NEAR Protocol’s native token has been on an absolute tear. Whereas the remainder of the crypto market’s momentum cooled, NEAR held on to its rally. It pushed into the highest 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap this week after posting round 125% features within the final 30 days earlier than correcting earlier right this moment.
In response to Bitwise’s Matt Hougan, NEAR stands out as a result of its huge AI imaginative and prescient is backed by a enterprise that’s already producing actual exercise and income.
AI Ambition
NEAR rose 198% within the third quarter, nicely forward of Bitcoin and Ethereum. However for Hougan, the larger story is what the mission is constructing and the way that enterprise is creating. NEAR calls itself “the blockchain for AI.” Its long-term purpose is to turn out to be the infrastructure for AI brokers that may transact with one another and work together with the broader world.
The primary criticism can also be clear. NEAR is just not really getting used primarily by AI brokers right this moment. Its customers are nonetheless largely people. However that has not stopped one among its merchandise from gaining critical traction, Hougan stated. NEAR Intents has now processed greater than $30 billion in cumulative quantity. The Bitwise CIO defined that the product is on monitor to generate round $45 million in charges this yr. A few of these charges are returned to tokenholders via buybacks.
Intents permits customers to maneuver throughout crypto networks with out having to take care of the standard complexity of wallets, bridges and exchanges. A community of market-making bots, referred to as solvers, handles the transactions behind the scenes. For Hougan, that is necessary as a result of Intents is not only a product constructed round a future AI use case. He described it as a “actual enterprise” right this moment.
“Even when AI brokers by no means turn out to be a giant deal, or if NEAR doesn’t seize all of that chance, I feel NEAR remains to be positioned to do nicely. In different phrases, once I’m investing in NEAR, I’m shopping for an thrilling blockchain enterprise; the AI moonshot is gravy.”
Bitwise launched a spot NEAR exchange-traded fund, beneath the ticker NRR, on NYSE Arca final month, with Coinbase Custody as custodian.
$3.8 Million Exploit
NEAR Intents suffered a safety exploit on Thursday that resulted in round $3.8 million in losses. The incident compelled the platform to pause companies and quickly droop deposits and withdrawals throughout a number of blockchains.
In response to the official replace, the difficulty got here from a bug involving its Omni deposit and withdrawal system and the NEAR Intents sensible contract. The vulnerability has since been patched, and the mission stated affected customers will probably be absolutely reimbursed for his or her losses.
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