AI Protocol NEAR Surges Over 20% Intraday, Briefly Breaching $3.3 to Hit One-Year High

TradingKey - NEAR surges 24% to hit $3.3, setting a new high for nearly a year.

On September 18, public chain and AI protocol Near (NEAR) continued its recent momentum, surging 24% today and briefly touching $3.3, setting a new high since September 2025. Recently, NEAR's price has continued to rise, accumulating gains of over 100%, significantly outperforming the broader market and outpacing major coins such as Bitcoin (+18%) and Ethereum (+28%).

NEAR price chart, Source: TradingView

Recently, the total value locked (TVL) of Confidential Intents, a cross-chain privacy execution feature in the NEAR ecosystem, officially surpassed the $70 million mark, directly triggering the official "NEAR@3.33" rewards program launched in June this year, pointing to a potential airdrop reward.

On September 15, the official team successfully executed the snapshot of account data for the first round of Drop 1 and will allocate 333,333 milestone tokens to eligible users. However, these rewards will remain locked after distribution and can only be unlocked when the three-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of NEAR remains at or above $3.33 continuously, which has attracted a large number of ecosystem users and traders to lock up tokens to participate, creating direct spot buying pressure in the market.

The rise in NEAR's price was also influenced by the implementation of FOMC policy and new policy announcements from the U.S. SEC. Yesterday, after the Federal Reserve's September rate decision was finalized, the macroeconomic uncertainty suppressing high-risk assets overall receded, risk-off sentiment among macro funds cooled down, and risk appetite in the crypto market rebounded. Shortly thereafter, the SEC issued an innovation exemption statement, further driving the tokenization of U.S. stocks, while Bitcoin's price rose to around $77,000, triggering a general rebound in altcoins.

Notably, $3.3 is a strong resistance level for NEAR during its rallies in 2025, having failed to break through in five attempts. If it can effectively break through this level this time, it will completely open up upside potential, with the promise of a further rally of over 80% to around $6.