Near Protocol News: NEAR’s Biggest Week Yet Has 3 Major Twists
Near Protocol News: What Are NEAR’s 3 Biggest Moves Right Now?
There's a lot happening across the ecosystem in Near Protocol News this week, three separate developments that each deserve their own spotlight.
Tokenized US stocks just landed on near.com through a new Ondo Finance partnership.
MyNearWallet users are facing a hard deadline to migrate their staking setup, and NEAR's own co-founder just made the case that privacy, not speed or scalability, is what finally unlocks everyday blockchain use.
Alongside all this, NEAR's price sits at $4.33, down 2.41% over the past 24 hours, after a genuinely wild run that saw it spike above $4.60 before pulling back.
NEAR's Current Price Action
Before diving into the news itself, here's where the token actually stands right now:
| Metric | Value |
| Price | $4.33 |
| 24h Change | -2.41% |
| 24h Volume | $1.73 billion (-7.57%) |
| Fully Diluted Valuation | $5.66 billion |
Note: Cryptocurrency prices can change rapidly. Price data may differ from the latest market value, so always verify the current price through an official or reliable market source before making any financial decision. This price data is based on the market conditions as of September 22, 2026, at 11:00 AM IST.
Source: CoinMarketCap's live data
Tokenized US Stocks Arrive on near.com Through Ondo
The biggest development here comes straight from accompanying post.
Source: NEAR POST
Near.com has partnered with Ondo Finance, described as the largest tokenizer of stocks globally, to let eligible users buy, trade, and hold tokenized US stocks and ETFs confidentially through a single account, no separate brokerage account required.
Key details of the integration:
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20 tokenized assets launching initially, including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and ETFs like QQQ, SLV, and IAU
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Powered by NEAR Intents, which handles cross-chain routing and execution across more than 30 networks
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Purchases can be funded with USDC, Bitcoin, or other supported assets
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Ondo's tokenized securities platform already holds over $1 billion in total value locked and more than $26 billion in cumulative trading volume
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Not available to US or Canadian persons under current securities restrictions
Defuse Labs CEO Alex Shevchenko framed the move around giving people more control over their money and more choice in how they transact, while Ondo's Armand Khatri noted that NEAR Intents lets users hold these tokenized assets without a separate brokerage account entirely.
MyNearWallet Users Face an October 31 Deadline
Separate from the Ondo news, there's an important operational update tied to staking.
Per Everstake's official announcement, MyNearWallet will officially sunset on October 31, 2026.
Anyone currently staking NEAR through Everstake using MyNearWallet needs to migrate to either Meteor Wallet or near.com before that date to keep managing their staking through a supported wallet.
MyNearWallet's own site confirms the sunset is happening gradually as part of a broader NEAR ecosystem transition and reassures users that funds remain safe with no immediate action required, though the staking migration itself does need to happen before the cutoff.
Everstake has published dedicated guides covering the Meteor Wallet staking process for anyone who needs to make the switch.
Why Privacy Is the New Frontier for NEAR
The third major thread in this week's Near Protocol News comes from NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin, who told the Unchained podcast that the missing piece holding back everyday blockchain use has always been privacy.
His argument is straightforward: fully public blockchains leak too much information for things like payroll, active trading, or daily spending, and that's exactly the gap technologies like NEAR's Confidential Intents and Zcash are now closing.
Source: X Post
This isn't just talk either. NEAR has already built a private version of its Intents system, and in September the protocol crossed $70 million in confidential total value locked, triggering the first snapshot for an incentive program tied to Confidential Intents.
The system routes transactions through a private NEAR shard specifically designed to keep activity away from public mempools, reducing exposure to front-running and strategy leaks without sacrificing the composability that fully opaque privacy chains typically give up.
How These Three Stories Connect
Looking at all three developments together, a clear pattern emerges in the direction NEAR is pushing.
A few takeaways worth keeping in mind:
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The Ondo partnership directly leans on confidential execution as a selling point, tying real-world asset access to the same privacy infrastructure Polosukhin was describing
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Wallet consolidation toward near.com and Meteor Wallet reflects NEAR's broader push to unify its user experience under fewer, more capable interfaces
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Privacy, tokenized real-world assets, and infrastructure cleanup are all converging around the same near.com hub at the same time
Conclusion
This stretch of Near Protocol News captures a project moving on multiple fronts simultaneously, expanding into tokenized traditional finance through Ondo, tightening its wallet ecosystem ahead of the MyNearWallet deadline, and doubling down on privacy as its core technical differentiator.
With NEAR's price still holding well above its recent lows despite today's pullback, and crypto news today full of chatter about confidential execution as the next major on-chain trend, these developments together suggest NEAR is betting heavily on privacy and real-world asset access as its path toward genuine everyday usage.
Disclaimer
This article is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered financial or investment advice. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.
