NEAR Protocol Shatters 1M TPS Barrier, But Its Revenue Stalls at a Mere $5K
NEAR Protocol just crossed a threshold most blockchains only dream of—one million transactions per second. That's raw, unfiltered throughput, the kind that makes legacy networks look like dial-up modems. Yet, the financials tell a different, far quieter story.
The Speed vs. Value Conundrum
Scaling to this level is a monumental technical feat. It proves the underlying architecture can handle the data firehose of a global, mainstream application. But here's the rub: all that furious computational activity translated to a daily revenue figure that wouldn't cover a decent marketing consultant's hourly rate. The chain is running a Formula 1 engine to deliver a single pizza.
Building the Highway Before the Traffic
This is the classic 'if you build it, they will come' gamble of infrastructure projects. NEAR has effectively paved an eight-lane superhighway capable of hosting the entire internet's traffic. The problem? Right now, it's mostly test cars and a few eager early drivers. The utility—the apps, the users, the fees—hasn't caught up to the capability. It's a bet on a future where demand explodes to fill the supply.
A Cynical Finance Take
On Wall Street, they have a saying: 'Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash flow is reality.' By that metric, achieving a million TPS for five grand is the ultimate exercise in vanity metrics—a triumph of engineering that, for now, leaves the balance sheet looking decidedly anemic. It's the crypto equivalent of throwing the world's most expensive party and having only two guests show up.
The real test for NEAR won't be maintaining its blistering speed. It will be finding the economic gravity to turn that spectacular throughput into sustainable, real-world value. Otherwise, it risks becoming the world's most powerful engine, stuck in neutral.
The revenue contradiction
The achievement of 1 million TPS should place NEAR Protocol at the forefront of crypto ecosystems, focusing on sharpening its infrastructure. Typically, protocols with high transaction volume capabilities drive millions of users and essentially an increase in transaction fees.
As per DeFiLlama data, the NEAR blockchain currently records a daily network revenue of only around $4,982 at the time of writing. The network’s current processing capacity is not in line with its real economic activity and user demand, as this figure shows.
Onchain data also shows that NEAR Protocol currently holds $158.02 million in Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi, reflecting a 24-hour increase of 6.92%. Despite this growth in locked value, the network’s financial activity remains relatively low.
The protocol’s native token, NEAR, is priced at $1.75, contributing to a market capitalization of $2.24 billion, as per CoinMarketCap data.
High-volume adoption and AI
NEAR’s future vision focuses heavily on an onchain AI economy, which is expected to be accelerated by the recently confirmed scalability. The capacity for a million transactions per second opens the door for AI agents to execute thousands of micro-transactions rapidly and autonomously on the blockchain.
Moreover, this base is essential in supporting the increase of cross-chain volume through initiatives such as NEAR Intents. The next steps for the protocol include deploying the optimizations on mainnet in version 2.12 and continuing development on dynamic resharding.
The 1 million TPS establishes the NEAR Protocol as a leader. However, it is yet to be seen whether this speed can finally attract the applications and activity required to match its achievements with meaningful economic scale.
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