As Near Protocol celebrates its five-year anniversary, the blockchain community is reflecting on the platform’s remarkable growth and achievements. Since its mainnet launch in May 2020, NEAR has made significant strides in addressing some of the most pressing issues in the blockchain space, including scalability, usability, and security.
With its sharding technology, account abstraction, and intent-based transactions, the protocol has positioned itself for a wider range of applications, from decentralised finance and gaming to AI-integrated systems.
Despite the challenges posed by the broader cryptocurrency market crash and AI tokens’ decline, the ecosystem continues to thrive, with over 50 million active addresses, more than 50 startups building on the platform, and a strong community of developers. However, the NEAR token’s price decline has sparked questions about its potential uptrend, leaving investors doubtful if the downtrend would continue.
Near Protocol Celebrates Five-Year Milestone
Near Protocol is celebrating a remarkable milestone- five years since its mainnet launch on October 13, 2020. What began as an AI-focused startup in 2017, founded by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, has evolved into a leading Layer 1 chain. After pivoting to blockchain in 2018, NEAR has seen notable developments, addressing the space’s key issues like scalability and security. It achieved impressive technical milestones, including nine operational shards, block times of 600 milliseconds, and finality in just 1.2 seconds.
In a recent X post, NEAR Protocol shed light on its remarkable growth since its mainnet launch. Revealing its strengths and a string of achievements, the platform expressed gratitude to the community for the overwhelming support. The message read,
“Huge thank you to our vast and hard-working ecosystem of validators, developers, dApp teams, researchers, users, community members, and more who have made NEAR the groundbreaking protocol it is. Together, we are pioneering the onchain AI economy and building the foundation for a user-owned future.”
Near Token Continues to Plummet
Despite NEAR Protocol’s critical milestone, its native cryptocurrency is still facing challenges to overcome from its long-standing bearish trend. Over the past year, the AI token has been facing significant market volatility and fluctuations.
Although the altcoin reached a notable high of $8.02 last December, the price started plummeting soon. Since the beginning of 2025, the token has been trading in the red zone, caught within a narrow range of $1.8 and $3.2. While NEAR exhibited positive signals in late September and early October, the price crashed to $2.2 during the recent crypto market debacle.
Now, the cryptocurrency is struggling to recover from this lower range. Currently, NEAR is valued at $2.40, marking a marginal surge of 0.75% in a day. However, it has seen notable dips of 18% and 9% over the past week and month, respectively.
Binance Allegations: Limitless Labs CEO Loses NEAR
A heated controversy has erupted in the crypto market after Limitless Labs CEO CJ Hetherington accused Binance of imposing stringent listing requirements, including demanding significant token allocations and substantial upfront deposits. While Binance swiftly denied these allegations as “false and defamatory.” Soon, Hetherington responded, asserting that he had lost over $40,000 in NEAR tokens due to the platform exploit in 2022.
Crypto Market Crash and AI Token Debacle
Currently, the global crypto market is struggling hard to recover from its recent crash, which experts describe as the largest of all falls. Although the market has rebounded to $3.82 trillion, up by 1.02%, top cryptocurrencies are still trading in the red.
Aligning with this broader trend, the AI and Big Data tokens are also experiencing significant downfalls, with NEAR, Story and Internet Computer leading the crash. Expert Dami-Defi shared a post, drawing the community’s attention to the AI token plummet.
Will NEAR Surge?
In a recent X post, analyst Degen Sing asserted that the crypto is poised for a bullish breakout if it maintains the current recovery. If it holds $2.42 and manages to break past $2.6, more highs are possible.
Nonetheless, with the continued plummet and the unpredictable nature of cryptocurrency, the potential future of NEAR remains uncertain. Traders must be patient before taking any investment decision.
