoming increasingly clear, while its economic闭环 remains to be validated.

Transition from a single blockchain to a multi-chain trading gateway

NEAR was initially designed as a general-purpose smart contract platform targeting consumer-grade applications. Its Nightshade architecture processes network state through sharding, aiming to scale capacity while maintaining low costs. According to project disclosures, NEAR currently has a block time of approximately 600 milliseconds and finality in about 1.2 seconds; in 2025, the number of network shards will increase from 6 to 9, raising theoretical throughput by approximately 50%.

These performance metrics are not poor, but they no longer constitute a standalone advantage in today’s public blockchain market. Solana, Sui, Aptos, and Ethereum Layer 2 solutions are all delivering faster and cheaper transaction experiences. For NEAR, continuing to emphasize TPS and transaction fees will only lead it into homogenized competition.

Therefore, NEAR began shifting its development focus toward "chain abstraction."

In simple terms, chain abstraction aims to eliminate the need for users to be aware of which blockchain they are using or to manually handle cross-chain bridges, gas tokens, and transaction paths. Users simply specify the outcome they want, and the system automatically finds the appropriate network, liquidity, and execution solution.

NEAR Intents is the most important product in this strategy. Traditionally, cross-chain transactions require users to select a bridge, a trading platform, and a target network; under the Intents model, users simply submit their transaction intent, and solvers find the optimal path across different platforms and liquidity pools.

NEAR’s disclosed data shows that the cumulative cross-chain settlement volume of Intents has exceeded $13 billion. Some community estimates range from $20 billion to $26 billion, covering 30 to 35 blockchains. Although these figures may vary due to different time frames and statistical criteria, they at least indicate that NEAR Intents has already generated a significant volume of real transaction activity.

This also transforms NEAR’s potential market. Previously, a public chain’s growth primarily depended on developers deploying applications on the chain to attract users and capital; if the Intents model succeeds, NEAR could participate in asset flows on other blockchains—even without hosting all applications—and generate revenue from cross-chain transactions.

However, chain abstraction contains a natural contradiction: the smoother the user experience, the more easily the underlying network is hidden. Users may utilize NEAR’s execution capabilities without knowing their transactions passed through NEAR, and they may not even need to hold NEAR tokens directly.

Meanwhile, wallets, aggregators, cross-chain protocols, and other intent networks are competing for transaction entry points. Even as the settlement volume of NEAR Intents continues to grow, most fees are likely to flow to solvers, market makers, and partner applications that provide quotes and liquidity. How much revenue NEAR can retain from this will determine its valuation.

AI offers new narratives, but commercial revenue still needs validation.

AI is another key pillar of NEAR's strategic shift.

NEAR is building autonomous agents, confidential model execution, verifiable AI outputs, agent marketplaces, machine-to-machine payments, and user-owned AI assistants. The project aims to combine blockchain’s capabilities for accounts, payments, and asset ownership with the autonomous execution power of AI agents.

Compared to some crypto projects that only repositioned themselves after the AI boom, NEAR has a more direct technological foundation. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin previously worked on machine learning research at Google and co-authored the foundational paper "Attention Is All You Need" on the Transformer architecture; co-founder Alexander Skidanov has experience in distributed databases and large-scale system development.

This gives NEAR’s AI transition a sense of continuity, rather than merely seeking a more popular market label for the token.

According to project disclosures, NEAR’s AI ecosystem already involves over 50 teams spanning research, data, storage, models, and applications. Collaborations or integrations include Frax, Infinex, SWEAT, and Eliza. NEAR is also advancing AI assistants like IronClaw, aiming to enable agents to securely access accounts, hold assets, and execute transactions through trusted execution environments, credential isolation, and privacy protection.

There is also a natural synergy between AI and intents. Future AI agents may need to autonomously purchase services, manage funds, and exchange assets across different blockchains. Intents can help agents find paths and liquidity, while NEAR has the opportunity to become the coordination and settlement layer for these machine-to-machine transactions.

The potential in this direction is vast, but commercial evidence remains limited. Having 50 AI teams does not equate to 50 mature revenue streams, and partnerships or product launches do not guarantee consistent paid demand. Centralized AI services already possess mature computing power, tools, and enterprise customers; NEAR must demonstrate that the asset ownership, privacy, and verifiability enabled by blockchain are sufficient to offset the added technical complexity.

More importantly, even if AI products succeed, value may not flow to the NEAR token. Agents might access services through third-party wallets, and fees could be covered by the application, meaning end users may not need to buy or hold NEAR long-term. Whether AI activity can generate protocol revenue—and whether that revenue can create demand for the token—remains two unanswered questions.

With $13 billion in trading volume, how much revenue remains?

The most noteworthy aspect of NEAR’s current investment thesis is not the transaction volume itself, but the gap between transaction volume and protocol revenue.

According to the revenue panel cited in the original text, NEAR-related products generated approximately $3.48 million in total fees over the 30 days ending September 1, 2026. After deducting fees paid to solvers, partners, applications, and other participants, the net protocol fees amounted to approximately $757,500.

In other words, the revenue actually retained by the protocol constitutes only a portion of the total fees. This allocation is not surprising: cross-chain transactions require solvers to provide quotes, market makers to supply liquidity, and applications and wallets to generate revenue. However, for NEAR token holders, the volume of cross-chain transactions and total fees are not the most important metrics—it is the net protocol revenue that more accurately reflects the economic value captured by the underlying asset.

Even so, net fees cannot be directly equated to shareholder cash flow. NEAR can allocate revenue toward buybacks, staking, locking, ecosystem spending, or protocol treasury purposes, but there is currently no fixed rule requiring all revenue to be used for token purchases. The use of funds remains subject to governance decisions.

