ZEC's Surge Sparks Interest in NEAR as Privacy Coin's 'Tool Seller'

Written by Xiao Bing

ZEC surged to $1,200 on September 6, posting a 370% gain over three months, and Grayscale’s ZEC spot ETF (ZCSH) attracted over $460 million in assets within two weeks of its launch—the most aggressive pricing recovery for a privacy coin in a decade.

But the hottest trading discussion on crypto Twitter has moved beyond ZEC itself to a more sophisticated logic: instead of betting on ZEC’s next move at the $1,000 level, buy the “toll road” beneath it.

The name of this highway is NEAR Intents.

To understand this narrative, you first need to see the key product flow.

The Zashi wallet, developed by the Electric Coin Company, is currently the most comprehensive self-custody entry point in the ZEC ecosystem. In October 2025, Zashi launched "Zashi Swaps," a cross-chain swap feature powered by NEAR Intents, enabling users to directly exchange assets such as BTC, SOL, and USDC for shielded ZEC. Shortly after, the CrossPay feature was introduced, reversing the flow to enable payments from shielded ZEC to assets on any chain.

This means that NEAR Intents serve not only as an on-ramp for ZEC but also as its off-ramp.

Every cross-chain swap initiated from Zashi, regardless of direction, must go through the NEAR Intents settlement layer.

On February 23, 2026, NEAR Intents activated the "Fee Switch." Starting this date, all fees generated at the protocol level are uniformly collected in NEAR tokens, with 100% of protocol fees used to repurchase NEAR on the open market. This creates a textbook value capture flywheel: higher trading volume leads to more fees, stronger repurchases, and reduced selling pressure on NEAR.

The chain of events circulating on Twitter is as follows: Increased demand for ZEC → Higher cross-chain swaps via Zashi → Increased transaction volume on NEAR Intents → Protocol earns fees → Fees used to repurchase NEAR → NEAR experiences structural buying pressure.

Let’s subject this narrative to data verification.

First, consider the total volume: According to the official NEAR Intents dashboard, as of early September, the cumulative trading volume reached approximately $27.6 billion across more than 26 blockchains, generating around $45 million in fees, with a 30-day trading volume of approximately $3 billion.

Now consider ZEC’s share. Data from the end of 2025 shows that ZEC trading accounted for approximately 10% of NEAR Intents’ daily trading volume, equivalent to about $15 million per day. However, CoinGecko’s trading pair data reveals a more significant reality: currently, the USDT/ZEC trading pair on NEAR Intents represents 27.4% of total trading volume. When combined with USDC/ZEC (7.1%), SOL/ZEC (2.5%), and ETH/ZEC (2.2%), ZEC-related trading pairs collectively account for nearly 40% of total trading volume.

The most critical step is value capture.

According to DefiLlama data, NEAR Intents has generated a total of $45 million in fees, but the actual protocol income—allocated to the protocol treasury for NEAR buybacks—amounts to approximately $5.51 million, with a 30-day protocol income of about $910,000, equivalent to an average monthly buyback volume of $910,000.

Early reports stated a monthly buyback of approximately $3 million, which differs from DefiLlama’s "protocol revenue" metric. The discrepancy arises because the majority of the $45 million in fees went to solvers (market makers/settlers) and distribution channels—SwapKit alone received over $4.4 million, and Zashi contributed approximately $760,000—while only the protocol-layer fees entered the NEAR buyback pool.

The narrative of NEAR as the "shovel seller" for ZEC is logically sound.

The integration of the Zashi wallet with NEAR Intents is a real product relationship, the buyback mechanism after the fee switch is on-chain verifiable, and ZEC's share of NEAR Intents transaction volume is indeed significant.

However, the transmission efficiency is actually much lower than what the community suggests and is highly dependent on the sustained performance of the ZEC asset.

If ZEC’s ETF inflows maintain their current pace over the coming weeks, this transmission chain can continue to function; if ZEC enters a period of significant volatility or pullback, the trading volume distribution of NEAR Intents will reveal a higher concentration risk than suggested by the “multi-chain infrastructure” narrative.

For traders, what truly matters is not whether the cumulative trading volume of NEAR Intents has surpassed $30 billion, but the trend in ZEC’s share of that volume. If ZEC’s share drops from 40% to below 15% while overall trading volume continues to grow, then NEAR has truly completed its narrative evolution from "ZEC’s shadow" to "cross-chain settlement infrastructure."