NEAR rose over 45% in three days, gaining insight into the privacy trading business behind the narrative changes

Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

On September 18, NEAR briefly rose to $3.45, with a 24-hour increase of over 26%. Just three days prior, it closed at $2.34.

The market quickly summarized this round of trading as the "Plan to Hit $3.33." This figure comes from a confidential trading incentive recently triggered by NEAR: funds first enter a confidential account, rewards are then locked, and only after the price meets the criteria consecutively does it convert into tradable NEAR.

This is akin to using an options-like airdrop to bring product usage and price expectations to the forefront.

$3.33 Written into Reward Redemption Conditions

On September 17, near.com announced that locked assets in confidential mode (Near Intents) exceeded $70 million, and the first phase of the NEAR@3.33 incentive plan completed its snapshot.

Eligible users need to hold over $100 in assets in the confidential account and have completed at least one confidential exchange.

Once this condition is met, the project team will issue 333,333 milestone tokens, with a single wallet receiving a maximum of 2% of the total amount. However, these tokens cannot be sold in the market for the time being.

The rules require that the three-day volume-weighted average price of NEAR reaches or exceeds $3.33 before the milestone tokens can be converted to NEAR at a 1:1 ratio. Based on $3.33, the nominal value of this batch of rewards is approximately $1.11 million.

This also became one of the important catalysts for NEAR's spot price to break through $3.3.

A brief explanation: NEAR Intents is a cross-chain trading protocol launched by NEAR. Users only need to tell the system what asset they want to exchange for what asset, and market makers are responsible for finding quotes and completing settlements. The so-called "confidential mode" adds a privacy layer to this trading system.

Orders will enter NEAR's private shard, and the public trading pool cannot see the direction, quantity, or submission time of the trades. The purpose of the aforementioned NEAR@3.33 reward plan is very straightforward: to bring funds and trading frequency into this confidential mode.

The design of the three-day average price is also deliberate; a single intraday spike cannot complete the exchange, and the price needs to linger around $3.33. The activity first uses rewards to encourage users to deposit assets and complete trades, then uses redemption conditions to maintain attention beyond the snapshot.

Ordinary airdrops often face sell-offs on the redemption day, while NEAR separates the redemption and sale.

This activity is planned very cleverly and is good at creating market trends. The $1.11 million reward keeps the entire market focused on $3.33.

However, this reward cannot explain the more than $1 billion increase in NEAR's market capitalization within three days. Historical data from CoinGecko shows that NEAR's market capitalization rose from about $3.22 billion on September 15 to about $4.46 billion, an increase of over $1.2 billion. The value of the rewards only accounts for about 0.09% of the market cap increase.

The real work this money accomplished was bringing investors back to NEAR's product page. The funds subsequently revealed NEAR Intents' revenue data. The NEAR Revenue Dashboard shows that NEAR Intents generated approximately $5.01 million in total fees over the past 30 days, leaving about $1.58 million in net revenue.

Revenue comes from front-end fees, quote improvements, and partner access, no longer relying on traditional public chain gas fees.

Additionally, on-chain, there is a buyback multi-signature address that cumulatively holds about 1.158 million NEAR. A project that once could only discuss sharding and public chain performance now has monthly updated trading revenue. This is the more valuable change in this round of market activity.

When ZEC Purchase Orders Occurred Through NEAR

Confidential trading may easily become a new concept, but a set of whale transactions that appeared on September 9 gave it a concrete purpose.

Four addresses belonging to the same entity, which had been dormant for about six months, became active again, first buying approximately $33.37 million in ETH through CowSwap, and then taking out 2,500 ETH to exchange for 6,601.37 ZEC through NEAR Intents, worth about $8.21 million.

This set of transactions paid a service fee of 16.75 ETH, approximately $42,000. Large buyers are willing to pay this fee to ensure that the trading path is not publicly monitored. The order size, buying direction, and execution time are less exposed, reducing the chances of being front-run or having prices raised.

For NEAR, this transaction is more convincing than the number of airdrop participants. Users don't even need to understand the NEAR public chain first; the protocol completes settlements behind the cross-chain exchange and retains the fees.

Today we also reported that near.com has brought in perpetual contracts provided by Hyperliquid for market and liquidity into the confidential account. Users can deposit assets from different chains and open positions using the same account. Position size, entry price, and trading direction will not directly appear in the public trading pool.

Cross-chain exchanges typically complete and leave, while perpetual contracts will leave positions, margins, and continuously generated fees. Therefore, NEAR Intents has transitioned from an exchange tool into a trading account.

So, in this wave of old coins rising anew, you should pay more attention to the narrative changes, as this is the key catalyst supporting the short-term price increase:

NEAR has shifted towards confidential exchanges, perpetual contracts, and protocol revenue. The market, which previously viewed NEAR as an old public chain left over from the last round, is now beginning to see it as a privacy settlement channel behind cross-chain trading.