NEAR Protocol Slips to $3.70, but the TVL Drop Is Mostly a Price Effect

NEAR Protocol fell to $3.70 on Thursday, November 5, 2026, or roughly €3.30. That is 7.6 percent less than 24 hours earlier and the lowest daily close since September 20. At the same time, the value locked in applications on the NEAR blockchain has shrunk to $173.6 million. What the data shows: converted into NEAR tokens, that value has stayed almost unchanged at around 47 million tokens since mid-October. The decline in dollar terms is therefore almost entirely down to the lower price and hardly at all to capital being withdrawn. Our assessment follows further down.

This article places the price drop in the context of the market sell-off, presents our own analysis of locked capital, explains when the approved cut to NEAR issuance will actually push down staking yields, and sets out the price levels that NEAR Protocol will look to next.

NEAR price on November 5: down 7.6 percent to $3.70

According to CoinGecko market data, the 24-hour trading range ran from $3.64 to $4.09. Over seven days the loss adds up to 16.4 percent, over 30 days to 27.1 percent. On a one-year view NEAR is still up 90 percent, because the token was trading well below $2 in the summer.

Market capitalisation is the price multiplied by all tokens in circulation, which for NEAR is around 1.31 billion. At rank 21, NEAR remains one of the larger projects in the crypto market.

Chip sell-off and liquidations: the market backdrop to the decline

There was no trigger specific to NEAR on the day, such as a network outage or an announcement from the project. The decline is part of a broad sell-off. On Wall Street, the Nasdaq Composite lost around 3.5 percent on Thursday and the S&P 500 more than 2.3 percent. Semiconductor stocks were hit hardest: Micron fell more than 12 percent, AMD more than 13 percent and Nvidia 6.5 percent, as Crypto Briefing summarises.

Bitcoin was dragged down to around $76,400, a loss of 4.6 percent in 24 hours, while Ether lost 6.2 percent to $2,264. In the derivatives market, leveraged positions worth $1.06 billion were forcibly closed within 24 hours according to CoinGlass data, $931.96 million of them on the long side, Crypto News Flash reports. A liquidation is the automatic closure of a leveraged position once the posted collateral no longer covers the losses. When many long positions are unwound at once, the trading venues sell into a falling market and the decline speeds up.

Smaller layer-1 tokens such as NEAR typically fall harder than Bitcoin in phases like this. On Thursday NEAR lost a good one and a half times as much as Bitcoin.

Since November 2: from $4.02 to $3.70 in three days

On Monday NEAR lost the $4.30 level and stood at around $4.02 in the afternoon; our report NEAR Protocol slips below $4.30 named $4.00 and $3.59 at the time as the next reference points on the downside. On Tuesday the issuance cut was approved with the price at $3.87, when the lower level stood at $3.74.

Since then, the following has happened: the $4 mark has broken, and $3.74 has not held either. Thursday's daily low was $3.64, only five cents above the zone around $3.59 where NEAR last closed on September 20. What is new is the downward pressure from the stock market, which played no role on Monday.

TVL on the NEAR blockchain: $173.6 million, lowest since September

TVL stands for total value locked, the combined value of all tokens that users have deposited in a blockchain's applications, for example in lending protocols or decentralised exchanges. According to daily figures from DefiLlama, this value on NEAR stood at $276.8 million on October 12. On November 5 it is $173.6 million, 37 percent less and the lowest level since September 18.

At first glance this looks like capital flight. Some English-language market reports read the decline exactly that way. Looking at the composition leads to a different conclusion, because TVL is measured in dollars. When the price of the deposited tokens falls, TVL drops even if nobody withdraws anything.

TVL measured in NEAR: around 47 million tokens since mid-October

For this analysis we divided the daily TVL figures on NEAR by the respective daily NEAR price. The result is an approximation, because TVL contains stablecoins and other tokens as well as NEAR. For the direction of travel it is sufficient. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on November 5, 2026, based on CoinGecko daily prices and DefiLlama daily TVL figures on eleven reference dates since August 8, 2026.

Between October 12 and November 5, the converted holdings move within a narrow band of 45.6 to 47.0 million NEAR. Over the same period the price fell 37 percent, and TVL in dollars also fell 37 percent. The two figures match almost exactly because the holdings remained stable.

The picture was different in late summer. From August 8 to early October, the converted holdings fell from 58.0 to around 46 million NEAR, a drop of a fifth. In that phase the price rose sharply, and TVL in dollars grew regardless. Some users therefore used the rally to pull tokens out of the applications. That withdrawal lies weeks in the past and has come to a halt since mid-October.

Rhea, Meta Pool and LiNEAR: where the capital on NEAR sits

A single project accounts for most of the TVL on NEAR. According to DefiLlama protocol data, around $147.9 million is currently deposited in the lending protocol Rhea Lend, 16.1 percent less than a week ago. Another $23.2 million sits in the decentralised exchange Rhea Dex. Together, the two make up almost the entire TVL of the blockchain under the standard count.

DefiLlama also lists liquid staking protocols separately. Liquid staking means that users deposit NEAR for staking and receive a tradeable receipt token in return. Meta Pool comes to around $80.8 million, down 16.9 percent in seven days, RHEA LST to $70.2 million, and LiNEAR to $47.0 million with the steepest weekly loss at 25.0 percent. The NEAR Intents bridge, through which tokens move between blockchains, holds $100.9 million.

