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.