Near Protocol token continued its strong rally this week as it surged to over $8.5 on Wednesday morning. It has had a strong rally as it moved from the year-to-date low of $2.4. Near token has also jumped by over 758% from its lowest point in 2023, making it one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies.
AI tokens are soaring
Near Protocol is not the only token that is soaring. Aurora, a key part of the ecosystem rose to $0.552 on Wednesday, its highest point since December 5th.
The main reason for the Near price surge is that its ecosystem is doing well. Data compiled by DeFi Llama shows that the Total Value Locked (TVL) in the ecosystem has jumped to a record high of over $618 million.
In $NEAR terms, the platform has over 80 million in assets. The biggest players in the ecosystem are the likes of Burrow, Linear Protocol, Meta Pool, and Ref Finance. Burrow is a lending platform like AAVE while Linear and Burrow are liquid staking networks.
Aurora has also had its TVL jump sharply in the past few weeks. It soared to over $46 million, helped by the likes of Aurora Plus, Trisolaris, and Aurigami. Aurora’s token has soared by over 35% in the past 24 hours.
The other reason why NEAR price is rising is that the developers have pivoted it towards artificial intelligence (AI), the fastest-growing area in the tech industry. Most AI tokens like Fetch AI (FET), SingularityNET (AGIX), and AIOZ Network have all jumped sharply.
In line with this, Near will be one of the few blockchain companies that will present in a major AI conference by Nvidia. The platform’s CEO will be on the same panel as Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of Nvidia. As such, most investors anticipate that he will make an important announcement during the event.
Near token price has also been boosted by the recent performance of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has already surged to its all-time high while the total market cap of all coins has soared to over $2.7 trillion. Most cryptocurrencies tend to do well in such market conditions as investors embrace the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) attitude.
For starters, Near Protocol is one of the top blockchains that aims to be a better alternative to Ethereum. It is a proof-of-stake network with superior speeds and lower transaction costs. It has been used by some of the top companies in the world like Alibaba, Google and Sweatcoin.
Near Protocol price forecast
Turning to the daily chart, we see that the NEAR token price has been in a strong uptrend in the past one year. This rally has coincided with the remarkable crypto bull run that has been going on for months. It has jumped from last year’s low of about $1 to over $8.
Near has surged above all moving averages. It is about 60% above the 25-day moving average. At the same time, the Average Directional index (ADX) has moved to the extreme level of 38. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the MACD have also continued rising.
This performance is a sign that there is a strong momentum. Therefore, the upside will likely continue rising in the coming months as the crypto bull run intensifies. This could see it jump to the next resistance point at $10.
