NEAR Protocol enters new phase of economic maturity with unlocked supply and revenue-generating products - Crypto Economy

2026-02-23 23:10:39

TL;DR

NEAR fully unlocks supply and cuts inflation by 50%.
NEAR Intents settles over $13 billion in cross-chain volume.
$NEAR becomes the native payment token for AI services.

NEAR Protocol announced a series of updates to its tokenomic model that reflect its transition into a stage of economic maturity. After more than five years of uninterrupted mainnet operation with 100% uptime, the network now features a fully unlocked supply, a 50% reduction in maximum annual inflation, and active onchain governance through House of Stake.

The NEAR ecosystem no longer operates as a conventional layer 1. The network currently positions itself as a unified commerce layer for digital assets and agents, settling cross-chain trades, powering native artificial intelligence applications, and offering scalable cryptographic solutions for execution and privacy.

Native products generating onchain revenue

Two core products drive NEAR’s new economic model: NEAR Intents and NEAR AI. Both tools generate recurring revenue that flows directly to the protocol, unlike models that depend exclusively on external applications for value capture.

NEAR Intents functions as a universal liquidity protocol that allows users and agents to express desired outcomes without managing complex execution paths. The platform has already settled over $13 billion in cross-chain volume, positioning itself as settlement infrastructure in the flow of global crypto liquidity.

The revenue mechanism for NEAR Intents includes an automatic sharing system with third-party distribution channels. All payments are denominated in $NEAR, reinforcing the token as the unit of account for generated fees. The protocol has already directed revenue to over $1 million in $NEAR buybacks.

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NEAR AI extends economic reach into confidential and verifiable infrastructure for agent-driven markets. Compute and inference services are payable in $NEAR, and agents require $NEAR to operate and maintain state. Integrations with Brave, OpenMind, and Phala demonstrate enterprise adoption of this infrastructure.

A community-governed treasury structure will receive revenue from NEAR products, with the ability to deploy assets toward $NEAR buybacks, staking, or other supply management strategies. Governance retains full discretion over when and how to apply these tools.

NEAR positions $NEAR as the anchor for the AI economy and agentic commerce. The token functions simultaneously as the settlement asset, unit of account for protocol services, and coordination mechanism for governance and security. As usage scales, this role strengthens through transparent governance-approved economic processes.

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