Is NEAR's trading volume at zero: can staking on NEAR Protocol revive it?

The trading volume of NEAR tokens currently stands at zero dollars, a figure that reflects extremely thin liquidity in the market. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the most significant news for the ecosystem arrives: NEAR Protocol has launched two new staking models designed for AI infrastructure, a step that introduces staking on NEAR Protocol as a concrete lever for accessing computational resources dedicated to decentralized artificial intelligence.

NEAR Protocol expands its offering with two distinct staking schemes, both aimed at transforming users' financial commitments into operational resources for AI. This move positions the project among the key players at the intersection of blockchain and decentralized AI infrastructure, at a time when the crypto market as a whole shows mixed signals.

IronClaw Staking transforms commitments into hosting credits

The first model, IronClaw staking on NEAR, converts the amounts pledged by users into hosting credits. In practice, participants do not merely lock up capital: they receive in return hosting resources usable within the ecosystem, a mechanism that directly ties economic participation to the availability of technical infrastructure.

NEAR AI Staking transforms commitments into reserved inference capacity

The second model, NEAR AI, operates similarly but with a different output: commitments are converted into reserved inference capacity, meaning computing power dedicated to executing AI models under confidentiality. This is a form of AI staking on NEAR that aims to meet the growing demand for computational infrastructures directly controlled by users, without centralized intermediaries.

The declared goal of both models is to strengthen engagement and utility within the blockchain ecosystem, providing users with a tangible reason to participate beyond mere speculation on the token price. This type of initiative fits into a broader interest in user-owned AI, where control of computational resources shifts from a few large operators to a distributed network of participants.

Why it matters: if the model takes hold, NEAR Protocol would offer a concrete use case for its token, going beyond mere governance or transaction functions. For a sector that often struggles to demonstrate real utility beyond the hype, linking staking to actually usable AI services—hosting and inference—represents an attempt to anchor the token's value to a verifiable technical need.

The context in which the announcement arrives is not the most favorable: the trading volume of NEAR tokens currently stands at zero dollars, a sign of very low liquidity for the NEAR token. However, increasing participation in staking could change this scenario, driving demand for the token and influencing the overall market sentiment.

It remains to be seen how quickly the community will respond to these two schemes and whether the actual performance of AI integrations on NEAR Protocol will meet expectations. In a crypto market sending mixed signals, the evolution of NEAR user engagement in the coming months will be the most concrete indicator to understand whether AI-related staking can truly shift the balances of liquidity and network usage.