Near Protocol’s native token has jumped sharply this week as the network expands privacy-focused trading and related infrastructure. Over the past seven days, Near’s token traded around $4.29—up about 78.2%—according to CoinGecko, with CoinGecko also showing total cryptocurrency market capitalization up roughly 6% over the same period.
The rally appears tied to new privacy features launched for perpetual futures trading on near.com, alongside a growing ecosystem around Near Intents, a platform that coordinates cross-chain swaps by matching users with market makers.
Key takeaways
- CoinGecko data shows Near (NEAR) gained about 78% in seven days, outpacing a broader market that rose around 6%.
- Near says deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading on near.com are now confidential by default, obscuring the connection between funding wallets and Hyperliquid trading accounts.
- Near.com’s confidential TVL surpassed $70 million, triggering the first snapshot under the NEAR@3.33 incentive program.
- According to the NEAR Intents Explorer, cumulative volume has reached about $29.3 billion, with $842 million recorded over the last seven days.
Confidential perpetual futures trading becomes the default
Near’s push into privacy accelerated this week after the protocol said on Thursday that deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading through near.com are now confidential by default. In Near’s description, the feature is designed to hide the link between a trader’s funding wallet and a dedicated Hyperliquid trading account.
From an investor and user perspective, the practical effect is straightforward: traders who use near.com for perpetual futures can reduce exposure of wallet-to-account relationships that would otherwise be visible through on-chain flows or traceable account linkages. While the measure doesn’t necessarily prevent all forms of identification—market activity and other metadata can still reveal information—it directly targets a common privacy weakness in trading account structure.
The timing matters because the feature aligns with a broader industry narrative around privacy and confidentiality in finance. Near’s move effectively shifts attention from privacy as a niche value proposition toward privacy as a product feature for mainstream trading workflows.
Confidential TVL milestone and NEAR@3.33 incentives
On the same day, Near also reported that near.com’s confidential total value locked (TVL) crossed $70 million. The announcement said this milestone triggered the first snapshot under its NEAR@3.33 incentive program.
Near stated that the program set aside 333,333 milestone tokens for the first distribution. Under the program rules described in the release, the tokens unlock and convert to NEAR when the token’s three-day volume-weighted average price reaches at least $3.33.
This kind of condition can be significant for token-related expectations because it ties incentives to a price threshold rather than distributing immediately at the moment the TVL checkpoint is recorded. Traders and liquidity providers typically watch how these unlock mechanics may change selling pressure dynamics (for example, whether participants anticipate distributions once a price level is reached).
Near Intents keeps scaling volumes
Beyond trading privacy, Near’s ecosystem is also expanding through NEAR Intents, which enables users to request cross-chain swaps while market makers compete to execute them. On Monday, the NEAR Intents Explorer showed cumulative volume of roughly $29.3 billion.
The explorer also indicated $842 million in volume over the preceding seven days. For the prior 24 hours, privacy-focused Zcash wallet ZODL appeared as the third-largest referral source by volume, generating about $3.8 million across 458 transactions. The explorer also listed a large transaction involving roughly $613,000 worth of ZEC over the previous 24 hours.
While these figures reflect activity within the intent execution network rather than spot trading on a centralized exchange, they matter because higher intent volume can translate into stronger routing, execution competitiveness, and incentives for liquidity provision—factors that can make cross-chain execution more reliable for end users.
Why Zcash is showing up in the privacy narrative
Activity around ZEC in NEAR Intents has drawn commentary from researchers inside the ecosystem. Bitwise research analyst Camran Khosravi said Near and Zcash are “complements,” arguing that Near provides confidential cross-chain infrastructure and access to liquidity for ZEC holders.
Khosravi also cautioned about how TVL metrics can behave. He noted that NEAR Intents’ TVL can rise when the price of ZEC already held within the system increases, even if new deposits do not occur. That distinction is important for interpreting growth: TVL moving up doesn’t always mean user inflows are increasing at the same pace.
Near has continued extending its privacy focus beyond trading. In July, it introduced NEAR AI staking-based payments through near.ai, allowing users to stake NEAR to receive credits for confidential AI inference and agent hosting while keeping ownership of the underlying tokens.
Taken together, these announcements place privacy at the center of Near’s product strategy—spanning trading account confidentiality, cross-chain swap execution, and even confidential compute workflows.
Looking ahead, market participants are likely to watch two things closely: whether near.com’s confidential trading features and the NEAR@3.33 incentive mechanics translate into sustained liquidity growth, and how privacy-oriented assets like ZEC continue to contribute to NEAR Intents’ volume without relying solely on price-driven TVL increases.
