NEAR Protocol Jumps 28% on Privacy, AI, and Scaling Upgrades

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In brief - NEAR rose 28% in 24 hours and almost 45% over the past week, leading altcoin gains. - The rally follows three protocol upgrades: confidential treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic network scaling. - Myriad users see just a 12% chance of an “altseason” by July, with fearful sentiment persisting despite recent altcoin surges NEAR Protocol’s token surged 28% to lead altcoin gains over the past 24 hours, extending its weekly rally to just under 45% as the team rolled out a cluster of privacy, AI, and scalability announcements between May 20 and May 22. The token's jump outpaces gains from Worldcoin's 12% and Venice Token's 8% over the same period, according to CoinGecko data. The moves come even as Bitcoin retraced from near $82,000 to $77,000 over the past week. The sharp price move is partly attributable to capital rotation after months of Bitcoin absorbing most available liquidity, according to Sammi Li, CEO of crypto exchange Ju.com. NEAR has become "one of the more obvious beneficiaries" as money moves into large-cap alts, Li told Decrypt, adding that the project's longstanding positioning around AI makes it a natural candidate when the market seeks AI-related exposure. Three NEAR Protocol upgrades The rally reflects a concentrated product push across three fronts: confidential on-chain treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic network scaling—positioning NEAR as a potential settlement layer for AI agents and confidential finance. On Wednesday, Trezu launched Confidential Treasuries, a product offering private on-chain multisig, payroll, balance management, and cross-chain payments across more than 35 chains. The product is powered by NEAR's private sharding and Intents infrastructure. NEAR's official account noted that $68 million moved confidentially out of near.com over the past month. Separately, NEAR AI rolled out automatic PII anonymization for prompts sent to closed models, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Sensitive data never leaves the user's machine under the new system, addressing enterprise concerns about AI inference costs and data leakage. NEAR Co-founder Illia Polosukhin has been actively promoting the upgrades on social media, tying the developments directly to what he calls the coming "agentic market" where specialized AI agents compete on outcomes via intents. "Dynamic resharding is coming soon to NEAR Protocol – unlocking a new level of scalability to power the growth of NEAR Intents and agentic commerce," Polosukhin tweeted Thursday. "As more AI agents transact onchain, we'll need more scalable infrastructure. This upgrade allows NEAR to scale to 70+ shards, which would have a higher throughput than Visa." Confidential inference means you have end-to-end encryption with nobody else getting access to your prompts. But this only works on open weight models (for now). If you do still want ot use closed weight models - you can use it via @near_ai and it will remove all sensitive info… https://t.co/hwgoTeLaxx — Illia (root.near) (🇺🇦, ⋈) (@ilblackdragon) May 21, 2026 The dynamic resharding upgrade, scheduled for June 2026 as part of network upgrade 2.13, allows shards to split automatically when a shard reaches a certain state size. Li cautioned that price can move "much faster than fundamentals" once momentum kicks in, describing part of the rally as narrative-driven and part as traders chasing strength. But she views the persistent caution as constructive: sentiment has stayed cautious even while the market improves, which she said is "usually not a bad sign." On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, user confidence in a broader altseason has not shifted despite the recent explosive uptrends seen across standalone altcoins like HYPE, Ondo, or Zcash. Users assign just a 12% chance to an altseaon kicking off by July. That number has remained unchanged in May, underscoring the the "fearful" reading on the Fear & Greed Index. Looking ahead, Li does not expect all altcoins to run together. Capital will likely remain concentrated in projects with strong narratives and real ecosystems, she said, noting the market is "much more selective than previous cycles." If Bitcoin holds steady, she sees room for quality altcoins to outperform over the next few months—a move that "often starts when people are still skeptical."

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