NEAR token surges up to 80 percent in a week

NEAR Protocol's native token rose roughly 74 to 80 percent over the past week, trading around $4.20 to $4.29 on Monday, outpacing a broader cryptocurrency market that gained about 6 percent over the same period, according to CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap data. The rally coincided with a series of privacy-focused product announcements from the network. On Thursday, Near Protocol said deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading through near.com had become confidential by default, a feature designed to obscure the link between a trader's funding wallet and a dedicated Hyperliquid trading account. On the same day, Near said near.com's confidential total value locked had crossed $70 million, triggering the first snapshot under its NEAR3.33 incentive program. The program allocated 333,333 milestone tokens for the first distribution, with those tokens set to unlock and convert to NEAR when the token's three-day volume-weighted average price reaches at least $3.33. NEAR Intents, which lets users request crosschain swaps while market makers compete to execute them, reached about $29.