NEAR Protocol Surges 31% on Friday Amid Introduction of Confidential Perpetual Trading
The NEAR Protocol token surged by 31% on Friday as traders pushed it higher. The price increase brought NEAR's market value to around $4.575 billion, with a daily trading volume of over $1.786 billion. This is in addition to the token's significant gains against Bitcoin, rising by about 29% during the same period.
One key factor contributing to this rally is the introduction of Confidential Perpetual Trading on near.com. This feature makes confidentiality the default for perpetual positions, allowing users to open leveraged positions without publicly linking each position to their account. The system uses a dedicated private NEAR shard and a Trusted Execution Environment-based bridge to connect it to mainnet.
This development does not introduce perpetual trading to the ecosystem for the first time but rather updates the existing functionality of Hyperliquid, which has recorded over $240 billion in perpetual trading volume over the last 30 days. The expansion of Hyperliquid also adds broader market context, as Payward, Kraken's parent company, plans to launch on-chain perpetual futures based on Hyperliquid for US customers.