NEAR Protocol has an unusual claim to fame: its co-founder helped create the Transformer architecture behind modern AI. With a spot ETF bringing fresh institutional attention, the bigger question is whether NEAR can turn that AI heritage into a blockchain built for autonomous agents—and justify comparisons with Ethereum.
Bitwise Asset Management launched the first U.S. spot ETF on NEAR Protocol ( ticker: NRR ), while adding a bullish long-term thesis on the NEAR crypto. The NYSE Arca-listed NRR charges 0.75% and began trading on Sept. 29, according to a Bitwise release.
Bitwise intends to stake the underlying NEAR tokens in the ETF to generate a “roughly 5% yield” (the company warns that the reward is not guaranteed). The fund attracted substantial inflows on the first day, reflecting the institutional interest in the young ecosystem.
NEAR prides itself on being the blockchain for AI, where its developers can build dApps (decentralized apps). The network’s main chain went live in 2020 and utilizes a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
Notably, the NEAR founders are vocal about the potential of AI. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin (co-created the Transformer neural net architecture behind ChatGPT) leads NEAR’s on-chain AI lab.
In addition, the NEAR team has created Intent-based DeFi – a cross-chain swap service (called “NEAR Intents”) which has already processed over $32 billion in transactions.
Bitwise Asset Management founder and CEO Hunter Horsley envisions an “agentic” future. According to him,
“We’re entering a world in which AI agents increasingly act on our behalf… We believe this shift…could unlock an enormous new frontier. And NEAR is building a platform for that future.”
In practice, this means that NEAR wants to enable its users to develop AI-powered applications and automated services without the complexity of crypto. Bitwise’s pitch to investors is that NEAR will be the infrastructure for an upcoming AI-powered economy.
The price of the NEAR token recently traded above $5, up from the August lows ($1.60), but still about 75% below its all-time high above 20. For context, Ethereum trades around $2,430 (implying a market cap near $280 billion).
Bitwise argues that the NEAR token has the potential to see its value grow by an order of magnitude in the AI-powered economy. Per the Bitwise presentation, the NEAR token’s total addressable market (TAM) could be Ethereum-scale (a few hundred billion) – given that it could potentially serve a multi-billion user base of automated financial and data services.
To justify the TAM, Bitwise cites the success of NEAR thus far: a loyal developer base and an overall resilient protocol, which has survived multiple crypto winters. The recent ETF launch is further proof of confidence in the protocol: Bitwise applied for a NEAR ETF back in April 2025 (when NEAR token was at ~$2.61).
Moreover, the structural hurdles for a crypto ETF were recently lowered: the SEC adopted the generic ETF listing standard in Sept. 2025. The NRR ETF will also stake the NEAR tokens on behalf of its shareholders. Bitwise expects the yield from staking to be roughly 5%, on average (annualized).
However, the company warns that the yield can vary significantly and “slashing events” are possible in case of malicious activities. Previously, the after-reserve Bitwise Fund generated a 6%–8% yield on a hypothetical NEAR stablecoin, but that number is not a hard promise.
The crypto market is in a mixed state: Bitcoin is at $82,000, and analysts are eyeing a breakout above the key $83,300 range on the way to 90,000–100,000. Meanwhile, Ethereum remains at $2,430.
Given the scenario, the NEAR price move since the beginning of the year is noteworthy: it rallied by nearly 28% in 24 hours on the news about AI and privacy upgrades, and the ETF installation added to the momentum.
Nevertheless, the token still has a long way to go: currently, it trades at roughly $5, or 75% below its peak, and even at this price, it is a small-cap cryptocurrency (top-20). Thus, Bitwise essentially predicts the NEAR token to trade at several digits above its current value in the next cycle.
Overall, while the roadmap is not linear, Bitwise believes it has identified a “new frontier” category with a TAM of several hundred billion – similar to the one for Ethereum – where NEAR can provide an infrastructure for automated financial services and applications.
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