NEAR token rises 28% in 24 hours amid AI and privacy upgrades

The NEAR Protocol token has surged dramatically over the past week, rising approximately 60% in a month and posting gains of over 28% in the last 24 hours alone to trade around $2.26. This rally has positioned NEAR as one of the top-performing large-capitalization altcoins, significantly outpacing broader market movements.

The price increase coincides with a series of technical upgrades and announcements from the NEAR ecosystem focused on artificial intelligence and privacy. Between May 20 and May 22, the protocol unveiled three key developments. Trezu launched Confidential Treasuries, a product for private on-chain treasury management supporting multisig wallets, payroll, and cross-chain payments across more than 35 blockchains. The protocol's official account reported $68 million moved confidentially through the system in the past month.

Separately, NEAR AI introduced on-device anonymization for prompts sent to external AI models like ChatGPT and Claude, aiming to protect sensitive data. The third and most expansive upgrade is the planned implementation of dynamic resharding, scheduled for June 2026. This mechanism is designed to allow the network to scale automatically by...