Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan highlights the investment potential of the NEAR protocol, emphasizing its current blockchain operations alongside future AI-related prospects. The network aims to provide infrastructure for autonomous AI agents to conduct transactions.
A key product, NEAR Intents, simplifies cross-chain transactions by allowing users to define desired outcomes while market makers handle execution. The service has surpassed $30 billion in cumulative trading volume and is projected to generate roughly $45 million in fees this year, with a portion allocated to token buybacks.
In the third quarter, the NEAR token experienced a 198% increase, outperforming bitcoin at 43% and Ethereum at 71%. Despite the focus on AI, current network activity is primarily driven by human users rather than AI agents.
Co-founder Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of the 2017 transformer architecture paper, leads the strategy to build high-throughput blockchain services and confidential AI infrastructure. Hougan views these existing revenue-generating tools as the primary investment case, with AI development serving as a long-term upside.
