NEAR Protocol NEAR

What NEAR actually is on-chain

For NEAR the project publishes a whitepaper, a public source repository and an active account as @nearprotocol. Both a written specification and readable code exist, which is a materially higher bar than most assets in this size range clear. None of it is a quality judgement about the asset; it is simply what can be independently checked before the chart is worth looking at.

Where NEAR sits in the market

At #45, NEAR Protocol sits in the middle of the large-cap band. This is the part of the table capital rotates through first: when the leaders stall, money moves down into names like NEAR, and when risk comes off it leaves here before it leaves the top ten. Spot spreads stay tight through both legs of that cycle; derivative funding does not, and perp basis is usually the earlier signal.

CryptoPingAi is currently streaming 7 live NEAR order books (Binance, Coinbase, Gate.io, MEXC, HTX, Upbit…). That is coverage in line with a #45 ranking: enough books to cross-check a quote, few enough that one of them can dominate price formation for hours at a time. Coinbase carries it, so NEAR is reachable from a regulated US venue — that widens the participant set and tends to keep the quote honest during US hours specifically. One of them is a Korean won market, so the Kimchi-premium spread between the KRW and USDT quote is visible on this page.

NEAR against its all-time high

NEAR is 78.7% off its $20.44 high (on 2022-01-16). At this depth the arithmetic turns against a recovery narrative: getting back to the record takes 4.69x, not a rebound. The high is better read as the marker of a completed cycle than as a target — most of the holders above spot are underwater by enough that their behaviour on the way up is supply, not demand. It was set 5 years ago. A reference that old says more about the cycle it belongs to than about the asset as it trades now.

NEAR across its historical range

The recorded range runs 38.8x, from $0.5268 to $20.44 — wide by the standards of traditional assets, moderate for this one's class.

NEAR trades roughly 8.27x above its record low of $0.5268 (on 2020-11-04). Recovery from the bottom has been limited, which means the low is still close enough to function as a real reference level rather than a historical footnote.

NEAR supply structure

There is no fixed maximum supply for NEAR. Total supply stands at 1.30 billion NEAR and essentially all of it — 100.0% — is circulating. With no locked treasury to unlock, dilution comes from protocol issuance over time rather than from a cliff on a vesting calendar, which tends to produce slow supply drift instead of discrete unlock shocks. With a supply in the billions, the quoted price is low enough that a single cent of movement is a large percentage swing; size your thresholds in percent, not in cents.

What kind of asset NEAR is

NEAR Protocol is a base-layer network, so NEAR is simultaneously the chain's security budget and its unit of account rather than a claim on a business. Only 42 tracked tokens are tagged to its ecosystem, so this is not primarily an application platform. Assets like this are valued on the base network's own use — settlement, payments or monetary demand — rather than on app-layer activity, which makes the app-ecosystem metrics people quote for smart-contract chains largely irrelevant here. It is secured by proof of stake, so a portion of the supply is bonded to validators at any moment and the float genuinely available to trade is smaller than the circulating figure implies; unstaking queues, not order books, set how fast that can change.

CoinGecko files NEAR under 10 categories, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Layer 1 (L1), Near Protocol Ecosystem, Alleged SEC Securities, FTX Holdings. Worth flagging from the metadata: NEAR has been named in SEC enforcement filings as an alleged security, and was held on FTX's balance sheet and remains part of the estate's distribution.

How to set a NEAR Protocol alert that is worth receiving

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) — quoted on 7 venues we stream — high dated 2022-01-16 — rank #45. On this profile the condition that carries signal is a two-sided price threshold beyond the recent band plus a 4-hour or daily RSI condition.

Full alert-design method: thresholds, RSI/MACD and volume conditions →