# NEAR’s Rally Depends on Intents Fees Routed Through Outside Aggregator

By Enna Lee

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/investing/23983
Published: 2026-09-25T04:01:30.000Z
Updated: 2026-09-25T04:01:30.000Z

NEAR’s token has nearly doubled in about a week as revenue shifts toward Intents fees, but the largest channel for that activity routes trades among competing providers and does not reveal which wallets supply its traffic.

NEAR Intents accounted for about 85% of NEAR’s revenue after the network activated its fee switch in February 2026. The token has gained 350% since the switch was activated and 178% since mid-August 2026.

The shift has come as traditional execution fees weakened. Weekly execution fees fell 83% from January 2025, declining from about $120,000 to $20,000. Relayer-paid transactions represented 78% of transaction volume in the first quarter of 2026. Gas-subsidized consumer applications lost support after those subsidies stopped, contributing to weaker native activity.

Intents allow users to complete cross-chain transactions without manually managing execution routes or gas fees. The activity includes deposits, withdrawals and swaps, with swaps generating the largest share of fees.

SwapKit, a cross-chain swap software development kit embedded in wallets such as Ledger Live, BitPay and Trust Wallet, generated 35% of Intents volume and 61% of Intents fees. NEAR cannot identify which wallets provide that traffic.

SwapKit also routes trades among NEAR Intents, THORChain, Maya and Chainflip. That makes NEAR one of several providers competing for each quote rather than the guaranteed destination for every transaction. Stablecoins, Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Zcash (ZEC) make up most of the traffic.

SwapKit’s share of activity has been declining as overall volume and confidential deposits increase, but its fee contribution remains significant. The figures make NEAR’s current revenue growth dependent on both Intents usage and routing decisions made outside the network.

Privacy-related activity has grown without becoming the dominant part of Intents. ZEC represented 9% of Intents volume, while ZODL’s share of fees doubled to 16% in September 2026.

Confidential Intents locked deposits increased from $28 million in mid-August 2026 to $131 million after perpetual contracts launched. Half of that total was wrapped NEAR deposited into a project that distributes staking returns as points. Excluding that amount leaves about $65 million in external confidential deposits.

NEAR’s artificial-intelligence strategy has produced no disclosed quantifiable contribution. NEAR AI Cloud has not disclosed revenue, customers, GPU numbers or a path connecting the business to the token.

Token burns have also declined. Monthly burns fell from 100,000 NEAR in January 2025 to 20,000 in August 2026. The current monthly burn rate is 0.7%, compared with a historical high of 3.4% in March 2024.

For now, Intents remain central to NEAR’s current revenue. The fee channel has expanded even as native execution activity and token burns have fallen, leaving routing volume, provider competition and the composition of confidential deposits as key measures of the network’s operating mix.