NEAR Protocol: Time to Buy the Dip?

NEAR is back on everyone’s radar, and for three good reasons.

• NEAR Intents demand

• Privacy upside via Zcash flows

• Founder-led AI narrative

The cleanest valuation point is no longer just that NEAR is cheaper than other cross chain bridges like LayerZero. With NEAR Intents fees in the picture, NEAR trades at roughly 56x annualised fees, making it cheaper than Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, Sui, Avalanche, and Injective on the same fee multiple framework.

The market is still pricing NEAR like a mid-tier L1, while the protocol is starting to look like a cross-chain execution layer with privacy and AI upside.

TL;DR

• NEAR is showing a renewed setup driven by a live fee engine via NEAR Intents and two massive narrative call options in the form of privacy and AI.

• Arthur Hayes has named NEAR his next favourite altcoin, highlighting its powerful combination of privacy and positive cash-flow potential.

• NEAR Intents is generating roughly 18x LayerZero’s 30-day fees, yet NEAR trades at a fraction of ZRO’s fee multiple.

• The tokenomics are improving. Inflation was recently cut to 2.5 per cent, and transaction fees actively burn supply, shifting NEAR towards a cash-flowing execution asset.

• When combining base-chain gas and Intents fees, NEAR trades at a 56x annualised fee multiple, making it cheaper than Ethereum, Solana, and most major L1 peers. This presents a compelling valuation.

What is NEAR?

NEAR is no longer an old L1. It is evolving into a cross-chain execution layer equipped with two narratives – privacy and AI.

Privacy has already proven to be a powerful crypto use case through Zcash (ZEC). While NEAR does not directly compete with privacy coins, it benefits as the execution layer around privacy demand for such tokens. Zodl (previously Zashi), a Zcash network wallet, is a prime example. Zodl can be used to directly purchase Zcash without KYC and utilises Zcash seamlessly in payments. In payment scenarios, Near Intents can also help with converting Zcash to other crypto like USDC, making it much easier to purchase and spend while also protecting privacy. Users state the outcome they want and solvers compete to execute it

AI is the second call option. NEAR has a better claim here than most crypto AI tokens. Illia Polosukhin, NEAR’s co-founder, co-authored Attention Is All You Need, the Transformer paper behind modern LLMs. NEAR also began as an AI company before pivoting into the blockchain space. The real question is whether AI can create fees. NEAR AI is building towards that through AI Cloud, IronClaw, Agent Market, and Intents. AI agents will not manually bridge assets, manage gas, or compare routes across chains. They will express outcomes. NEAR Intents is built for that world.

Why Altcoin OGs Should Care

Arthur Hayes has made NEAR tradeable again. In The Butterfly Touch, he frames the next crypto leg as a liquidity-driven move tied to AI capex, war spending, infrastructure spending, and easier credit. He named NEAR as his next favourite altcoin after HYPE and ZEC. .

The important part is why. His claim isn’t all about AI. It’s that privacy on top of NEAR Intents can create a positive cash-flow setup for the NEAR protocol. This matters because the best altcoin trades need both narrative and numbers. NEAR now has both.

The On-Chain Signal

The market is still focused on LayerZero, Stargate, CCIP migrations, and bridge security. The current fee data points somewhere else entirely.

NEAR Intents is generating roughly 18 times LayerZero’s 30-day fees, but NEAR trades at about one-third of ZRO’s fee multiple. That is the first disconnect.

The caveat is important. Gross Intents fees are not the same as token holder revenue. Captured revenue is much smaller today, sitting around $149,000 over 30 days. The trade depends on whether NEAR can convert usage into more revenue capture, buybacks, burns, staking, locking, or other supply-management tools.

Why a Market Rerate is Still on the Cards

NEAR does not appear cheap when only looking at base-chain gas. However, that misses the thesis. The current NEAR trade is base-layer activity plus NEAR Intents, which is already generating meaningful cross-chain execution fees.

This is the strongest relative valuation point. NEAR is still priced like a mid-tier L1. If Intents are treated as part of the NEAR economic stack, the valuation looks more like a real execution business.

What to Watch Out For

For non-degens, this is not the cleanest trade like HYPE. The biggest risk is that the market prices the call options before the token captures enough economics. Even though NEAR’s multiples are low enough compared to other L1s, it is still a high multiple in the eyes of traditional investors.

The cleanest confirmation would be continued NEAR Intents fee strength plus visible buybacks or revenue routing on the NEAR revenue dashboard, which hasn’t started yet.

We would fade it if NEAR rallies only on Hayes, AI, or privacy headlines while Intents fees and NEAR’s actual AI developments stays tiny.

Final Take

NEAR now has one overlooked fee engine and two call options in privacy and AI.

The valuation setup is key. On a combined base-chain plus Intents fee view, NEAR trades around 56x annualised fees. That is cheaper than major L1 peers and much cheaper than LayerZero (ZRO) on a bridge-fee comparison. Arthur’s latest blog brought attention, but the data is what makes the trade sustainable. Long NEAR if we see new AI features, growing fees and updated revenue capture mechanism keep confirming the story.

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