$NEAR Surges 30% After Bitwise’s $36 Million ETP Strengthens the Token’s AI Narrative
The value of NEAR Protocol surged by 30% to a daily high of $2.25, marking a gain of more than 70% since the beginning of May and briefly pushing its market capitalisation above $2.9 billion.
Key Takeaways:
- NEAR Protocol jumped 30% to a daily high of $2.25 following a government services partnership with Bermuda.
- The Bitwise $NEAR Staking ETP recently attracted $3 million in inflows, bringing total assets under management to $36 million.
- Near Protocol plans to implement a dynamic resharding upgrade in June to scale infrastructure for AI agents.
$NEAR Token Climbs Above $2
NEAR Protocol, the token of the AI-focused Near Protocol, rallied sharply on Friday, surpassing the $2 mark for the first time this year. The surge extended the token’s upward trend that began after the announcement that Near AI had partnered with Bermuda to deploy AI-powered government services.
According to the daily chart, $NEAR jumped 30%, rising from $1.73 to a daily high of $2.25, pushing its weekly gains above 40%. Since the beginning of May, when the token was trading around $1.30, it has risen by more than 70%, making it one of the best-performing digital assets during this period. The latest rally also briefly lifted its market capitalisation above $2.9 billion.
Market observers attribute $NEAR’s upward trajectory to growing recognition of the protocol’s underlying AI architecture. Near Protocol’s strategic focus on AI agents, chain abstraction, and autonomous commerce represents a deliberate move to establish itself as a foundational layer for the next-generation digital economy. Institutional interest appears to support this trend, as evidenced by recent $3 million inflows into the European Bitwise $NEAR Staking ETP, bringing assets under management to $36 million.
In addition, the upcoming dynamic resharding network upgrade scheduled for June highlights the project’s strong commitment to agentic commerce. By enabling the blockchain to automatically scale and distribute data loads in real time, this structural redesign provides the throughput necessary to support millions of high-frequency AI agents executing autonomous transactions.
However, some industry sceptics warn that the network’s optimistic “coordination layer” thesis may fundamentally misjudge how market value is actually created. Critics argue that Near Protocol has a history of delivering excellent, highly scalable technical architecture that ultimately remains underutilised due to weak adoption, limited developer attention, and insufficient enterprise integration.
Opponents also warn that features such as chain abstraction could easily become commoditised at the application layer by market giants such as Coinbase. Furthermore, because intense competition among execution providers naturally drives transaction fees close to zero, sceptics argue that high transaction volumes could eventually become a hollow metric incapable of sustainably offsetting token issuance.
See also: "Detailed Report on the Current State of the Bitcoin (BTC) Market Published: Hashrate Drops Sharply"
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