NEAR rips 22% as quantum-safe signing lands in June

$NEAR is up 22% on the day and 44% on the week, trading around $2.20 with $1.2 billion in 24-hour volume, a 183% jump from recent levels. The token has also broken above its multi-year descending trendline for the first time since the 2024 cycle top, a technical milestone that has drawn fresh attention from traders.

Quantum-Safe Signing and Dynamic Resharding Coming in June

The primary catalyst is a confirmed June upgrade from @NEARProtocol. The protocol will introduce dynamic resharding, allowing the blockchain to automatically add shards as demand grows without human intervention. The upgrade also adds post-quantum-safe signing, designed to protect users from future quantum-computing threats.

Near One CTO Anton Astafiev announced the initiative, noting that NEAR is preparing to become one of the first major Layer-1 blockchains to ship a post-quantum-safe signing scheme. A Google Quantum AI paper from March 2026 estimated that breaking 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography could require roughly 20 times fewer resources than previously believed, adding urgency to the timeline. The upgrade will use FIPS-204, also known as ML-DSA, a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology-approved lattice-based signature standard built for post-quantum security.

Dynamic resharding ensures that when a shard hits a state-size threshold, it splits deterministically and is validated by state witnesses with no human intervention. The combination of automated scaling and quantum-resistant cryptography in a single protocol upgrade is described as unprecedented among major blockchains, with no other Layer-1 shipping both capabilities simultaneously.

A Broader Ecosystem Already Gaining Traction

The upgrade arrives against a backdrop of growing ecosystem momentum. NEAR Intents connects more than 35 blockchains through a single account, enabling cross-chain swaps, peer-to-peer settlement, and optional confidential transaction flows without manual bridging or routing. Built into NEAR Intents, Confidential Intents provides a restricted-visibility environment for cross-chain transactions, allowing users and institutions to opt into confidentiality across transfers, deposits, and withdrawals while maintaining verifiable on-chain execution. According to the original source data, Confidential Intents accounted for 87 million of NEAR's last 209 million transactions.

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley disclosed that the Bitwise Near Staking ETP, a European exchange-traded product providing institutional exposure to $NEAR with staking yield, pulled in $7 million in investor inflows this week alone. The ETP demand signals institutional positioning ahead of the June upgrade, suggesting the dynamic resharding announcement is being treated as a fundamental catalyst by allocators rather than simply a trading event.

CoinDesk: Near Protocol to automate its own growth and its token is skyrocketing | The Crypto Times: NEAR Plans Post-Quantum-Safe Signing for Q2 2026 Testnet | PR Newswire: NEAR Unveils Confidential Cross-Chain Infrastructure for the Agentic Economy