DefiLlama does not include these protocol values in the blockchain's standard TVL, which is why their sum clearly exceeds $173.6 million. What matters for the assessment is something else: at Rhea Lend and Meta Pool, the weekly loss of around 16 to 17 percent is of the same order as the price decline of 16.4 percent. Here too, the arithmetic points to a price effect. Only LiNEAR is losing noticeably more than the price explains.

Issuance cut HSP-029: staking yield falls from February 2027 at the earliest

On November 2, the vote on proposal HSP-029 closed in the House of Stake, the NEAR community's voting body. The proposal lowers the maximum annual issuance, meaning the amount of newly created tokens, from 2.5 to 1.6 percent. According to the proposal text in the NEAR governance forum, the cap declines linearly over 24 months by about 3.75 basis points a month. The ramp only begins a full quarter after the decision, and validators must first adopt the change through a regular protocol upgrade.

In its detailed tables, the proposal puts the gross staking yield falling from 5.27 to 3.37 percent at the end of the ramp. The summary of the same text, however, gives a path from 4.80 to 3.07 percent. The range therefore remains open: at the target, the gross yield lies between 3.07 and 3.37 percent depending on which calculation is used. Our report NEAR cuts issuance to 1.6 percent works through both versions in detail.

Issuance plays no discernible role in Thursday's price. Fewer new tokens mean less selling pressure in the medium term from validators who sell their rewards. That effect only kicks in with the ramp, however, and works in small steps over years. Until at least early February 2027, stakers receive the existing yield.

NEAR price levels: $3.59 below, $4.30 above

The following levels are derived from daily prices over the past twelve months. A moving average is the mean of closing prices over a fixed number of days; traders read it as a measure of the trend.

• $3.64: Thursday's daily low. If this level does not hold, the next reference point is close by.
• $3.59: the closing price on September 20, already named as support on November 2.
• $3.27: the 100-day average, a good twelve percent below the current price.
• $2.57: the 200-day average, the long-term trend line. As long as NEAR trades above it, the uptrend since the summer remains formally intact.
• $4.09 and $4.30 on the upside: Thursday's daily high and the level that broke on November 2. Only a close above $4.30 would technically end the decline that began in October.
• $4.65: the 50-day average, which NEAR has been looking at from below since late October.

Price levels are not a forecast. They show where buyers and sellers were active in the past, and on days with waves of liquidations they are often briefly breached.

Our assessment: Based on the available figures, NEAR's decline is mainly a valuation problem rather than a usage problem. Supporting this are the holdings of around 47 million NEAR, stable in token terms since October 12, and the weekly loss at Rhea Lend and Meta Pool, which matches the price decline. Against it stand the withdrawal of around a fifth of the holdings between August and October and the above-average loss at LiNEAR. As long as the stock market keeps dumping technology stocks, many traders expect NEAR, as a highly volatile layer-1 token, to keep reacting more strongly than Bitcoin. A total loss is possible with any crypto asset.

NEAR in Germany: MiCA exchange, holding period, staking tax and leverage

How to buy: MiCA authorisation first

Since the transitional periods ended, crypto exchanges serving customers in Germany need authorisation under the EU's MiCA regulation (Markets in Crypto-Assets). If you buy NEAR, first check whether the provider is listed as a crypto-asset service provider in the register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. The comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which platforms are authorised and offer NEAR. An alternative through a securities account is the Virtune Staked NEAR ETP listed on Xetra, whose fee of 1.49 percent a year eats up a large part of the staking yield.

Holding period and losses

Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, gains from selling NEAR are tax-free in Germany if more than one year passes between purchase and sale. Within that period, an exemption limit of €1,000 a year applies to all private sales transactions combined. If you sell at a loss now, you can offset that loss against gains from other private sales transactions. The records can be generated from exchange data with crypto tax tools.

Staking income

In the view of the German tax authorities, NEAR from staking counts as other income at the time it is received. A separate exemption limit of €256 a year applies here. Staking does not extend the holding period for the staked tokens; it stays at one year. Until the issuance ramp begins in February 2027 at the earliest, nothing changes in the level of income.

Leverage and liquidation

If you trade NEAR with leverage, you carry the greatest risk on days like this. At ten times leverage, a price drop of around ten percent is mathematically enough to wipe out the collateral of a long position; fees and funding costs shorten the distance further. Thursday's range ran from $4.09 to $3.64, or eleven percent. Leveraged positions can be limited with a stop or a lower leverage level.

Custody

If you hold NEAR for the long term and do not stake through an exchange, you can keep the tokens yourself. A hardware wallet that keeps the private key offline is suitable for this.

NEAR at $3.70: holdings stable, valuation under pressure

The NEAR price has lost two support levels in three days, and TVL in dollars is at its lowest since September. Measured in tokens, however, the locked capital has barely shrunk since mid-October. The issuance cut takes effect from February 2027 at the earliest. Three steps help with your own assessment:

1. Check holdings and cost basis: Record when you bought your NEAR and at what price, so that the holding period and any loss offsetting are clear. A tax tool with a portfolio tracker does this automatically.
2. Check the provider's MiCA authorisation: If you want to buy more or rebalance, use an exchange from the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges and keep the $3.59 and $4.30 levels in mind as reference points.
3. Weigh up the staking yield: Compare your provider's current yield with the target of around 3.1 to 3.4 percent gross after the ramp. The overview of staking platforms shows current terms.

(As of November 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)