Author: 0x_Zhuang Compiled by: Vernacular Blockchain A month and a half ago, I began heavily dollar-cost averaging into $NEAR Some people asked me how I was able to spot it ahead of its recent surge in attention Looking back, my investment analysis framework has actually always been relatively simple: Narrative, Fundamentals, and Who's behind it I once thought NEAR was one of the few projects that could cover almost all three of these elements, but after digging deeper into its latest developments, my conviction became even stronger I gradually realized that NEAR is by no means just another ordinary L1 competing for liquidity It is positioning itself as the underlying infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI), privacy, and cross-chain finance, and I believe the market is still severely undervaluing it Here's why: 1. The narrative is beginning to converge deeply My initial interest in NEAR came from the fact that it simultaneously hit the two strongest narratives in crypto: Privacy and AI With the strong comeback of $ZEC, NEAR Intents has become one of the core channels for cross-chain ZEC liquidity; when I first did my research, its ZEC transaction volume had already surpassed $2.2 billion Now, with Confidential Intents and its integration with Hyperliquid, NEAR is riding the trend into privacy-focused perpetual contract trading Bitwise's latest research report also pointed out that Confidential Intents account for more than 50% of the total value held in the Intents protocol Privacy is no longer just a verbal narrative; real spot buying demand has already taken shape 2. Every chain will become NEAR's L2 This is the most intriguing part of the entire investment thesis While other blockchains are still engaged in internal competition for users and on-chain liquidity, NEAR is building the infrastructure that connects them all Robinhood Chain recently completed integration with NEAR Intents and near.com, enabling seamless cross-chain trading across more than 30 networks and over 180 assets Add to that Hyperliquid perpetual contracts and Ondo's tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs Users do not need to care which blockchain they are currently on and can directly access crypto assets, traditional stocks, and derivatives NEAR has essentially completely abstracted away the underlying blockchain It no longer competes with individual public chain ecosystems, but instead continuously benefits by enabling interconnection Admittedly, ecosystem integration alone cannot directly guarantee revenue, but this landscape is far grander than that of an ordinary L1 simply fighting over TVL 3. On-chain fundamentals have already exploded across the board When I first started accumulating, NEAR Intents' cumulative processed volume was around $25 billion And according to the latest on-chain snapshot I tracked: Cumulative transaction volume exceeds $33 billion Transaction volume over the past 30 days reached $4.76 billion Intents TVL surpassed $223 million Cumulative total fees exceeded $53 million Fees captured over the past 30 days reached $7.28 million Net income over the past 30 days reached $2.15 million Calculated at the current 30-day annualized run rate, annualized total fees are about $87 million, and annualized net income is about $26 million For a project that is still widely regarded by the market as an ordinary L1, this performance is already quite impressive With near.com launching spot, perpetuals, and wallet functions based on Intents, the ecosystem has gained another powerful entry point for customer acquisition and fee capture User growth → trading volume expansion → increased revenue → potential token buybacks strengthened This is exactly the growth flywheel I value extremely highly 4. The token economics model has become even more attractive This may be one of the most undervalued catalysts in the entire investment thesis NEAR has already cut its annual token inflation rate in half from 5% to 2.5%, directly reducing new issuance by 50% Since February, NEAR's share of Intents protocol fees has also been directly used for public buybacks of $NEAR in the secondary market And a proposal to further reduce annual inflation to 1.6% is currently being advanced Lower inflation, continuously growing protocol revenue, and token buybacks driven by real revenue 5. Decentralized AI may be the biggest potential opportunity At present, the vast majority of AI tokens in crypto are still stuck in a stage of pure conceptual hype Very few projects can tightly bind real AI applications with token utility NEAR is very likely to be the exception that breaks the mold Its co-founder @ilblackdragon is one of the co-authors of the foundational paper that drove the birth of modern large language models, "Attention Is All You Need" Today, NEAR AI is building a privacy inference and decentralized compute network Its logic is very pure: Break complete dependence on centralized cloud giants and let independent GPU compute nodes contribute compute to the network NEAR AI's Confidential GPU Marketplace uses trusted execution environments (TEE) to protect AI tasks and data, and verifies the authenticity of the operating environment through hardware attestation NEAR defines it as the first TEE-secured compute network designed specifically for enterprise- and government-grade AI tasks Decentralized compute itself is not rare, but combining independent compute nodes with confidential, verifiable execution mechanisms offers enormous imaginative potential And this is exactly where blockchain can truly deliver value: Coordinating independent compute nodes, payment settlement, staking, and economic incentives without the intervention of a centralized manager At present, even Venice ($VVV) has integrated NEAR AI's confidential inference infrastructure More critically, NEAR AI has