NEAR Surges 80% Amid Growing Demand for Cross-Chain Liquidity

Near has emerged as one of the top performers in the crypto market, surging nearly 80% over the past week and propelling its daily trading volume into the billions.

The project's rise to prominence is not driven solely by speculation, but rather a significant shift in its role in the market. In recent months, Near has transformed from a conventional Layer 1 blockchain to infrastructure for autonomous AI agents that need payments, swaps, and access to multiple blockchains.

One of the main drivers behind the surge is rising activity in Near Intents, a service allowing users to swap tokens across different blockchains without manual bridges. Zcash trading volume routed through this service has surged, with major wallets integrating Intents for ZEC swaps and daily volume increasing sixfold over the week.

Confidential Intents, a version of the service designed for private transactions, has also seen significant growth, with funds locked in exceeding $70 million. The project's development is led by co-founder Illia Polosukhin, who worked at Google and was one of the authors of the 2017 research paper Attention Is All You Need.