NEAR token rises 17% following the launch of ‘Confidential Intents’, surpassing the privacy tokens market.

Private execution layer seeks to reduce MEV and front-running as the token continues 40% weekly increase despite modest onchain earnings.

Essential information:

• NEAR’s token surged by as much as 17%, extending an approximate 40% weekly increase, following the launch of “Confidential Intents,” a private execution layer for trading.
• This new feature directs transactions through a private shard associated with NEAR’s mainnet, allowing users to access confidential accounts to minimize front-running, sandwich attacks, and other MEV-related issues.
• The market’s response indicates that investors anticipate the privacy-oriented, compliance-aware framework will draw institutional trading to NEAR, despite the current base-layer fee revenue being modest in relation to its $1.8 billion market capitalization.

Following the introduction of “Confidential Intents,” a new private execution layer aimed at concealing trades from public access, the NEAR token experienced an increase of as much as 17%, extending a 40% weekly rally, and outperforming both the CoinDesk 20 Index and the wider privacy token sector.

This feature was initially announced last week at NEARCON in San Francisco, as noted previously by CoinDesk, and officially became operational today.

Confidential Intents is live.

DeFi users, developers, and institutions can now access a variety of privacy-first use cases without sacrificing discretion.

Toggle it on and test it out at https://t.co/YBUSFVdjxE. https://t.co/RuXYTDUdXJ

— NEAR Protocol (@NEARProtocol) March 1, 2026

According to the technical documentation on NEAR’s blog, it routes transactions through a private shard linked to NEAR’s mainnet, enabling users to switch to confidential accounts to avoid front-running and sandwich attacks.

In contrast to privacy coins like Monero or Zcash, which are built to hide transaction information by default, NEAR’s approach provides optional confidentiality centered on trade execution, keeping only certain transfers and positions out of public sight while ensuring auditability for regulatory authorities.

NEAR stated that the initiative is specifically targeted at institutions that are cautious about revealing trading strategies on transparent ledgers.

Onchain transactions are visible prior to their settlement, revealing order size, timing, and direction to bots that can exploit users.

This situation has traditionally facilitated so-called maximal extractable value, or MEV, strategies that impose a hidden cost on traders. By transferring trade execution to a less visible environment, Confidential Intents is designed to keep transfers and cross-chain position management away from the public mempool.

Unlike entirely opaque privacy chains, NEAR’s framework allows for selective disclosure within a compliance-aware structure, positioning the product as a link between traditional financial expectations and onchain settlement.

Nonetheless, onchain data compiled by DeFiLlama indicates that NEAR’s base-layer fees remain limited compared to its roughly $1.8 billion market capitalization.

This suggests that investors are betting on the potential of the confidential execution layer to attract institutional-sized flow onto the network rather than responding to a significant rise in current revenue.