NEAR, the native token of the Layer 1 (L1) blockchain Near Protocol, has risen to a one-month high after breaking a previous downtrend that saw the token hit a low of $4 on July 5. Currently trading at $5.93, NEAR has posted a significant 20% gain over the past week, moving it to the 19th position among top 100 cryptocurrencies.
This positive momentum has caught the attention of venture capital firm Pantera Capital, whose Managing Partner, Paul Veradittakit, has shared several reasons for the company’s optimistic stance on the NEAR Protocol and its growth potential.
Scalability solution amid the challenges of Bitcoin and Ethereum
Veradittakit took to social media on Thursday Highlight NEAR’s value proposition within the blockchain ecosystem.
Veradittakit noted that while Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have been at the forefront of the crypto technology “revolution,” with Bitcoin establishing itself as a store of value and Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), both face “challenges” in transaction scalability.
According to Pantera’s MP, NEAR Protocol plays a key role here in addressing these scalability issues while prioritizing developer engagement and user experience by offering a scalable and user-centric blockchain solution.
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NEAR distinguishes itself with the Thresholded Proof of Stake (TPoS) system and Nightshade sharding, which increases scalability and decentralization. These advances have paved the way for NEAR to reach important milestones, such as reaching $335 million Total value locked (TVL), an increase of 547% in just six months.
According to Veradittakit, such growth demonstrates NEAR’s traction and strategic effectiveness in the market. In addition, NEAR’s presence in the market is strengthened by key figures, including a 42% quarter-over-quarter increase in the number of daily active addresses, an increase in the number of transactions from 35 million to over 220 million, and a substantial increase the number of monthly active users from 2.9 million to 15 million.
NEAR and Crypto AI integration
Notably, NEAR is also positioning itself as a leader in the emerging cryptocurrency space artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, which has gained considerable strength, especially in the past year, due to the rise of companies such as Nvidia.
The NEAR team has emphasized on integrating AI through an open and decentralized framework, where user control over data and assets is at the forefront.
This has received recognition, as has NEAR announced as part of Grayscale’s AI Fund. The fund’s components and weightings include Bittensor at 2.92%, Filecoin at 30.59%, Livepeer at 8.64%, NEAR at 32.99% and Render at 24.86%.
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Finally, Veradittakit emphasized that NEAR’s success can be attributed to the leadership of its co-founders, Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, as Polosukhin’s expertise in AI and Skidanov’s technical knowledge have been “instrumental” in developing NEAR’s infrastructure .
Despite reaching the monthly high of $5.93 and a significant 300% gain since the beginning of the year, the token will need to break above the $8.28 level in the short term to break out of its downtrend structure.
However, with this progress and the adoption of AI-related tokens, NEAR could see further gains throughout the year, aided by the recovery of the broader market.
Featured image of DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com