NEAR Protocol Jumps 28% on Privacy, AI, and Scaling Upgrades
NEAR Protocol’s token surged 28% in 24 hours and nearly 45% over the week, leading altcoin gains amidst Bitcoin’s decline from $82,000 to $77,000. The rally follows a series of NEAR announcements on privacy, AI, and scaling, including confidential on-chain treasuries, AI prompt privacy, and automatic network scaling. Trezu launched Confidential Treasuries, providing private multisig, payroll, and cross-chain payments across over 35 blockchains, powered by NEAR’s private sharding. NEAR AI introduced automatic PII anonymization for prompts sent to major closed models, keeping sensitive data on the user's machine. Planned dynamic resharding, set for June 2026, will allow NEAR to scale beyond 70 shards, potentially exceeding Visa’s throughput. Capital rotation from Bitcoin and NEAR’s AI positioning contributed to strong inflows, but market sentiment remains cautious, and analysts expect selectivity to persist, with quality altcoins favored over broad-based rallies despite recent uptrends in some standalone tokens.
