NEAR Jumps 11% After First US ETF Launch Draws $35M in Inflows

The first US spot NEAR ETF has opened with $35.5 million in net inflows, but the launch arrived after much of the market’s rush to position itself had already happened.

Bitwise’s NRR began trading on NYSE Arca on September 29, 2026. The fund attracted about 7.2 million NEAR, equal to roughly 0.55% of circulating supply, according to Bitwise data cited in first-day reporting. Its assets stood at $36 million, while shares traded $15.1 million.

The ETF arrived after a long rally

NEAR rose 10.2% to $5.38 in the 24 hours around the debut. That move followed a gain of more than 100% since August, when the token traded between $2.40 and $2.60.

The price move was substantial, but the derivatives picture was less one-sided. Futures open interest, measured in tokens, peaked on September 21 and fell about 20% by launch day while NEAR continued to appreciate.

That is a cleaner sign of physical demand than a rise driven by a growing pile of leveraged bets. It doesn’t prove every buyer was purchasing for the long term, though. The ETF’s $35.5 million represented less than 1% of supply, and NEAR had already moved from about $2.62 on September 16 toward $5 as the listing cleared.

What the fund does with NEAR

Bitwise says NRR will charge a 0.75% management fee. The firm also intends to stake the fund’s NEAR itself, targeting average rewards of about 5%.

That design makes staking part of the product rather than something an investor has to arrange separately. It also extends Bitwise’s NEAR offering into the US after a BaFin-approved staking ETP began trading in Europe.

Bitwise’s wider case for NEAR rests partly on NEAR Intents, its transaction protocol. The firm says the system has processed more than $32 billion in volume, up from less than $1 billion a year earlier. Confidential Intents, a related private execution system, has more than $70 million in total value locked across over 30 connected blockchains.

The numbers are growing. The more difficult question is how much of that activity will translate into sustained demand for NEAR itself.

Nearcore 2.14 changes who receives gas fees

A separate catalyst could soon change how NEAR handles gas fees. The network’s House of Stake passed proposal HSP-027 on July 3, and the code was merged into nearcore PR #16108 on July 23.

Under the current rules, 30% of gas fees go back to developers and 70% are burned. If the change activates on mainnet with nearcore 2.14, all execution gas fees will be burned permanently.

The NEAR governance forum currently estimates an October 5 deployment date. Earlier reporting placed the upgrade in August, so the date should be treated as a target rather than a completed change.

This is a redistribution of the fee, not a gas-price increase. It won’t alter smart-contract execution or make users pay more for transactions. It does remove a developer rebate that had already fallen to roughly 1 to 5 NEAR per contract per month by 2026, down from about 27.6 NEAR in June 2025.

For developers, the practical effect is simple. They will no longer receive that automatic rebate. For the protocol, every execution gas fee would be removed from circulation.

What to watch after the debut

NRR ended its first session at a 1.17% discount to the value of its underlying NEAR holdings. That is a modest gap, but it shows the ETF’s market price can move away from the value of the tokens it holds.

The clearest tests now are whether NRR attracts more inflows, whether NEAR can hold demand after the opening-day rush, and whether nearcore 2.14 activates the full gas-fee burn on schedule.

The debut gives investors direct US exposure to NEAR and its staking rewards. It doesn’t settle the larger market question. Most of the rally happened before the fund opened, leverage was already retreating, and the ETF initially held a small share of supply. The next round of flows may say more about durable buying than the launch figures do.