NEAR Surges 45%: The Secret Driver Behind the Rally

NEAR spiked more than 26% to $3.45 on Sept. 18, driven mainly by the "[email protected] incentive program." The program airdrops 333,333 milestone tokens, but they convert 1:1 to liquid tokens only if NEAR's three-day volume-weighted average price reaches $3.33, effectively using an option-style airdrop to tie product usage to price expectations. Although the reward is only $1.11 million, it helped push the market cap up by more than $1.2 billion in three days, and attention then shifted to NEAR Intents' revenue data—about $5.01 million in total fees over the past 30 days, with $1.58 million in net revenue, and revenue no longer dependent on traditional gas fees.

More importantly, NEAR Intents' confidential mode has attracted large trades. For example, a whale recently swapped 2,500 ETH for 6,601.37 ZEC through the protocol, paying a $42,000 service fee to avoid public tracking. Now, near.com has further integrated perpetual contracts into confidential accounts, allowing users to deposit assets from different chains and open positions privately, upgrading NEAR from a cross-chain swap tool to a privacy trading account.

The market is reinterpreting NEAR: it has transformed from an older public chain into a privacy settlement layer for cross-chain trading. The core of this rally lies in a narrative reset, including:

• Monthly protocol revenue (about $1.58 million net), improving fundamental appeal
• Whale cases validating actual demand for confidential mode
• Perpetual contracts going live, expanding the revenue base and user stickiness

Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

On Sept. 18, NEAR briefly rose to $3.45, a 24-hour gain of over 26%, after closing at $2.34 three days earlier.

The market quickly summarized this move as the **"push to $3.33" plan.** The number comes from a confidential trading incentive that NEAR just triggered: funds first enter confidential accounts, rewards are then locked, and only after the price continuously meets the target do they convert into liquid NEAR.

It is essentially an option-like airdrop that simultaneously puts product usage and price expectations in the spotlight.

$3.33 Written into Reward Vesting Conditions

On Sept. 17, near.com announced that locked assets in confidential mode (NEAR Intents) surpassed $70 million, and the first phase of the [email protected] incentive program completed its snapshot.

Eligible users need to hold more than $100 in assets in a confidential account and have completed at least one confidential swap.

After meeting these conditions, the project will distribute 333,333 milestone tokens, with a single wallet receiving at most 2% of the total. However, these tokens cannot be sold on the market for now.

The rules require NEAR's three-day volume-weighted average price to reach or exceed $3.33 for the milestone tokens to convert 1:1 into NEAR. At $3.33, the nominal value of this reward is about $1.11 million.

This became one of the key catalysts for NEAR spot breaking above $3.30.

Here is a brief explainer: NEAR Intents is a cross-chain trading protocol launched by NEAR. Users simply tell the system what asset they want to swap for what asset, and market makers handle quotes and settlement. The so-called "confidential mode" is the privacy layer that NEAR Intents adds to this trading system.

Orders enter NEAR's private shard, so the public trading pool cannot see the direction, size, or submission time of trades. The purpose of the [email protected] reward program mentioned earlier is straightforward: to bring capital and trading volume into this confidential mode.

The three-day average price design is also deliberate—a single intraday spike cannot complete the conversion; the price needs to stay near $3.33. The campaign first uses rewards to push users to deposit assets and complete trades, then uses the vesting condition to extend attention beyond the snapshot.

Typical airdrops often face selling on the claim date, but NEAR has separated claiming from selling.

This campaign is cleverly designed and good at creating market momentum. A $1.11 million reward made the entire market focus on $3.33.

But this reward cannot explain the more than $1 billion increase in NEAR's market cap in three days. CoinGecko historical data shows NEAR's market cap rose from about $3.22 billion on Sept. 15 to about $4.46 billion, an increase of over $1.2 billion. The reward value is only about 0.09% of the market cap increase.

What this money really accomplished was bringing investors back to NEAR's product page. Capital then dug up NEAR Intents' revenue data. The NEAR Revenue Dashboard shows that over the past 30 days, NEAR Intents generated about $5.01 million in total fees, with the protocol retaining about $1.58 million in net revenue.

Revenue comes from front-end fees, quote improvements, and partner integrations, and no longer depends on traditional public chain gas fees.

Additionally, on-chain data shows a buyback multisig address holding about 1.158 million NEAR. A project that once could only talk about sharding and public chain performance now has monthly trading revenue. This is the more valuable change in this rally.

When ZEC Buy Orders Happen Through NEAR

Confidential trading may sound like a new concept, but a whale transaction on Sept. 9 gave it a concrete use case.

Four addresses belonging to the same entity, dormant for about six months, became active again. They first bought about $33.37 million worth of ETH through CowSwap, then used 2,500 ETH to swap for 6,601.37 ZEC through NEAR Intents, worth about $8.21 million.

This trade paid a service fee of 16.75 ETH, about $42,000. Large buyers are willing to pay this fee to keep their trading path from public tracking. The less order size, direction, and execution time are exposed, the fewer opportunities for front-running or copy-trading to drive up prices.

For NEAR, this trade is more convincing than airdrop participation numbers. Users don't even need to understand the NEAR public chain first; the protocol completes settlement behind cross-chain swaps and keeps the fees.

Today we also reported that near.com has integrated perpetual contracts, with markets and liquidity provided by Hyperliquid, into confidential accounts. Users can deposit assets from different chains and open positions with the same account. Position size, entry price, and trade direction will not directly appear in the public trading pool.

Cross-chain swaps are usually done and gone, but perpetual contracts leave positions, margin, and ongoing fees. NEAR Intents has thus moved from a swap tool into a trading account.

So, in this rally of an old coin, what you should pay more attention to is the narrative shift, which is the key catalyst supporting short- to medium-term price gains:

NEAR has shifted to confidential swaps, perpetual contracts, and protocol revenue. The market used to see NEAR as an old public chain from the previous cycle, but now it is starting to view it as a privacy settlement channel behind cross-chain trading.