- In the latest report, Grayscale researcher shared the factors behind the recent growth in the value of the NEAR token in May.
- In May, the cryptocurrency rose by about 115%, which helped its value rise $2.37 With a market value of $3.08 billion.
- The network has made significant developments to support its AI agent infrastructure, along with changes to its token science.
On May 29, Grayscale Investments released a report on NEAR Protocol, revealing the factors behind the cryptocurrency’s strong performance this month, namely privacy and artificial intelligence.
“NEAR had a strong showing in May as cryptocurrency markets began to recognize the project’s improved fundamentals. We expect NEAR to play a major role in AI agent trading, potentially driving value appreciation to its native token,” the report said. a report.
according to CoinMarketCapNEAR is up more than 77% in the last 30 days. The cryptocurrency is currently trading at approx $2.36 With a market value of $3.06 billion. Daily trading volume increased to approx $866 million.
What grayscale research says about NEAR
According to the official post, the NEAR token rose approximately 115% in May. Amid bearish sentiment in Cryptocurrency In the market, the rise in the value of the NEAR token makes it the best performing asset within the grayscale crypto sectors in that specific time period.
The NEAR blockchain network was introduced in 2020, but its adoption has recently increased following major developments on the network.
One of the major developments on the network is the latest product known as NEAR Intents. This product acts like an artificial intelligence agent for transactions made on the blockchain. In this feature, users just need to give their input by sharing their ‘intents’, and then, the feature will take all the complex decisions behind the scenes. It was launched in 2025, and to date, it has executed more than 25 million swaps with a cumulative value of about $20 billion.
Apart from this, there is another major development for AI agents, which is known as IronClaw. It is a NEAR AI agent framework, which comes with a secret inference infrastructure.
“AI agents need privacy tools as they become more deeply integrated into a company’s workflow. To address this, Near built IronClaw, an AI agent framework integrated with Near AI’s confidential inference infrastructure. This enables AI agents to execute tasks securely while ensuring that core data, credentials, and user activity remain private,” the report states.
The Grayscale report also mentioned the change in NEAR protocol tokens, which has improved the supply/demand balance of the cryptocurrency. In October 2025, the NEAR community made the decision to implement a plan to reduce the network inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%.
Then, in February 2026, NEAR made a major change to its revenue model. This helps the network distribute profits with NEAR tokens.
“With these core elements, Near aims to create the core infrastructure for agentic commerce — a platform that enables AI agents to seamlessly coordinate economic transactions while underlying users retain ownership of their data, assets, and identity,” Grayscale stated in the report.
In the past few months, many blockchains have geared up to enhance AI-related service, e.g Agent payments.
