Elite
On-Chain Crypto & DeFi Research, Alpha Threads
NEAR is the less obvious infrastructure sympathy trade to Zcash's momentum, because Zcash swaps route through NEAR Intents. CoinDesk reports daily Zcash volume through NEAR Intents rose 6x. Routing volume isn't token revenue, though; solvers and distribution partners get paid, and only part of the economics becomes NEAR demand. The setup holds while Zcash activity keeps expanding through Intents and NEAR keeps responding. x.comÂ
NEAR's Intents use and new council member support its leg of the Zcash-NEAR barbell. Brian Danga reports that Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz, an early NEAR Intents user, joined the NEAR Foundation Council as the protocol reported $33 billion in all-time Intents volume. Both NEAR and Zcash look headed much higher. x.comÂ
NEAR could benefit from a fragmented crypto market because Intents earns fees on crosschain liquidity, with some revenue buying NEAR. Intents processed $34.2B across 37 chains; its buyback wallet holds about 1.4M NEAR. Confidential TVL reached $150.3M, up 345% in 90 days, and its 30-day volume share rose to 29%. Private execution could attract larger participants; fee-paying demand from AI agents remains unproven. These on-chain metrics support more appropriate repricing. x.com x.comÂ
NEAR is not private, not secure, centralized and not permissionless, as the $3.8 million exploit of NEAR Intents shows. Its popularity is driven by undisclosed paid marketing pushing people to buy a dinosaur coin and a trash chain. x.com x.comÂ
NEAR Intents activity and fees keep accelerating alongside NEAR's price. September intent volume reached a new monthly high of $4.07B, while fees surpassed $7.7M and reached $55M since inception; NEAR rose 156% over the same period. x.comÂ
Actual use of NEAR Intents, including private swaps, is a bigger positive sign for NEAR than ETF inflows. BSC News reports $5.22 million into Bitwise's NEAR ETF in the latest week; that is still small money. x.comÂ
NEAR can never be money, so any monetary or privacy premium ascribed to the token will flow to permissionless neutral protocols like Zcash and, to a lesser degree, Monero. NEAR's freezing of funds from the Bitget hack was the right business decision, but it shows that programmability creates governance surface area that is antithetical to money. The NEAR chain made about $150k in 30 days, Intents $1.7M and perps $61k, an insane multiple for something that isn't money. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Zcash and Hyperliquid could face less selling pressure because they have newer, stronger narratives than NEAR and fewer holders waiting to sell at breakeven. Their appeal this cycle rests on narrative and hype; they look like this cycle's Ether and Solana. x.com x.com x.comÂ
NEAR's buyback flywheel is turning: NEAR Intents had its biggest revenue week ever last week, and $500,000 of NEAR was bought back. x.comÂ
NEAR's $2.4 billion market cap already prices it as a major AI and apps layer, so the success of NEAR Intents does not justify the valuation. Intents is a strong bridging product and handled over $200 million of volume in about a day, per @andyyy, but it earns only about $1.5 million in annualized revenue, and valuing NEAR as a bridge is not very bullish. This may be a midcurve take. x.comÂ
NEAR can reach DeFi users on other chains by adding privacy to products they already use. Its new Kamino integration lets SOL holders earn yield in a Gauntlet-curated vault without exposing their wallet address to the vault or changing what they own. That could bring in users who were not looking for NEAR's ecosystem in the first place; it remains a comfortable hold. x.comÂ
