NEAR rises 54% on short squeeze, AI rotation, CowSwap tie-up

NEAR Protocol traded around $2.41 on Sunday, up roughly 54% over seven days and about 13% in the past 24 hours. The price moved higher after the token cleared technical resistance, triggering liquidation of short positions worth millions and forcing buybacks that accelerated the advance.

Derivatives data show several trading sessions wiped out millions in short positions. Futures volume increased sharply and open interest rose above $720 million, reflecting both short covering and new leveraged long positions entered during the rally.

NEAR’s recent headlines include its AI positioning. The project markets itself as ‘the blockchain for AI,’ describing the network as an execution layer where AI agents can hold assets, make decisions and transact across chains. NEAR joined an industry acceleration program and on May 20 rolled out a feature that strips passwords and personally identifiable information from prompts before they go to AI models.

CowSwap expanded to Solana using NEAR Intents as backend infrastructure and added Intents as part of a shift into bridge aggregation. NEAR Intents routes liquidity across more than 35 networks and handles routing, signing and execution while users define desired outcomes.

Protocol changes have altered supply dynamics. A halving upgrade completed in late 2025 cut maximum annual inflation from about 5% to roughly 2.5% and adjusted staking rewards. The network has no remaining large token unlock cliffs more than five years after mainnet launch. In February 2026 a fee-conversion mechanism began routing fees generated by NEAR Intents into NEAR purchases; some traders view that as an added demand signal while conversion rates and usage are available on protocol dashboards.

NEAR targeted a Dynamic Resharding upgrade for June 2026. The upgrade is designed to enable automatic scaling to handle demand spikes and to increase transaction throughput toward levels used by traditional payment networks.

Market metrics during the rally showed a market capitalization near $3.1 billion and 24-hour trading volume above $1 billion. The token’s all-time high remains about $20.44 from 2022. Earlier in May, NEAR had recovered from a monthly low near $1.25 to above $2.15 by May 22 before the breakout.

Metrics that market participants are watching include Intents transaction volume, active user counts, solver participation and application retention as measures of adoption and cross-chain activity.