NEAR's Resilience Amid Market Rotations: A Contrarian Play in a Volatile Sector Cycle

The blockchain industry has long been a theater of sector rotations, where capital flows like a river shifting its course in response to technological breakthroughs, macroeconomic pressures, and speculative fervor. From 2023 to 2025, the sector has witnessed a dramatic realignment: privacy-focused protocols surged, AI-native infrastructure gained traction, and traditional Layer 1s like Solana and Avalanche faced both headwinds and tailwinds. Amid this turbulence, NEAR Protocol has emerged as a compelling contrarian play-a project that, despite its smaller market cap, has demonstrated resilience and undervaluation relative to its fundamentals.

Sector Rotation: The New Normal in Blockchain

Blockchain sector rotations are no longer cyclical anomalies but structural shifts driven by innovation and capital efficiency. In 2023, privacy protocols like Zcash and Monero saw a 78% cumulative gain, spilling liquidity into adjacent sectors such as AI infrastructure and cross-chain tools, according to a Followin.io report. By 2025, NEAR Protocol capitalized on this trend, leveraging its AI roadmap and chain abstraction tools to attract developers and capital. A 38.93% single-day price surge in late 2025 underscored its ability to ride sector-specific waves, even as broader market volatility persisted, as noted in the Followin.io report.

This resilience is rooted in NEAR's dual focus on AI-native application development and cross-chain interoperability. The AI Center Roadmap, launched in Q3 2025, emphasized tools for decentralized AI model training and inference, aligning with the sector's growing demand for privacy-preserving computation, as described in the Followin.io report. Meanwhile, innovations like Chain Signatures and Intents reduced friction for developers building multi-chain applications, positioning NEAR as a bridge between fragmented ecosystems, according to the Followin.io report.

Undervaluation: NEAR vs. Solana and Avalanche

While Solana and Avalanche dominate headlines, NEAR's valuation metrics tell a different story. As of 2025, Solana's market cap ($102.04B) dwarfs NEAR's ($2.7B), and its 24-hour trading volume ($4.13B) far exceeds NEAR's ($123.14M), according to a Bitdegree comparison. However, these metrics mask NEAR's strengths in developer engagement and cost efficiency.

Developer activity on NEAR has grown steadily, with 52,400 developer actions and 58,500 contracts deployed in 2025 alone, as reported in a Coinlaw analysis. While Solana's developer count surged by 29.1% year-over-year, NEAR's ecosystem has attracted niche but impactful projects like Battlemon and Shroom Kingdom, which leverage its low fees (20x cheaper than Avalanche's C-Chain), as noted in a Coinexams comparison. This cost advantage is critical in a sector where transaction fees often dictate user adoption.

The Network Value to Transactions (NVT) ratio further highlights NEAR's undervaluation. While Solana's NVT ratio suggests a network overvalued relative to its transaction volume, NEAR's NVT ratio implies underutilization that could be rectified as its AI and cross-chain tools scale, as described in a Bitdegree comparison. For instance, NEAR's monthly active addresses jumped from 3.5 million in 2023 to 42.3 million in 2025, signaling latent demand, according to a Coinpedia analysis.

Strategic Implications for Investors

For investors, NEAR's position as a contrarian play offers both risk and reward. Its short-term volatility-exemplified by a 19.78% 30-day price gain in 2025-requires active risk management, but its long-term fundamentals are robust. Conservative price projections suggest a 2025 range of $1.47–$2.67, with optimistic scenarios reaching $3.50 by 2028, according to a Gate analysis. These forecasts hinge on two key drivers:
1. AI Infrastructure Adoption: As AI-native applications mature, NEAR's tools for decentralized training and inference could attract institutional capital.
2. Cross-Chain Abstraction: By reducing the complexity of multi-chain development, NEAR could capture a significant share of the $2.334T blockchain market projected by 2032, as noted in an Ideausher article.

However, NEAR faces headwinds. Solana's dominance in developer activity and Avalanche's TVL growth (up 90% since March 2025), as noted in an InvestingHaven analysis, pose competitive threats. Regulatory uncertainties and the broader crypto market's sensitivity to macroeconomic cycles also loom large.

Conclusion: A Contrarian's Edge

NEAR Protocol is not a flash-in-the-pan story but a project with a clear vision for bridging AI and blockchain. Its resilience during sector rotations-driven by strategic innovation and cost efficiency-positions it as a compelling undervalued play. For investors willing to navigate short-term volatility, NEAR offers a unique opportunity to bet on the convergence of AI and decentralized infrastructure.