NEAR Intents Volume Tops $37B as Brave Leo Goes Live

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The recap bundles four milestones into one update. It covers trading volume, confidential value locked, a new AI staking record, and a live browser integration. Together, they map NEAR’s pitch as privacy and AI infrastructure rather than a plain Layer 1.

NEAR Intents Volume Crosses $37 Billion

The headline figure is the NEAR Intents volume total. NEAR Intents lets users state an outcome, such as swapping USDT for BTC. Solvers then compete to fulfill that order across chains with one signature.

According to NearStats, all-time volume reached $37.03 billion near 03:30 UTC. That total splits into $32.97 billion public and $4.06 billion confidential. NearStats pulls its numbers from NEAR’s revenue.near.org and the public Intents Explorer API.

Other trackers land close. DefiLlama listed about $36.09 billion in cumulative DEX volume at the same time. A public Dune query also tracked near $37 billion. The small gap comes mostly from how each source counts confidential flow.

The growth curve is steep. Volume sat near $20 billion in June, then passed $30 billion by mid-September. It reached roughly $32 billion in early October before this latest print.

The swaps figure is less settled. NEAR reported 37 million-plus swaps, yet that number is first-party. Public trackers show heavy activity but do not publish an audited cumulative total that matches it exactly.

Confidential Intents TVL Tops $145 Million

NEAR also said Confidential Intents value locked crossed $145 million. This product launched on February 25, 2026. It uses a NEAR private shard and a TEE-based bridge, so order details stay private by design.

NearStats listed a source-reported confidential TVL of about $142.39 million. Nansen pegged the figure nearer $160 million at the end of the third quarter. The spread reflects a simple fact. Confidential metrics come from a private shard, not a fully public balance.

The ramp has been fast this year. Confidential TVL moved from roughly $27 million in mid-June to $50 million by late August. It then hit $70 million in mid-September, which triggered an incentive snapshot.

Brave Leo Runs Private Inference on NEAR AI

The most consumer-facing milestone involves Brave. On October 15, Brave Leo began running private AI inference from NEAR AI Cloud in production. The model in use is GLM 5.3 Flash.

Brave confirmed the integration on its own blog. The setup uses end-to-end encryption, Oblivious HTTP, and TEE verification. In short, the browser encrypts the prompt, strips the user’s IP, and processes the request inside a verified enclave.

The mechanics matter here. A Trusted Execution Environment isolates the model from the host, the cloud operator, and NEAR AI itself. Hardware attestations then let anyone verify that the right code ran. As a result, Brave cannot read the content, and NEAR AI cannot see the user.

Brave co-founder Brendan Eich framed it as a trust-but-verify win. “AI has raised the stakes, yet too much of it still runs on ‘trust me bro’ promises,” he said. He called it a first for AI chats in browsers.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin echoed the point in the NEAR AI announcement. “Browsers are a primary computing interface that handles all of our personal information,” he said. He stressed that AI should arrive in a user-owned way.

One Million NEAR Staked for Confidential Inference

NEAR AI also hit a staking record. On October 21, both NEAR AI and NEAR Protocol said more than one million NEAR had been committed to confidential inference. Staking for NEAR AI launched on July 30.

The design is unusual. A staker converts yield into compute credits that pay for private inference. Meanwhile, the staker keeps the principal and can unstake later. You pay for privacy with the yield, not the stake.

Still, community analysts raised a flag. Around the one million mark, one wallet held close to 66 percent of the stake. No fully independent dashboard confirmed the exact figure beyond official statements.

Price Slides as Skeptics Question the Figures

The numbers rose, but the token did not. NEAR traded near $3.81 around 03:30 UTC on November 3, down about 11 to 12 percent on the day. Market cap sat near $5.0 billion, ranking around 21st.

The drop tracked a wider market pullback, not the recap itself. DefiLlama also showed overall NEAR Intents TVL near $192 million, down roughly 16 percent over 30 days. So the growth story and the price story diverged this week.

Critics raise fair points. Much of the Intents fee flow goes to solvers and frontends rather than the protocol. Analysts also question how much volume is organic versus incentivized. In October, an exploit on Intents infrastructure drained about $3.8 million, though teams recovered most of it, as Decrypt and others reported.

None of that erases the trend. Multiple trackers confirm the volume climb. Yet the gap between headline numbers and protocol revenue remains a live debate.

What Comes Next for NEAR

The next test is durability. NEAR now has a mainstream surface for private AI through Brave, plus a growing NEAR Intents volume base to defend. Both need organic demand to hold once incentives cool.

Watch three things from here. First, whether confidential TVL keeps climbing without fresh incentive snapshots. Second, whether Brave Leo users actually pick the private model. Third, whether swap counts gain independent verification.

For now, NEAR is leaning hard into the AI and privacy thesis. The milestones are real, the skeptics are loud, and the next monthly recap will show which story wins. This article is not financial advice.