launched token-staking-based inference and AI Agent hosting access Users only need to stake $NEAR to continuously obtain AI compute credits while retaining ownership of the staked tokens This gives NEAR a brand-new source of substantive token demand beyond on-chain transaction fees and investment speculation 6. The launch of the Bitwise ETF and historical backing On September 29, Bitwise officially launched the first U.S. spot NEAR ETF (ticker: $NRR) And on October 7, it released an in-depth investment research report, "NEAR in Plain English" The logic behind it is very clear and intuitive: The crypto ecosystem is highly fragmented across hundreds of independent blockchains, while AI compute is increasingly monopolized by centralized giants NEAR Intents solves liquidity fragmentation between chains, while NEAR AI is building a verifiable private AI foundation Together, NEAR is ultimately expected to become the core execution layer for autonomously operating AI Agents Also worth noting is Bitwise's outstanding historical track record in operating crypto ETFs: $BITB — Bitcoin ETF Launched in January 2024 Ranked among the 25 fastest ETPs in history to surpass $1 billion in AUM Assets surpassed $2 billion in about two months As of October 2026, AUM reached about $3.1 billion $BSOL — Solana staking ETF Launched in October 2025 Surpassed $500 million in AUM in just 18 trading days after listing As of October 2026, AUM reached about $1.2 billion $NRR — NEAR ETF Launched on September 29, 2026 Early AUM has already reached about $60 million Provides spot NEAR exposure with a staking yield component Although AUM is not entirely equivalent to net inflows, and the popularity of past products cannot 100% guarantee that NEAR will replicate the same trajectory Bitwise's ability to attract traditional capital into crypto assets has been repeatedly proven Now, institutional investors have a legitimate U.S.-listed channel to directly gain NEAR exposure without complex wallet management or self-custody I believe this will be a highly significant long-term catalystProvides spot NEAR exposure with a staking yield component Although AUM is not entirely equivalent to net inflows, and the past popularity of products cannot fully guarantee that NEAR will replicate the same trajectory But Bitwise's ability to attract traditional capital into crypto assets has been repeatedly proven Now, institutional investors have a legitimate U.S.-listed channel to gain direct exposure to NEAR without complex wallet management or self-custody I think this will be a highly significant long-term catalyst 7. The risk-reward ratio still shows extremely high asymmetry (Asymmetric) This is probably the point I am most bullish on AI startups that have already validated PMF (product-market fit) and generate stable revenue often have primary-market valuations in the tens of billions of dollars At the time of my comparative analysis, NEAR's market cap was hovering at only around $5 billion Imagine a public chain that combines: AI underlying infrastructure, confidential inference, decentralized compute, cross-chain settlement, RWA tokenized assets, and a real-money buyback mechanism Obviously, crypto tokens cannot be directly equated with equity in AI companies But if NEAR can effectively capture the enormous demand brought by AI compute and cross-chain financial settlement, I believe the market's pricing logic for it will ultimately undergo a fundamental shift Especially since most market participants still view it as just another ordinary L1 ·8. Finally, look at who is standing behind it As early as July this year, I listened to an hour-long WSH podcast with Mert Near the end of the episode, he mentioned three positions he was heavily allocated to at the time: $ZEC, $SOL and finally $NEAR, which he regarded as a dark horse At that point in time, almost no one in the market was paying attention here. In just a few months: Naval began retweeting NEAR-related tweets Mert has repeatedly and clearly expressed his bullish view in public Robinhood Chain, Hyperliquid, and Ondo have successively integrated into NEAR's financial system, with more integrations on the way Bitwise even directly launched a spot ETF and published a detailed bullish research report I never blindly follow along just because well-known figures are bullish But when narrative, fundamentals, token economics, and traditional institutional funding channels resonate at the same time, the signal is already very clear Final thoughts Many people previously asked me where I got the confidence to aggressively build a large position more than a month ago My investment creed has always been very clear: once I have done thorough research and built sufficiently strong conviction, all that remains is entry timing and position management As long as the logic is closed-loop and conviction is firm, I will completely block out external noise and decisively build a large position through DCA (DCA) plus limit orders. As long as the core logic has not been falsified, I can fully withstand a 50% paper drawdown, but I absolutely do not want to miss a cross-cycle surge that could change one's social class A month and a half ago, I decisively bought NEAR at an average price of around $2, because I saw multiple core narratives beginning to converge here. Now, my bullish sentiment has become even stronger, because its fundamentals, product rollout, and token economic mechanism are being delivered at a visibly rapid pace AI, privacy, DeFi, continuously growing revenue, token buybacks, halved inflation, and the opening of institutional funding pipelines. All positive factors have formed a perfect closed loop within the same ecosystem The market is still only pricing it as an ordinary L1, but its future ceiling is far broader The stars are aligning And we are still in the early stage