NEAR Protocol is making a comeback as the market gears up for the next crypto boom. With the rise of Web3 applications, AI advancements, and scalability, NEAR is ticking all the right boxes. The big question remains: Can NEAR double its price by 2026, or is the market overestimating its potential?
NEAR is currently trading around $1.66, far below its all-time high of $20.41 established in January 2022. With a market capitalization of $2.12 billion, the project ranks within the top 30 cryptocurrencies, with a circulating supply of 1.28 billion tokens. The daily trading volume of $214 million reflects adequate liquidity, but technical indicators remain mixed.
The year 2025 looks to be contrasted for NEAR. After peaking at $9 in early 2024, the protocol suffered a severe correction down to $2. The price action reveals consolidation within a tight range between $1.90 and $3.40, without genuine bullish momentum. Analysts anticipate a continuation of the bearish movement toward the critical support at $1.05 by December 2025.
This price level presents major technical interest. Indeed, a significant rally launched from this zone in late 2024, creating a potential demand zone. If institutional buyers position themselves again at this support, NEAR could initiate a trend reversal. In the most optimistic scenario, some projections suggest a climb toward $6.75 during 2025, though this scenario requires a radical shift in market sentiment.
The NEAR Protocol ecosystem is banking on interoperability to differentiate itself. The integration of Chain Signatures now allows developers to interact with Solana and TON directly from NEAR, eliminating traditional barriers between blockchains. This technical innovation represents a competitive advantage over more siloed layer 1 protocols.
NEAR’s sharding technology, dubbed Nightshade, continues to evolve with progressive improvements in throughput and scalability. The network can theoretically process 100,000 transactions per second, a figure that rivals traditional infrastructures. This technical capacity could attract more DeFi projects and dApps if the overall altcoin market rebounds.
Institutional adoption remains modest compared to competitors like Avalanche or Polygon. The number of daily active addresses stagnates around 500,000, a decent level but insufficient to justify a price explosion in the short term. The development of the Gaming and NFT ecosystem on NEAR is progressing slowly, with some notable projects but without the viral effect observed on other chains.
The price forecast models for NEAR rely on several assumptions: global crypto market recovery, growing dApp adoption, and successful integration of cross-chain functionalities. For 2026, the expected range is established between $3.70 and $11.80, with an average price around $7.75.
The year 2027 could mark an acceleration with projections between $5.32 and $18.28. This period would potentially coincide with a new crypto bull cycle, historically observed every four years. Analysts from Priceprediction.net are targeting $28.62 as early as 2025, an estimate that appears excessively optimistic given current price action.
Projections for 2028-2030 naturally become more speculative. The bullish scenario suggests $71.78 by 2030, implying a market capitalization of $92 billion with the current supply. To reach this level, NEAR would need to capture a significant share of the smart contract market and establish itself as a reference infrastructure for decentralized applications. DigitalCoinPrice adopts a more conservative approach with $14.80 by the end of 2025, reflecting persistent macroeconomic uncertainties.
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