NEAR Protocol Drops 15x From ATH as Market Cap Shrinks to $1.4B and TVL Falls to $100M

TLDR:

• NEAR Protocol’s market cap has fallen from $11 billion to approximately $1.4 billion, sitting 15x below its all-time high price.
• TVL on NEAR Protocol dropped from a peak of $500 million to around $100 million, showing capital has rotated out of the network.
• NEARCON 2026 introduced tokenomics updates, a buyback mechanism, and Nightshade 3.0 to strengthen the base layer technically.
• NEAR’s largest wallet holds only 5.5% of supply, reflecting a balanced holder structure that reduces major sell-off tail risk.

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NEAR Protocol is trading at $1.13, with its market cap falling from $11 billion to approximately $1.4 billion. The token sits roughly 15 times below its all-time high price.

Total value locked has also dropped from a peak near $500 million to around $100 million today. Despite the correction, NEARCON 2026 recently wrapped up with several structural updates to the network.

The central question now is whether those changes are enough to rebuild market confidence.

Valuation Compression and Chart Resistance Continue to Weigh on NEAR Protocol

At its peak, NEAR Protocol carried the pricing of a potential top-five Layer 1 blockchain. The technology narrative was strong, covering sharding, user experience, and scalability at scale.

However, on-chain usage did not grow fast enough to support that valuation premium over time. The market has since stripped out most of those forward-looking growth assumptions from the price.

Crypto analyst account Our Crypto Talk shared a breakdown on X, pointing to NEAR’s stretched prior valuation. The speculative premium expanded aggressively across the 2021–2024 bull cycle.

Then it contracted just as hard once usage failed to keep pace with expectations. The current $1.4 billion market cap is now considered far more grounded than the peak.

The price chart still carries heavy resistance at a key technical level. The $2 zone served as a major breakout point during the 2023 rally.

In November 2025, buyers attempted to reclaim that level during a broader market bounce but failed. That rejection signals hesitation from the market rather than outright panic.

The RSI is sitting near long-term support, meaning downside momentum appears to be slowing. However, the chart structure has not turned fully bullish in any confirmed way yet.

This remains a compression phase, not a reversal. Buyers are still holding back, waiting for stronger conviction before committing capital at these levels.

TVL Weakness and NEARCON 2026 Developments Define the Road Ahead for NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol’s TVL declining from $500 million to roughly $100 million presents a real concern for the network. For a Layer 1 with a market cap above $1 billion, deeper on-chain capital deployment is generally expected by the market.

The drop shows that liquidity rotated elsewhere during the broader cycle. TVL growth must return before any sustained breakout narrative can take hold.

On a more constructive note, the holder distribution for NEAR Protocol remains relatively balanced across wallets. The largest single wallet holds around 5.5% of total supply.

The next several wallets fall between 2% and 4% each. There is no dominant whale in position to move the market in a single direction unilaterally.

NEARCON 2026 delivered several updates that address structural weaknesses across the ecosystem. A tokenomics revision introduced clearer revenue capture alongside a network buyback mechanism.

The NEAR Intents fee switch economically aligns integration partners with actual on-chain usage. These are considered smart design decisions that move the project in a more sustainable direction.

NEAR Protocol also positioned itself as a unified frontend layer across more than 35 blockchain networks. IronClaw and a Confidential GPU Marketplace push the project further into AI infrastructure territory.

Nightshade 3.0 separates consensus from execution, which technically strengthens the base layer. Announcements, however, do not equal adoption — on-chain usage must now follow to validate the roadmap.

The post NEAR Protocol Drops 15x From ATH as Market Cap Shrinks to $1.4B and TVL Falls to $100M appeared first on Blockonomi.