Key Takeaways:
- NEAR’s market cap plunged by 47.4% in Q1 2025, closing at $3 billion.
- Developer activity on NEAR declined sharply, with core developers down 27.7%.
- Despite the DeFi TVL drop, DEX trading volume doubled, driven by Rhea Finance.
The first quarter of 2025 proved challenging for NEAR Protocol, which followed broader market trends into negative territory. Based on the most recent “State of NEAR” report by Messari, the circulating market capitalization of the project was at $3 billion as of the end of Q1, which was down sharply by 47.4% quarter-over-quarter.
The native coin also followed suit, declining 48.8% quarter-over-quarter to a price of $2.50. This drastic drop notwithstanding, it retained its 21st ranking on total market capitalization, an indicator that it held its own against other leading cryptos facing the same macroeconomic headwinds.
The network revenue, which is based on fees for transactions minus staking rewards, plummeted 33.3% to $1.4 million. This was attributed to a significant decline in fees for transactions, which averaged only $0.0023 per transaction.
The protocol still follows its 70/30 burn model for fees, which means 70 percent are burned and 30 percent go to the smart contract creators.
Developer Decline and User Metrics Paint a Mixed Picture
The network activity was uneven for Q1. The daily average number of return addresses increased modestly by 0.8% to 3.8 million, but new daily addresses decreased by 4.7%, while daily transactions decreased by 7.8% to 6.8 million.
On the development front, the decline was steeper. NEAR’s weekly active core developers decreased from 272 to 196, a 27.7% decline, and ecosystem developers fell 42.4%, from 192 to 111.
In spite of this, the network has also been investing significantly in support for developers. The ecosystem supports an extensive development suite consisting of SDKs for several programming languages, a specific CLI tool, sandbox environments, and governance through NEAR Dev Hub.
NEAR.ai further expands the extent of the project into the world of AI, having more than 940 on-chain agents running under initiatives like the AI Research Hub and AI Assistant.
NEAR DeFi TVL Falls 36.8% Amid Market Downturn
Its decentralized financial (DeFi) space also suffered. Total value locked (TVL) within DeFi plummeted to $155.9 million, declining 36.8% quarter-over-quarter. Liquid staking TVL declined 40.4% to $149.6 million, with LiNEAR Protocol and Meta Pool recording double-digit decreases.
Rather, Rhea Finance became the leading one after absorbing Burrow and Ref Finance, now holding 95.2% of NEAR’s DeFi TVL, valued at $148.2 million.
On the plus side, decentralized exchange (DEX) daily average volume on NEAR rose 101.1% to $17 million, and Rhea Finance accounted for $16.2 million. Stablecoin activity was a rare bright spot, as its stablecoin market capitalization increased 2% to $697.2 million at the end of Q1.
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