On May 25, the NEAR token traded at $2.37, marking a significant recovery from early May lows of $1.24 and a recent peak of $2.5. This surge propelled the project's market capitalization back above $3 billion, demonstrating independent strength amidst broader volatility in assets like Bitcoin. While mainstream tokens fluctuated, NEAR emerged as a standout performer alongside ZEC, ONDO, and HYPE. The price action reflects a convergence of three distinct structural drivers: a deepened AI narrative, the rollout of advanced privacy protocols, and a deflationary fee buyback mechanism.

The AI narrative is anchored by co-founder Illia Polosukhin, a veteran researcher and one of the eight co-authors of the seminal Transformer paper alongside Ashish Vaswani and Noam Shazeer from Google Brain. This architecture, foundational to modern large models like ChatGPT and Gemini, positions NEAR uniquely within the decentralized AI infrastructure sector. In February, the project launched the Near.com super application, integrating cross-chain exchange and smart contract management with built-in AI capabilities for autonomous agents. Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that following Nvidia's earnings report in May, NEAR was increasingly categorized alongside TAO as a primary representative of decentralized AI infrastructure. Market sentiment was further amplified on May 22 when BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes highlighted NEAR in his analysis, grouping it with HYPE and ZEC.

Historically founded in 2018 with a focus on scalability and sharding technology, NEAR initially gained traction as an "Ethereum killer," surging from $0.5 to a peak of $20.59 during the 2020-2021 bull market.

However, the current cycle saw the token decline to a low of $0.84 in 2026 after peaking at $9 in 2024, as the market spurned many legacy and VC-backed assets. The recent resurgence is largely attributed to the launch of NEAR Intents, which addresses the critical privacy dilemma where transparency often equates to public exposure. Large transactions on public chains are vulnerable to Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) attacks, creating barriers for institutions and DeFi users. Woofun AI notes that the NEAR team identified privacy as a necessary supplement to Intents to mitigate these risks.

In late May, the NEAR Intents team deployed Confidential Payments and Confidential Intents, enabling private cross-chain transfers of assets including ETH, BTC, SOL, and USDC across more than 35 chains. This implementation utilizes private sharding combined with Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) bridging to hide the sender, amount, and transaction path, revealing results only on the target chain. A new privacy mode defaults user balances and activities to private status, preventing data leakage for enterprise users and AI agents executing complex strategies. The concurrently launched Confidential Treasuries (Trezu) supports privacy multi-signatures and payrolls, having already processed $68 million in confidential transactions. This approach offers a more practical balance of privacy and usability compared to pure privacy coins like Zcash, directly addressing enterprise needs and driving a rebound in Total Value Locked (TVL).

Tokenomics have also shifted toward a deflationary model following the completion of the final initial supply unlocks in October 2025, bringing the circulation rate close to 100%. The protocol operates on a dual mechanism of inflation and burning, with annual inflation permanently halved to 2.5% as of October 2025. Currently, daily epoch reward emissions account for approximately 5.4 million NEAR over 30 days, representing 0.4% of the total supply. Crucially, revenue generated from NEAR Intents fees is now directed entirely toward buying back NEAR tokens from the market. Woofun AI analysis suggests that while repurchased tokens may be staked or locked rather than immediately burned, this process effectively reduces circulating supply pressure while generating staking rewards.

from defiLlama, the TVL of NEAR Intents has surpassed $80 million, with daily fees hovering around $100,000. This fee structure translates to a monthly buyback volume of approximately $3 million, creating consistent buying pressure. Looking ahead, the core development team Near One is scheduled to announce technical progress by the end of the month, including dynamic redistribution planned for the end of the second quarter of 2026 to enhance scalability.

Furthermore, the team will introduce a post-quantum secure signature scheme in June to bolster resistance against quantum computing threats, solidifying the network's long-term security posture.