NEAR Rises 30% After Bitwise Inflows, Bermuda AI Deal

NEAR token surged 30% to an intraday high of $2.25 on Friday after $3 million of inflows into Bitwise’s NEAR Staking ETP and a Near AI announcement of a partnership with Bermuda to deploy AI-powered public services. The token is up more than 70% since the start of May and briefly pushed Near’s market capitalization above $2.9 billion.

The immediate price move followed two developments cited by market participants. The European-based Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP recorded $3 million of net inflows, taking assets under management to $36 million. Near AI disclosed a deal with Bermuda to build public services using AI capabilities. On the daily chart, NEAR rose from about $1.73 to $2.25, extending weekly gains past 40% from levels near $1.30 in early May.

Near Protocol has promoted an architecture focused on chain abstraction and agent-enabled commerce, aimed at supporting AI agents that can execute autonomous transactions. The project plans a dynamic resharding upgrade in June designed to let the blockchain automatically scale and split data loads in real time to increase throughput for high-frequency agent activity.

Institutional interest was visible in the Bitwise ETP inflows, which brought the fund’s assets under management to $36 million. Those inflows represent regulated, Europe-based demand for NEAR exposure through a staking exchange-traded product rather than direct purchases on cryptocurrency venues.

Some industry critics argue the protocol’s coordination-layer thesis overestimates how network-level features capture value. They note that technical upgrades can go unused without broad developer adoption, enterprise integrations and distribution. Critics add that large platform incumbents could replicate or absorb features such as chain abstraction. They also warn that intense solver competition on agent-enabled networks may drive execution fees very low, which could make transaction volume less economically meaningful if fees fall faster than token emission adjustments.

Near’s team has highlighted infrastructure upgrades and partnerships in its public communications. Market participants will be watching the June resharding rollout and subsequent developer activity to track whether technical changes coincide with increased adoption and real-world use cases.