A new kind of buyer is appearing online, and it is not human. AI agents have started buying data, services and compute from one another at machine speed. NEAR is positioning itself as the cash register of that market, rebranding as the "currency of agents."
June brought the most ambitious network upgrade in its history. Dynamic resharding lets the network add capacity on its own, up to 70+ shards, as traffic grows, with no governance votes or manual validator coordination, and with throughput that NEAR says exceeds Visa's. The same upgrade adds post-quantum signing, with key rotation in a single transaction.
Underneath sits a clear thesis. NEAR Intents lets an agent state the outcome it wants and leaves solvers to find the best path across chains, no bridges required: more than $20 billion in all-time volume, plus a fee switch that buys back NEAR with the fees. The late-2025 Halving Upgrade cut maximum inflation in half, from 5% to 2.5%.
But keep a cool head. The token has already run and given much back: after May's surge, Arthur Hayes fully exited his position on June 7 and the price slid, a sign of how much NEAR still moves on sentiment. The real catch is that the agent economy that would justify 70 shards does not yet exist at that scale. It is a thesis, not a result.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.
