NEAR Protocol (NEAR) jumped roughly 25% in 24 hours to about $2.20, the steepest one-day gain among major tokens on May 22.
NEAR Protocol Rallies 25%
The Layer 1 token led a broad market that otherwise slumped, with the total crypto market cap slipping to $2.58 trillion as roughly 78% of the top 200 coins lost value over the same day.
NEAR traded near $2.20 at press time, far above the $1.53 level it touched on May 11.
Volume data points to genuine conviction behind the move rather than a brief spike. Unique participants climbed 87% to 1,413 since Thursday, and weekly performance now sits up 37% from the $1.57 print recorded a week earlier.
Bitcoin (BTC), by contrast, eased 0.44% to $77,482, while Ethereum (ETH) dipped 0.32% to $2,127. NEAR's outperformance against both stood out on a red day.
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AI Roadmap Drives Momentum
Analysts tie the run to NEAR's 2026 roadmap, which reorients the network around artificial intelligence, decentralized trading, and user-owned data.
The protocol wants to grow NEAR Intents, its cross-chain swap layer, into a leading venue for on-chain transactions.
NEAR Intents recently expanded support to more than 100 tokens.
Co-founder Illia Polosukhin, one of the original authors of the research paper behind modern AI models, has framed NEAR as the execution layer for an open AI economy.
That pitch matters because the network already reports AI tools serving over 100 million users. Pairing scalable infrastructure with real demand gives the rally a fundamental anchor that earlier speculative spikes lacked, though on-chain revenue still trails the project's headline metrics.
NEAR Price History in 2026
NEAR entered 2026 under pressure, briefly dropping below $1 to $0.844 before rebounding toward the $1 demand zone.
The token has whipsawed since. It surged 45% after NEARCON 2026 in late February, climbed 22% in early March, then drifted back toward $1.50 through April and early May as bearish sentiment returned.
Friday's break above $2 marks the first time NEAR has reclaimed that resistance level in months, a threshold analysts have long flagged as the gate to a wider recovery.
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