NEAR Intents Generate Over $33 Million in Protocol Fees as Price Rips Nearly 10%

@NEARProtocol's intent-based architecture has officially crossed $33 million in cumulative protocol fees since launch, with $NEAR up 9.3% in the past 24 hours and roughly 89% over the past 30 days.

Intents Architecture Driving Real Fee Revenue

NEAR Intents is a transaction framework that allows information, assets, and actions to be exchanged between AI agents, services, and end users across multiple chains. NEAR Intents are described as a new type of transaction that allows information, requests, assets, and actions to be exchanged between AI agents, services, and end users. The system has become an increasingly practical rails layer for autonomous agent activity, with complex, multi-step transactions settling across the ecosystem with minimal slippage.

The fee mechanics behind the milestone carry direct tokenomic implications. NEAR Intents fees operate differently from base-layer gas fees: 100% of fees generated through the protocol are used to purchase $NEAR directly, creating market buy pressure that scales with transaction volume. On February 23, 2026, the NEAR Intents fee conversion mechanism activated, meaning 100% of Intents fees now flow into open-market NEAR purchases.

DeFiLlama data shows NEAR Intents carrying a $33.5 million annual fee run-rate, with $86.1 million in total value locked. Annualizing the trailing 90-day fee run rate through the Intents architecture implies approximately $53 million in annual ecosystem fees, placing NEAR's Intents-adjusted price-to-sales ratio at around 28x, versus Ethereum at 194x and Solana at 40x.

Token Rally Backed by Structural Shifts

The price move is not purely speculative. A governance proposal approved in late 2025 reduced NEAR's maximum annual inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%, lowering the amount of new tokens entering circulation each year. All VC allocations are fully unlocked, 99% of the 1.29 billion circulating supply is already in the market, and 45.5% of that float is staked, tightening available supply further.

NEAR saw the largest 24-hour gain among AI-related tokens on May 22, jumping over 26% to $2.19, a surge sparked by a short squeeze at the $1.72 resistance level that led to around $5.8 million in short liquidations. NEAR's focus on the "Agentic Web," where AI agents autonomously manage payments, identity, and cross-chain tasks, helped it stand out as a clear beneficiary of the broader AI market rotation.

For the protocol to turn net deflationary, volume must continue to grow. Analysts have identified a deflationary threshold at around $177 million in daily Intents volume, above which NEAR becomes net deflationary. The trailing 90-day daily average through early 2026 sat at approximately $77 million, meaning volume would need to roughly double to cross that threshold.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Sources:
NEAR Intents TVL, Fees and Volume, DeFiLlama
NEAR Revenue Dashboard, NEAR Protocol
Why is NEAR Protocol price going up?, Invezz