Overview
- NEAR’s token jumped roughly 26–29% in a 24‑hour span on Friday as a concentrated short squeeze near $1.72 forced about $5.8 million of short liquidations and propelled the price through a multi‑year descending trendline.
- Derivatives and trading metrics surged with 24‑hour volumes reported between about $825 million and nearly $1 billion and open interest flipping positive, signaling heavy leveraged positioning that amplified the move.
- The project rolled out and highlighted specific features this week, including Trezu’s Confidential Treasuries for private on‑chain multisig and payments, NEAR AI’s automatic PII anonymization for prompts to closed models, and dynamic resharding planned in Network Upgrade 2.13 for June.
- On‑chain user metrics tell a different story: daily active addresses fell from nearly 3 million earlier in 2026 to about 266,000 even as protocol changes cut annual inflation from 5% to 2.5% and redirected fees toward token buybacks.
- Market watchers warn of risks from crowded leverage and macro headwinds even as analysts point to bullish technical setups and Nvidia’s strong earnings for AI sentiment; attention now turns to whether the June upgrade and rising real use will sustain the rally.