NEAR token’s latest price rally comes in the wake of NEAR Protocol’s announcement of raising $800 million developer fund.
Brief Market Analysis of NEAR Token
NEAR token price rallied higher on Oct. 25 following NEAR Protocol announcing that it has earmarked $800 million for new funding initiatives aimed at growing its decentralized finance capabilities.
Notably, the price of NEAR token increased by more than 30% to over $12 a token, the highest level since Sept. 9. Combined with the gains recorded in the previous 96 hours, NEAR was up by nearly 39%.
At the time of writing, the price of the NEAR coin is $12.14 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $810,943,857 USD. NEAR Protocol however, is up 30.41% in the last 24 hours. According to CoinMarketCap, market cap is at $6,389,142,571 USD, and having a circulating supply of 526,072,613 NEAR coins and a max. supply of 1,000,000,000 NEAR coins.
What the $800 Million Funding Means For DeFi
As at Monday October 25, there was a total value of $247 billion locked across all decentralized finance DeFi projects, and NEAR just like many others, are moving to capitalize.
The smart contract ecosystem NEAR Protocol, having earmarked $800 million for new funding initiatives is looking to grow its decentralized finance capabilities.
The new funding includes in part, a $350 million grants program that was announced by Proximity Labs a week ago. This part will give developers the extra motivation and support they’ll be needing to create new product offerings on NEAR, announced the company.
Another $250 million will be allocated to existing ecosystem developers, another $100 million for startup grants, which NEAR is reportedly planning to fund about 20 startups at the rate of $5 million each. Lastly, the remaining $100 million will be pumped into regions across Europe, Asia and the United States.
Implication for NEAR Token
Over the past year, value locked in DeFi protocols has seen a 936% surge. And now, Ethereum’s main competitors like Solana, Binance Smart Chain, and Avalanche presently seeing considerable imcreases, according to data from DappRadar. However, Ethereum-based projects account for about 66% of the entire value locked across DeFi, according to industry data.
Now, despite the unarguable dominance of Ethereum in the DeFi space, the market keeps growing at an unimaginable rate, currently valued at over $247 billion. This reality undoubtedly gives enough room for other competing platforms to take advantage of.
Although NEAR represents only a small portion of the total DeFi market, but that might just change soon enough. There’ll definitely be many more developers hoping to tap into the new funding campaigns, even as users continue looking for alternatives to Ethereum-based protocols.