NEAR Protocol Positions Itself as Infrastructure for the Agentic Economy

NEAR Protocol is quietly reshaping its narrative around becoming the infrastructure layer for the "agentic economy." The network's NEAR Intents has surpassed $10B in all-time cross-chain volume, while a newly launched superapp offers a single-account experience spanning more than 35 blockchains, including BTC, SOL, ZEC, ADA, and major EVM networks. On the technical side, Nightshade 3.0 separates consensus from execution and introduces a live private shard, aiming to push NEAR's architecture beyond 1M+ transactions per second. NEAR AI has also joined NVIDIA's Inception Program, focusing on verifiable, privacy-preserving AI inference within Trusted Execution Environments.