NEAR Protocol went into "Building Mode" says Grayscale.
According to leading crypto asset manager @Grayscale, the @NEARProtocol L1 went into a development-focused stance after the last crypto cycle.
The firm points clearly to three catalysts/considerations specifically for the AI-focused chain...
- Emphasis on Chain Abstraction.
- The rise of NEAR intents.
- AI Agent-specific Roadmap.
In all fairness, the $NEAR token itself is up around +74% in the past month so the team must be doing something right!
What NEAR shipped this month:
✦ NEAR Intents crossed $19B+ in all-time volume and 25M+ total swaps.
✦ Confidential Payments went live on https://t.co/1n0j8823BT with Universal Send.
✦ $VVV is live on NEAR Intents and https://t.co/1n0j8823BT.
✦ Illia Polosukhin (@ilblackdragon) and Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) discussed the Privacy Renaissance on @therollup.
✦ NEAR AI and the Government of Bermuda partnered to deploy AI-powered public services.
✦ NEAR Intents began powering cross-chain swaps in Ledger Wallet.
✦ IronClaw released version v0.28 “IronClaw Reborn”.
✦ NEAR Intents integrated private USDC payments for the NEAR AI Agent Market.
✦ NEAR Intents joined the strkBTC Federation.
✦ NEAR AI shipped automatic PII anonymization.
✦ NEAR introduced Dynamic Resharding.
✦ NEAR AI and FailSafe launched AttackBench.
✦ NEAR hosted events at Consensus Miami and the SALT Digital Finance Forum in Bermuda.
✦ https://t.co/1n0j8823BT referrals went live
✦ The Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP drew roughly $3M in inflows
✦ Trezu (@trezuapp) launched confidential treasuries
And much more.
"NEAR has built IronClaw, an AI agent framework integrated with NEAR AI’s confidential inference infrastructure. This enables AI agents to securely execute tasks while ensuring that underlying data, credentials, and user activity remain private." - Grayscale Research
🆕 Grayscale Research: @NEARProtocol went into building mode after the last cycle.
In 2026, it's back, and the story runs through AI.
↳ Chain abstraction
↳ NEAR Intents
↳ Roadmap built for AI agents.
Read the full article from @LowBeta on the Stack:
https://t.co/yKsxXTgMXG
Privacy is defining the next generation of apps, both financial and agentic.
Privacy-first AI platform @AskVenice ($VVV) has 3M+ users and is growing fast. NEAR is the infrastructure making it possible, from private inference to confidential execution.
How NEAR powers Venice 🧵
Traditional AI providers log your prompts and can read everything you send.
Venice runs on NEAR AI, where your prompt is encrypted before it leaves your device and only decrypted inside a hardware enclave. No visibility for either the GPU operator, Venice, or NEAR AI.
Privacy is becoming the default expectation.
And increasingly, the default experience on https://t.co/YBUSFVdjxE.
Turns out, confidentiality on https://t.co/YBUSFVdjxE is ridiculously seamless.
Privacy gets stronger with every new user, asset, and swap.
3 months. $0 to $15M Confidential TVL.
Confidential is becoming the default on https://t.co/YBUSFVdjxE.
Why did $NEAR double in May while most alts bled?
🤖 It's the only L1 whose co-founder co-authored the Transformer paper — real AI lineage, not a rebrand.
🔒 Privacy shipped as infra: confidential payments baked into cross-chain intents across 35+ chains. Not a privacy coin — a privacy layer.
💰 All protocol fees buy back NEAR monthly. Supply fully unlocked, inflation halved. No cliffs, just steady demand.
Three engines firing at once — has the market caught up yet? 🤔
#NEAR #AI #Crypto #DeFi
sheesh $NEAR looks good here
$5B is a clear magnet. $10B doesn't feel crazy either.
privacy x AI x crypto is the what leads the next bull run
this one has the trinity.
$NEAR exposure, no wallets, no keys, no custody headaches.
Grayscale NEAR Trust (ticker: $GSNR) gives investors exposure to $NEAR, the native asset of @NEARProtocol, a Layer-1 powering peer-to-peer value exchange onchain.
LATEST: 📈 Near Protocol says dynamic resharding is coming in June, allowing the network to automatically scale as demand grows without human intervention.
After listening to Illia’s interview on Medici Level Up, I think CT is framing $NEAR completely wrong.
People keep trying to classify it as:
- an AI infra play
- a chain abstraction play
- an intents/payment layer
- an agent framework
But Illia’s actual thesis is bigger:
“AI in the front end, blockchain in the back end.”
NEAR is building a vertically integrated stack for the agentic economy:
- private/verifiable AI inference
- IronClaw agents
- AI-to-AI contracts + escrow
- intents across 35+ chains
- NEAR as the settlement + trust layer
And the key line:
“NEAR token is effectively looped into everything.”
1. Inference
2. Payments
3. Intents
4. Security
5. Storage
Not every new token for every new project, just single $NEAR for all of this.
Most L1s are optimizing one layer.
NEAR is trying to own the whole AI → commerce → settlement loop.
Still feels mispriced.