NEAR jumped nearly 80% in a week as its Intents cross-chain swap system pushed past $29.3 billion in cumulative volume, with activity tied to privacy coin Zcash among the drivers. Near Protocol also made perpetual futures deposits and withdrawals confidential by default this week, part of a broader push into privacy-focused trading.
NEAR outpaces the wider market
Near Protocol's native token traded around $4.29 on Monday, up about 78.2% over seven days and 22% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. That climb outpaced the broader market, where total cryptocurrency market capitalization rose about 6% over the same seven-day period. The rally came as Near expanded its privacy-focused trading services across the network.
Confidential trading and a token unlock
On Thursday, Near Protocol said deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading through near.com were now confidential by default, obscuring the link between a trader's funding wallet and a dedicated Hyperliquid trading account.
The same day, Near said near.com's confidential total value locked had crossed $70 million, triggering the first snapshot under its [email protected] incentive program. The program allocated 333,333 milestone tokens for the first distribution, which unlock and convert to NEAR once its three-day volume-weighted average price reaches at least $3.33.
Intents volume nears $30 billion, with Zcash in the mix
NEAR Intents, which lets users request cross-chain swaps that market makers compete to execute, reached about $29.3 billion in cumulative volume and $842 million over the past seven days as of Monday. Privacy-focused Zcash wallet ZODL was its third-largest referral source by volume over the preceding 24 hours, generating about $3.8 million across 458 transactions. A swap involving roughly $613,000 worth of ZEC also ranked among the largest transactions the explorer displayed for that period.
Bitwise research analyst Camran Khosravi said Near and Zcash are "complements," arguing that Near gives ZEC holders confidential cross-chain infrastructure and access to liquidity. He also cautioned that NEAR Intents' total value locked can rise when the price of ZEC already held within the system increases, even without new deposits.
Near has extended its privacy focus beyond trading, too. In July, NEAR AI introduced staking-based payments that let users stake NEAR to receive credits for confidential AI inference and agent hosting while retaining ownership of the underlying tokens.
Source: Cointelegraph
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