Here's why $NEAR is a no-brainer in 2025 👇 Everybody loves @NearProtocol and there is a reason for that (or many). Near is well-positioned to be one of the leading blockchain ecosystems this year. Let’s explore the “whys”. TIMESTAMPS Quick Bio – 00:00:15 Inflation Reduction Proposal – 00:00:43 Technically Speaking – 00:02:40 Near Intents – 00:03:37 Chain Signatures and AI – 00:04:39 Decentralization and DeFi – 00:05:59 I have my Near account since March 2023, but it has been inactive for a while, as I was focused on other stuff. However, the recent inflation halving proposal by HOT DAO (@hotdao_) and LiNEAR (@LinearProtocol) brought my eyes back to the project and I really like what I’m seeing. So, here’s my first point. If this proposal passes, NEAR could lead the way in what appears to be a market trend of improving the tokenomics, as more and more experts realize holders have been overpaying for these networks' security, with a too high supply inflation. Solana tried something similar, but the proposal was rejected. In my opinion, validators voting favorably to that show a commitment to the chain for the long term. On the other hand, voting against it signals a short-term vision focused on milking the emissions as much as possible, at the ecosystem’s expense. The voting currently goes with 28% “YEA” votes, needing 66.76% to pass. Most of the validators who already cast their votes went with the yes. 2pilot, avb, openshards, qbit, sicmundus, fox, and intear are, so far, the only seven who voted “NAY”. This proposal has the vocal support of most influential figures in the Near ecosystem, including the Near Foundation (@NEARFoundation), led by @ilblackdragon, which makes me believe it will pass and show the power of the halving in getting the market’s attention and presenting a huge investment asymmetry for the native token right now. Is this everything I like about NEAR? Definitely not. This is just what got me looking at it again, just to discover a (very much) thriving ecosystem, full of interesting things happening at the same time. I’ll mention a few, but there is (much) more. Technically speaking, Near is a high-performance blockchain, with really low fees and one of the fastest finalities, with 600ms block time and approximately 1.8s finality. It also has my favorite architecture for internet-scale scalability, using sharding, while keeping a high decentralization standard. As a learning programmer, Near also has one of the best dev experiences (in my limited opinion). The documentation is clear, has a logical journey, presenting from the basic anatomy in details to more complex SDKs and tools. I’m also in love with the near-cli-rs. A command line interface program written in Rust for seamless interaction with the Near blockchain. Allowing wallet creation, chain query, sending transactions, staking, smart contract calls, and more. Near Intents. This was the second thing to get my attention, while studying the project again, and it sets a whole new standard for blockchain interactions, especially cross-chain. Basically, users can declare an intention (for example, swap Ethereum-USDT to Bitcoin) and a network of solvers, running on Near, will find the best path to accomplish this task. We recently saw an impressive 465k-worth swap happening in exactly this example, paying 0.55% of trading fees to thorswap.near and swapkit.near. According to a Dune Dashboard, the protocol accumulates nearly $400 million in volume since its launch not long ago, in November 2024. *obs.: half this volume was achieved in the last month. Massive! Near Intents is possible due to two other very interesting things: (i) Chain abstraction, and (ii) a solid AI infrastructure. Chain abstraction (via Chain Signatures) is a powerful interoperability feature, allowing Near to friendly connect different blockchains as if they were part of a single network. Users and devs benefit from wallet, address, fees, and cross-chain bridges abstractions - not even noticing they are interacting with multiple chains. One wallet that powers everything. Powered by Near. On AI, Near is just built differently. Not for the hype, but for the solution. The team has been looking for AI solutions much before the ChatGPT fever. Actually, they started as an AI company, pivoting to blockchain later. So, being one of the most promising networks for the growing AI economy was just the natural path to follow. There is an extensive and super complete research piece on that topic, recently published by Reflexivity Research (@reflexivityres) on July 1st. It presents Near as an AI-optimized blockchain, covering AITP, Shade Agents, x402, Near Intents, and more. Definitely worth the reading. Wrapping up this content with one more aspect that really matters to me is how Near remains truthful to decentralization, data ownership, censorship-resistance and open-source primitives that have been increasingly abandoned by other key players. A simple example of that is how the Near Foundation decided to deprecate its public APIs, encouraging the surge of a more decentralized and competitive market of SaaS projects, with a highlight to Lava Network, that recently appeared in my timeline talking about that. DeFi is also huge on Near, leveraging all the previous properties I mentioned, creating a truly decentralized liquidity pool via Rhea Finance, connected with other chains like BTC, Ethereum, ZCash, and more. All that contributes to Near having the second-largest monthly active addresses, with nearly 50 million, only losing to Solana’s nearly 90 million. In the meantime, NEAR, the token, is not even at the 30rd position by market cap. Crazy stuff. To (finally) wrap it up, I also want to mention Near’s consensus decentralization. While having a low node-count, the network has a Nakamoto Coefficient of 11, which is not bad at all. Surely, there is still room for improvement, which is possible as becoming a validator is accessible staking and hardware-wise. If you liked this content, make sure to click the like bottom and share it around. Follow me on X or subscribe to my YouTube channel, both at vinibarbosabr. See ya!