NEAR Protocol price is down 3.85% over the past 24 hours, consolidating just above the October 2023 low at $0.972. Intraday trading has ranged from $0.9658 to $1.02, with 24-hour volume at $96.33 million, up just 0.83% from yesterday.
The pullback comes as NEAR Protocol rolls out sweeping tokenomics changes and launches near.com, a unified cross-chain, AI-focused super app.
NEAR Protocol Rolls Out Fee Switch and Buyback Model as Intent Volume Scales
NEAR Protocol is restructuring its economic model after 5 years of 100% mainnet uptime, moving to a fully unlocked supply and cutting the maximum inflation rate to 2.5%. Governance is now live on-chain through the House of Stake, and protocol revenue is no longer abstract.
The key shift is the NEAR Intents fee switch, now live. Every swap across more than 35 connected networks routes fees back to the protocol, with payouts denominated in NEAR tokens. Revenue is directed toward buybacks and other supply management mechanisms. To date, Intents has already directed revenue to 2.1 million NEAR coins in buybacks and burns.
Intents has settled over $13 billion in cross-chain volume and currently processes roughly $3 billion in monthly trading activity. That flow matters because more volume feeds more fees; more fees feed more buybacks. The stated objective is a threshold where tokens removed from circulation exceed new issuance, creating a deflationary flywheel.
At the same time, near.com is positioning Near Protocol as a unified liquidity and commerce layer, combining cross-chain swaps, private transactions, and AI agent infrastructure. Confidential Mode on the private shard is live, with validators running inside TEEs and private accounts coexisting with public state. The Confidential GPU Marketplace, built on NEAR DCML, introduces encrypted compute for enterprise AI workloads.
NEAR Price Tests October 2023 Low as Descending Channel Compresses
NEAR price is trading around $1.053 at press time while currently testing $0.972, the October 2023 low that marked the bottom before the 2024 bull run. Price has descended within a clear channel, now compressing into that macro support.
According to R3N Research, the confluence is notable, as multi-year horizontal support at $0.972 meets the lower boundary of the descending channel, with price action described as deeply oversold.
The $1.80–$1.90 zone, once support, has already flipped to resistance, while $3.20–$3.50 remains the larger structural ceiling that would need to be reclaimed to alter the higher-timeframe narrative.
If $0.972 holds, the outlined path is a channel break and a recovery toward $2.90–$3.00 over the coming months. If it fails, historical support below is limited, as noted by the analyst. At the moment, NEAR Protocol price is sitting directly on what R3N calls a line in the sand.
