NEAR Protocol’s native token surged 15% over the past 24 hours to trade around $2.8, continuing a strong upward trend that has seen its price double over the past month.

The latest rally is being driven in part by growing traction around NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain execution framework. The system enables users to specify desired outcomes—such as swapping USDC on Ethereum for SOL on Solana—while third-party solvers handle the transaction execution behind the scenes.

According to data from DefiLlama, NEAR Intents has processed more than $19 billion in total volume and generated roughly $32 million in fees, helping bring renewed attention to the ecosystem after a prolonged period of subdued price action.

Momentum picked up further after BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes highlighted NEAR, Hyperliquid’s HYPE, and ZEC as a “holy trinity” in crypto, adding that the rally still has significant room to run.

Earlier in the month, NEAR had already climbed about 30% as traders rotated back into tokens linked to artificial intelligence and blockchain infrastructure. Institutional interest has also been building, with the Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP in Europe growing to approximately $40 million in assets under management after attracting $7 million in weekly inflows.

Investors are now focusing on an upcoming network upgrade scheduled for June, which will introduce dynamic resharding. This feature is designed to automatically scale the network by splitting shards based on demand, potentially enhancing performance during periods of high activity.

Despite the recent gains, NEAR remains significantly below its all-time high of nearly $20 reached in 2022.

NEAR is a layer-1 blockchain built for decentralized applications, AI-driven use cases, and cross-chain functionality. It operates on a proof-of-stake consensus model and aims to simplify blockchain interactions while supporting high throughput through its sharding architecture.