NEAR Protocol’s native token has surged more than 22% over the past 24 hours, extending a multi-week rally. According to CoinGecko data, NEAR climbed from roughly $1.25 earlier this month to around $2.15 on May 22, lifting its gains to more than 70% from the monthly low. The token has rallied over 45% during the past two weeks alone, making it one of the best-performing assets among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation. Behind the sudden acceleration, derivatives data points to a large-scale short squeeze that caught bearish traders offside just as NEAR broke above a key resistance trendline near $1.72. According to liquidation charts on Coinglass, nearly $5.8 million out of $6.1 million in wiped-out positions over the past 24 hours came from shorts. Within four hours alone, more than $2.4 million in short positions were liquidated after the token pushed through resistance connecting the March and mid-May highs. Forced buybacks from liquidated short sellers added immediate demand pressure to the market, while available sell-side liquidity thinned rapidly during the move higher. The fresh momentum across artificial intelligence-linked crypto assets followed NVIDIA’s first-quarter FY2027 earnings report released on May 20. The chipmaker reported $81.6 billion in quarterly revenue alongside $58.3 billion in profits, representing an 85% year-over-year increase in revenue. During the earnings call, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said, “Agentic AI has arrived” as competition among AI model developers intensified around compute efficiency and token generation. Following the report, trading activity rotated aggressively toward AI-related crypto projects, with NEAR emerging as one of the strongest beneficiaries due to its positioning around decentralised AI infrastructure. Market activity around the token strengthened further after Near Protocol expanded its enterprise-focused AI tooling. The protocol recently introduced automatic personally identifiable information anonymisation for AI prompts, allowing developers to remove passwords, API keys, and sensitive user information before requests are routed to external large language models such as ChatGPT or Claude. According to the project, the system processes confidential inference tasks through Trusted Execution Environments powered by NVIDIA H200 and B200 GPUs. The upgrade addresses concerns around AI privacy and data security, areas that have become increasingly important as businesses integrate generative AI products into customer-facing systems. AI narrative is supporting demand Beyond the recent AI-driven market rotation, Near Protocol has spent the past year positioning itself around what the project describes as the “Agentic Web,” a framework where autonomous AI agents manage payments, coordination, identities, and cross-chain interactions without constant human oversight. Interest around that thesis has intensified as decentralised applications move toward infrastructure-heavy AI workflows. Because NEAR’s founders come from artificial intelligence research backgrounds, traders have increasingly grouped the token alongside AI-linked digital assets during periods of strong sector performance. Meanwhile, ecosystem adoption around NEAR Intents has continued gaining traction through integrations tied to the protocol’s chain abstraction infrastructure. One notable example came from decentralised trading platform CoW Swap, which recently expanded to Solana using NEAR Intents as a backend settlement layer for cross-chain execution. The integration allows users to complete multi-step transactions across different blockchains without manually bridging assets or managing separate gas tokens. Increased usage around these services has reportedly pushed protocol transactions to new highs while lifting the number of unique holders across the network. Additional tokenomics changes have also contributed to bullish sentiment around the asset. A governance proposal approved in late 2025 reduced NEAR’s maximum annual inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%, lowering the amount of new tokens entering circulation each year. Since February 2026, fees generated through the NEAR Intents cross-chain settlement system have also been converted programmatically into NEAR tokens, creating a direct source of open-market buying tied to ecosystem activity. Network usage metrics have moved higher alongside the price rally. According to ecosystem data shared by the project, total value locked across Near Protocol has increased more than 120% year over year, while developer activity climbed over 40% during the same period. NEAR price analysis The 4-hour NEAR/USD chart shows an extremely aggressive breakout phase, with momentum indicators now stretched deep into overheated territory after the latest vertical move higher. NEAR/USD 4-hour price chart. Source: TradingView. Price action has broken cleanly above the previous multi-month resistance zone near $1.72, which was acting as a ceiling since the March highs. Once that level gave way, the rally accelerated sharply into the $2.10 to $2.20 area with almost no visible consolidation in between. Volume also expanded heavily during the breakout candle, which lines up with the liquidation-driven squeeze described in your context. The RSI on the 4-hour timeframe has now climbed to around 88, placing NEAR firmly in overbought territory. Historically, RSI readings above 80 on this timeframe often signal that momentum is becoming crowded in the short term, especially after near-vertical rallies. At the same time, the RSI moving average continues trending upward, which still confirms strong bullish momentum rather than immediate exhaustion. Meanwhile, the Chaikin Money Flow indicator remains positive near 0.23, showing that capital inflows are still entering the asset instead of fading after the breakout. Sustained positive CMF readings during a sharp rally usually indicate that buyers are still supporting price advances rather than the move being driven only by thin liquidity spikes. Another important detail comes from the structure of the candles themselves. Recent breakout candles have closed near their highs with very limited upper wicks, which usually points to sustained buying pressure rather than aggressive profit-taking. The sharp increase in volume near the latest breakout also strengthens the argument that the move is being supported by real participation instead of isolated low-volume volatility. Still, the vertical nature of the rally leaves NEAR vulnerable to short-term cooling if momentum slows. Because the price moved rapidly from roughly $1.70 to above $2.10 without building strong support zones in between, any pullback could become volatile as traders look for fresh support formation. For now, though, the structure remains strongly bullish. The post Why is Near protocol price going up? appeared first on Invezz
