Is NEAR’s recent price rise just the beginning?

• Near Protocol has seen a massive surge in daily transactions, suggesting high network usage. 
• The network growth and high Open Interest suggested long-term bullish outlook.

Near Protocol [NEAR] traded at $4.47 at press time after a 12% gain in price.

The upsurge was driven by bullish support from the broader market, as most coins traded higher following the interest rate cut decision by the Federal Reserve. 

NEAR’s trading volumes were up by more than 90% at the time of writing per CoinMarketCap.

Such a parabolic rise in volumes suggested that the recent gains stemmed from buying activity, triggering concerns about the rally’s sustainability. 

However, on-chain data suggested that NEAR’s long-term outlook was positive. 

Daily transaction count surges 

Data from NearBlocks showed a significant increase in NEAR’s daily transactions, which were currently approaching a two-week high of 7.33M. 

The daily transactions on the protocol have been on a gradual rise, given that a week ago, this stood at 6.7M. Presumably, network engagement was high, which is in turn fueled demand for NEAR. 

At the same time, the daily new addresses on the blockchain have grown significantly. At the start of the month, these addresses stood at 687,000.

This has now increased, with 900,000 new addresses joining the network every day since the 5th of September.

Source: NearBlocks

Data from DappRadar showed that the high transaction count was not just coming from trading activity, but also from decentralized application (DApp) activity. 

Monthly dApp transactions on the network have increased by 14% to more than $182M. However, monthly dApp volumes have dropped by 54%. This decline could be attributed to NEAR’s price changes. 

Open Interest reaches eight-week high 

NEAR is also attracting the attention of derivative traders, as Open Interest (OI) had reached $184M at press time, the highest level since the 25th of July. 

NEAR’s OI has been on a gradual rise since early August, as seen on Coinglass. This suggested that traders are opening new positions, as they speculated on future price gains. 

Source: Coinglass

At the same time, NEAR’s Funding Rates were positive at 0.0112% and are at the highest level since June. This suggested an increased demand for long positions. 

Coinglass showed that traders on Binance have been predominantly long on NEAR since August, indicating a bullish bias towards the altcoin. 

Source: Coinglass

One of the reasons that could be driving the bullish sentiment is the growth of Big Data and AI coins.

Read Near Protocol’s [NEAR] Price Prediction 2024–2025

In just one month, the total market capitalization for these coins has increased from $22B to $32B at press time per CoinMarketCap. 

NEAR is the largest AI crypto currently, dominating more than 15% of this market cap.