The direction of funds after the airdrop unlock, whether product implementation can further increase revenue, and how long the privacy theme can remain hot will determine whether this wave of increase is a short-term pulse or a long-term turning point.

Written by: Jae, PANews

On September 21, Bitcoin surpassed $84,000, and the cryptocurrency market experienced a wave of broad increases. Among them, NEAR's performance is particularly noteworthy. As of now, NEAR has broken through $4.3, rising over 20% in the past 24 hours.

At the same time, the total TVL of the Near network also rose to $256 million, setting a historical high. In just one week, two major product advances, the implementation of the milestone incentive mechanism and the launch of privacy perpetual contracts, were realized in succession, coupled with the resonance of market sentiment in the privacy track, together boosting this wave of market movement.

TVL Sets Historical High, Incentive Mechanism + Privacy Derivatives as Growth Drivers

The main reason for NEAR's excess returns is its two continuously implemented driving factors.

Milestone Snapshot Trigger, Incentive Mechanism Links TVL Growth with Coin Price

The primary catalyst for short-term rapid inflow of funds is the first round of snapshots from the "NEAR@3.33" milestone incentive plan.

On September 17, Near announced that the total TVL of its Confidential Intents protocol surpassed the $70 million threshold, now approaching $98 million, and officially activated the long-awaited milestone incentives.

According to the rules, the official will allocate 333,333 milestone tokens to addresses that maintain a balance of privacy assets above $100 on near.com and complete at least one cross-chain privacy exchange, while setting a maximum allocation cap of 2% for a single wallet to avoid the monopoly of liquidity by whales.

The innovation of this mechanism lies in its market game design: unlike the traditional airdrop model of "take it and dump it," the milestone tokens obtained by users will initially be locked. Whether they can be exchanged for tradable spot chips at a 1:1 ratio will depend on whether the volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of NEAR tokens can remain consistently stable at $3.33 or above for three consecutive days.

In other words, for users to truly receive tradable airdrop incentives, they must align with the ecosystem, jointly promote TVL growth, and maintain the coin price at a critical point. Essentially, "NEAR@3.33" is similar to a "call option with a strike price of $3.33."

In the short term, the effect of "NEAR@3.33" is quite remarkable. Data from DeFiLlama shows that since September 17, the new inflow of funds into the Near protocol has approached $65 million, entering a peak period of capital inflows.

Default Privacy Derivatives Launched, Integrated Hyperliquid Liquidity

The milestone incentive is the fuse for short-term sentiment, while the product launch of privacy perpetual contracts provides deeper structural support for this wave of market movement.

On September 18, near.com officially launched the derivative trading function of default privacy (Confidential by Default), with the underlying liquidation engine connected to the leading Perp DEX Hyperliquid. This product addresses a long-standing pain point in on-chain derivative trading: the publicly transparent order book exposes the holdings, entry points, and stop-loss strategies of whales and institutions on the public ledger, making them vulnerable to MEV attacks and front-running.

NEAR’s solution is to decouple the trading accounts from their holding information on the underlying order book through dedicated privacy sharding and cross-chain bridging technology based on Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), shielding sensitive data such as source of funds and account information from external observers.

More critically, NEAR did not spend massive funds to create liquidity from scratch, but instead connected to Hyperliquid's deep order book with a monthly trading volume exceeding $240 billion, as well as more than 50 mainstream perpetual contract markets that support up to 40 times leverage. With the multi-chain routing capability of NEAR Intents, traders can use assets spread across different heterogeneous chains as initial margin, and the system will automatically settle them as USDC margin in the background.

This model also reshapes Near’s revenue structure: the front end at near.com will continuously capture transaction service fees through Hyperliquid’s Builder Code, transforming Near into a "full-chain derivative gateway" with self-sustaining capabilities.

In fact, this is another application scenario extension of Near's "chain abstraction" route: users do not need to connect cross-chain bridges, different chain Gas, or asset conversion; they only need to express their trading goals through Intents, and the underlying infrastructure will automatically complete cross-chain execution and settlement. According to official disclosures, the cumulative trading volume of NEAR Intents has reached $29.8 billion, covering more than 35 public chains.

Yield Farmers + Privacy Rotation, NEAR 'Borrows' Money to Rise

Amidst the frenzy of the market, attention to risks and boundaries is equally crucial. This wave of increase is supported by both product implementations and is fueled by sentiment and speculation.

1. Risk of "Yield Farmers" Withdrawal

Among the $70 million that flowed into Confidential Intents, a significant portion could consist of speculative funds aiming to profit from milestone airdrops. Once the snapshot is completed, the VWAP conditions are met, and the tokens are unlocked, yield farmers may quickly take profits, triggering a synchronous decline in TVL and coin price.

2. Limited Value Capture Scale

NEAR's official income dashboard shows that in the past 30 days, NEAR's total revenue was approximately $5.24 million, with net income around $1.82 million. Although some of the net income generated by Intents will be used for repurchasing NEAR, the token release continues, and the gap between the repurchase rate and the inflation rate is still expanding, leading to limited effects of repurchase offsets.

Moreover, Near's current income scale accounts for less than 1% of the total market capitalization, which is also insufficient to support the continued increase in token prices.

3. Thematic Rotation of Privacy Narratives

NEAR's increase is also highly correlated with the privacy narrative driven by ZEC.

Zcash's on-chain wallet Zodl uses Near Intents for ZEC privacy exchanges to reduce friction. It can be said that Near serves as the infrastructure for ZEC's usage path. On the other hand, Grayscale's research on ZEC has also pointed out that the privacy theme has yet to be fully priced in.

This creates a logical chain: ZEC rises → market re-evaluates the "privacy" theme → "privacy" assets rotate → Near is the infrastructure for Zcash + hits the sentiment window → NEAR price rises.

If this judgment holds, then a portion of the funds recently flowing into NEAR may also belong to thematic rotation funds.

However, NEAR's Confidential Intents is merely a set of privacy trading infrastructure and not a pure privacy coin. Once the privacy narrative cools off and market risk tolerance declines, some of the premium gained by NEAR recently may face retracement.

Additionally, the entire cryptocurrency market has been in an expansion cycle over the past 30 days. In comparison, Ethereum's TVL has grown by over $5.7 billion, Solana's TVL by over $900 million, and Base's TVL by approximately $700 million. Although Near's TVL growth rate of 63% far exceeds the previous three, the actual absolute growth scale is only $165 million, still significantly lagging behind mainstream public chains.

In summary, Near's TVL growth is also benefiting from the collective shift in risk preferences across the whole market, rather than being an isolated event.

Behind NEAR's significant rise is the combined effect of innovative incentive mechanisms, product implementations being realized, and resonance of sentiment in the sector.

The "options-style airdrop" binds user interests and ecosystem growth together, avoiding the one-time selling pressure seen in traditional airdrops; while the privacy perpetual contracts leverage the underlying capabilities of chain abstraction onto high-value derivative tracks, following a streamlined route towards "accessing leading ecosystems."

However, the weight of sentiment and speculation in the short-term market should not be overlooked. The direction of funds after the airdrop unlock, whether product implementation can further increase revenue, and how long the privacy theme can remain hot will determine whether this wave of increase is a short-term pulse or a long-term turning point.