The fourth quarter of 2025 emerged as a transformative period for NEAR Protocol, according to Nansen’s latest quarterly analysis. The blockchain achieved several milestones, including a publicly verifiable one million transactions per second (TPS) benchmark, growth in its cross-chain intents framework, and the introduction of AI infrastructure.
These advancements underscore NEAR’s evolution into a foundation for the agentic economy, where autonomous AI agents handle complex financial and operational tasks.
Central to this progress was the rapid maturation of NEAR Intents, which has become the leading cross-chain execution layer for decentralized finance and automated payments.
Surpassing $7 billion in cumulative volume across more than 13 million swaps involving over 125 assets on 25+ blockchains, the platform served 1.6 million unique users.
Its solver-based architecture enables users to specify desired outcomes, with specialized entities managing the intricate cross-chain execution.
New integrations with exchanges like CoW Swap and ThorSwap, along with support for networks including Starknet, Monad, and Bitcoin Cash, further expanded its reach.
This growth reflects increasing demand for seamless, intent-driven interoperability.
On-chain metrics revealed robust activity, with the network handling 54 million transactions and engaging 20 million users throughout the quarter.
Daily averages reached 4.2 million transactions, bolstered by the dominant HOT Wallet, which accounted for 53.3% of activity with 28.8 million transactions.
Native infrastructure saw an 8.4% quarter-over-quarter increase in activity, while Tether stablecoin usage climbed 29%, signaling broader adoption and diversification.
Technically, NEAR strengthened its core protocol significantly.
It demonstrated the 1M TPS feat using actual code on consumer hardware across 70 shards.
The shard count expanded to nine with full dynamic resharding capabilities, sharded smart contracts went live, and the validator set grew to 500 nodes.
These enhancements boost scalability, decentralization, and overall capacity.
The NEAR AI Cloud marked another first, offering hardware-enforced confidential inference backed by cryptographic proofs, ideal for sensitive agent operations.
Partnerships, such as with ADI Chain for the TravAI travel platform using intents for automated bookings and payments, illustrate real-world applications.
Developer resources advanced with new SDKs, documentation, and wallet features like social logins.
Tokenomics received a major boost via the Halving Upgrade, slashing maximum annual inflation from 5% to 2.5%.
With fully unlocked supply and a live fee-sharing mechanism through Intents, NEAR’s economics appear more sustainable.
Governance progressed with the House of Stake launch, introducing community-driven decisions weighted by staked tokens.
Institutional interest surged, highlighted by a $120 million investment from OceanPal Inc. for AI initiatives and listings of trusts and ETPs by Grayscale, Bitwise, and others.
The NEAR Legion community expanded to over 4,100 members.
Looking ahead to Q1 2026, NEAR plans key releases including IronClaw for confidential agents, enhanced private intents, a unified near.com super-app spanning 35+ chains, and an AI agent marketplace. These developments position NEAR as a vertically integrated service provider in agent-driven commerce, ready for accelerated adoption in 2026.