Therefore, when evaluating NEAR’s fundamentals, focusing solely on the number of users, transaction volume, or Intents settlement value can easily overstate the quality of growth. What truly matters are three questions: Is net protocol revenue growing consistently? Is the proportion of revenue relative to total transaction fees increasing? And how much of this revenue is ultimately driving demand for NEAR through purchases, burns, or long-term locking?

If the settlement volume of Intents grows rapidly but net income remains consistently low, NEAR could become a widely used infrastructure without necessarily being an asset that effectively captures value.

In recent years, NEAR has also been working to address this issue. Its maximum annual inflation rate has been reduced from 5% to approximately 2.5%; the developer gas refund mechanism has been eliminated, ensuring that transaction fees are more fully directed toward burning; NEAR Intents has enabled a fee switch and is experimenting with using a portion of product revenue for buybacks. According to project disclosures, these mechanisms have already facilitated the buyback of over 1 million NEAR tokens.

The supply structure has also improved. Approximately 1.305 billion NEAR tokens are already fully or nearly fully circulating, resulting in a market cap that closely aligns with the fully diluted valuation. Compared to new blockchains with large amounts of team and investor tokens still pending unlocking, NEAR faces significantly lower future unlocking pressure.

However, nearing full circulation does not equate to deflation. NEAR has low transaction fees, so even with high trading volume, the amount burned may not be sufficient to offset the inflation from validator rewards. Buybacks also involve some discretion and have not yet established a stable, predictable mechanism.

NEAR needs to prove more than just an improvement in token economics—it must demonstrate that protocol revenue and fee burns can eventually approach or exceed new issuance. Only by establishing this closed loop can product growth reliably translate into token value.

The ecosystem is still growing, but has not yet established leadership.

NEAR's disclosed user and transaction data is impressive. Its 2024 review shows that monthly active users on the network increased from 7 million the previous year to 40 million, with approximately 4 million daily active users and over 8 million daily transactions. Ecosystem projects secured around $146 million in external funding, and accelerator participants raised approximately $50.5 million.

This data at least shows that NEAR is not a "ghost chain" that has lost its developers and users. After the previous bear market, it has retained its network, infrastructure, funding, and application ecosystem.

However, blockchain user metrics must be interpreted with caution. Monthly active users may refer to accounts, addresses, or entities interacting with applications, which could include automated programs, incentive-driven activities, and low-value transactions, and cannot be directly equated to unique user counts on internet platforms.

The original text also lacks complete, independently verified latest data on user retention rate, stablecoin volume, TVL, and transaction quality. Therefore, while 40 million monthly active users and 8 million daily transactions demonstrate network activity, they alone cannot prove that this activity generates sustained revenue.

Developer data shows a similar trend. According to the August 2026 figures cited in the original text, the NEAR ecosystem has approximately 1,231 developers, 79,400 code commits, and 234 code repositories. Using the same metrics, Solana has around 1,494 developers, while Ethereum reaches 11,600.

NEAR clearly has a functioning developer ecosystem, but it still lags significantly behind Ethereum and trails Solana in terms of liquidity and consumer application momentum. Apps like HOT Wallet, SWEAT, and KAIKAI have brought NEAR a certain user base, yet none have yet emerged as a killer product capable of reshaping the industry.

NEAR faces competition across multiple markets. In the foundational blockchain space, it competes with Ethereum, Solana, Sui, and Aptos for developers and funding; in the chain abstraction space, it confronts wallets, transaction aggregators, cross-chain bridges, and other intent networks; and in the AI space, it must also compete with centralized cloud providers and crypto projects focused on compute, data, models, and privacy.

This gives NEAR both significant flexibility and high execution risk. If its multiple product lines achieve synergy, NEAR could build a comprehensive system encompassing accounts, payments, cross-chain interoperability, and agents; however, if resources are overly dispersed, it may end up with many products but consistently limited market presence.

NEAR is currently more of a technically credible, strategically differentiated mid-tier competitor than a market leader with a strong moat.

Core judgment: NEAR needs to prove more than just its technology

NEAR's most compelling investment thesis today is its potential to serve as the coordination, transaction, and settlement infrastructure for the multi-chain and AI agent economy. If this vision materializes, NEAR could address a market far larger than any single Layer 1, creating new value capture pathways through intent fees, agent payments, and token buybacks.

NEAR’s advantages include a strong founding team, a long track record of operations, a sharded architecture, a nearly fully circulating token supply, a reduced inflation rate, and a differentiated focus on AI and chain abstraction.

But its greatest risk may not be technical failure, but rather remaining indefinitely in a state of “technically reliable and product-rich, yet economically secondary.” NEAR could continue to operate stably, maintain its developer community, and consistently launch new products, yet still fail to build a sufficiently strong network of applications, protocol revenue, or token demand.

The most important metrics to track next include NEAR Intents net revenue and profit margin, non-incentivized user retention, stablecoin and TVL growth, real commercial revenue from AI products, token effective inflation rate, and transparency around buybacks and treasury funds.

Ultimately, NEAR must answer three questions: How much revenue can intent-based transaction growth retain for the protocol; will AI and cross-chain products create direct demand for NEAR tokens; and can protocol income, burning, and buybacks consistently offset new issuance over the long term.

Until these issues are fully validated, NEAR is better viewed as a high-resilience asset betting on the growth of AI and multi-chain infrastructure. Its technological foundation and product direction offer significant upside potential, but its commercialization capabilities, value capture, and competitive pressures will determine whether this transition can truly drive a valuation re-rating.