NEAR Protocol Closes Q3 Strong with $3.3B Market Cap and Rising Cross-Chain Volume
The post NEAR Protocol Closes Q3 Strong with $3.3B Market Cap and Rising Cross-Chain Volume appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) continues to cement its position as one of the most active blockchain ecosystems of 2025. The Layer-1 network closed Q3 with a $3.3 billion market cap, marking a 24.3% jump quarter-over-quarter, while NEAR Intents processed $234.9 million in transaction volume, a milestone that underscores its growing dominance in cross-chain infrastructure. For a network once seen as an underdog among Ethereum alternatives, NEAR’s quiet but steady expansion is now turning heads across DeFi, AI, and multi-chain development. Cross-Chain Ambitions Take Center Stage At the heart of NEAR’s growth lies its cross-chain transaction layer, NEAR Intents. The protocol allows users to perform seamless swaps and actions across different blockchains without directly bridging assets. In Q3, the Intents framework processed nearly a quarter billion dollars in volume, showing accelerating demand for abstracted, multi-chain operations. This plays directly into NEAR’s mission to become “the blockchain for AI and chain abstraction.” In plain terms: NEAR wants to make blockchains invisible. It’s building an architecture where users and developers no longer need to think about what chain they’re on, just what action they want to take. That abstraction layer, backed by NEAR Intents, is fast becoming the network’s most strategic advantage. Scalability Boost: NEAR Expands from 8 to 9 Shards To meet growing demand, NEAR executed a key scalability milestone in Q3: expanding its sharding structure from 8 to 9 shards. The move increased network throughput by 12.5%, boosting performance and ensuring that NEAR can handle higher transaction loads without compromising decentralization. This continuous sharding evolution has been NEAR’s core scaling strategy since launch. Instead of relying on Layer-2 solutions or sidechains, NEAR scales horizontally, splitting network load into shards that operate in parallel. By increasing the number of shards, NEAR is effectively expanding its transaction lanes, allowing for higher volume and faster…
