- NEAR Protocol is a leading and fast-growing Ethereum-killer.
- It uses the Nightshade sharding technology to boost speeds and lower costs.
- NEAR could soon tumble by at least 25%.
The NEAR price has been under pressure this week. It has fallen in the past five straight days and moved to the lowest level since January 10th. It has dropped by over 28% below the highest level in January. As a result, the total market cap of the token has declined to about $9.16 billion.
Why has NEAR retreated?
For starters, the NEAR protocol is a leading blockchain project that seeks to be a viable alternative to Ethereum.
Its aim is to help developers launch decentralized applications (DAPPs) that perform better than those built using Ethereum.
It achieves this through what it calls Nightshade Sharding technology. Unlike in Ethereum where blocks are processed in full, NEAR breaks them down into parallel blocks known as shards. As smaller blocks, these shards help to improve the speed of the network.
NEAR Protocol is not yet using this technology. It launched Phase 0 of the rollout in November last year. And this year, the protocol will launch phase 1 and 2.
For a long time, NEAR was a relatively unknown blockchain platform that was among the top 50 of the biggest coins in the world. Recently, however, the embrace of the sharding technology and the headlines that ensued have made NEAR one of the most popular coins in the world.
Today, the total market cap of all NEAR tokens is at $9.1 billion, making it the 21st biggest coin in the world.
Recently, however, the NEAR price has declined sharply as investors reflect on the ongoing risks to the blockchain industry. Some of these risks are on regulations while others are on interest rates.
On regulations, the Central Bank of Russia announced this week that it will recommend for the government to ban cryptocurrencies. On rates, the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and even the European Central Bank (ECB) have hinted that they will start raising interest rates.
NEAR price prediction
The daily chart shows that the NEAR Coin price has been in a sharp downward trend in the past few days. The coin has managed to move below the 25-day and 5o-day moving averages while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) has been in a sharp bearish trend.
It has also moved below the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the NEAR price will keep falling in the near term. If this happens, the next key level to watch will be at the 50% retracement level at $11, which is about 25% below the current level.
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