MyNearWallet Shuts Down on October 31

MyNearWallet, one of the oldest browser wallets for the NEAR protocol, is being shut down on October 31, 2026. Your NEAR balances will still sit on the blockchain afterwards, but the route you have been reaching them through in the browser disappears. Do nothing and you lose no balance, then, only convenient access to it, and you will have to claw that access back later through your recovery data the hard way.

The deadline falls on a day when NEAR is the only one of the 25 largest cryptocurrencies in positive territory. The two belong together: the price brings new holders into the network, and many of them land through search results on precisely the wallet that closes in a good three weeks.

MyNearWallet in one sentence: what a browser wallet for NEAR actually does

A browser wallet, often also called a web wallet, is a website that manages your private key in the browser and uses it to sign transfers for your account. It does not hold the coins, because those sit in the blockchain's account balance. What is held is the key that allows that balance to be moved.

In the jargon, that distinction is called self-custody: you hold the key yourself, no company holds it for you. MyNearWallet works on that principle, so it is not a custodian, and precisely for that reason a shutdown here is something other than at an exchange. An exchange that closes is sitting on your money. A browser wallet that closes only takes the interface with it.