Bitwise launched NRR, the Bitwise NEAR ETF, which is the first spot NEAR exchange-traded product available in the United States.
"The future is NEAR. Introducing $NRR—the Bitwise NEAR ETF—giving investors exposure to the emerging agentic economy," Bitwise wrote on X.
The fund offers in-house staking designed to capture NEAR's approximately 5% staking rewards, based on the 30-day average annualized rate as of September 25, 2026.
Why Bitwise is positioning NEAR around AI
Bitwise framed the product specifically around NEAR's positioning at the intersection of AI and crypto. The firm's pitch centers on the network's origins:
"Built at the intersection of AI x crypto by foundational AI researchers: The team helped shape modern AI, and now they're building its transaction layer."
NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin was one of the authors of the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which introduced the transformer architecture underlying every major large language model built since, including GPT, Claude, and Gemini. That research lineage is central to how Bitwise is marketing NRR, distinguishing NEAR from other layer-1 blockchains by tying its founding team directly to the technical foundations of the current AI boom.
The growth numbers behind NEAR Intents
Bitwise cited NEAR Intents processing more than $32 billion in volume, up from under $1 billion a year earlier. The firm described the underlying security model directly:
"NEAR Intents settle cross-chain transactions through smart contracts to avoid the potential risks of centralized bridges."
NEAR Intents functions as a cross-chain execution layer that lets users express a desired outcome, such as swapping one asset for another across different blockchains, without manually routing the transaction through a bridge protocol themselves. Centralized and even many decentralized bridges have historically represented one of the largest attack surfaces in crypto, with the Ronin Bridge and Wormhole exploits alone accounting for more than $900 million in combined losses in 2022. An intents-based architecture that settles through smart contracts directly, instead of locking assets in a bridge contract pending a separate minting event on the destination chain, removes a specific failure mode that has repeatedly cost users hundreds of millions of dollars across the industry.
How NEAR's tokenomics changed heading into this launch
Bitwise highlighted three structural changes to NEAR's token economics: a fully unlocked supply at roughly $6 billion market cap, inflation recently halved to 2.5% annually, and transaction fees now funding token buybacks.
A fully unlocked supply removes one of the most common overhangs facing newer layer-1 tokens, where large allocations to early investors and team members vest gradually and create persistent sell pressure as those tokens unlock on a schedule. NEAR's inflation cut from what was previously a higher annual rate to 2.5% mirrors a broader trend across proof-of-stake networks toward reducing token issuance as networks mature and transaction fee revenue becomes a more meaningful funding source than inflationary staking rewards alone. Directing fees toward buybacks, similar to the mechanism Ethena introduced for ENA and Cronos Labs adopted for CRO, ties NEAR's token value more directly to actual network usage.
What differentiates NRR structurally from a direct NEAR purchase
Bitwise emphasized that in-house staking brings its own institutional expertise directly into the fund's operations, stating the approach delivers "transparency, security, and oversight" compared to relying on a third-party staking provider. Staking rewards earned by the trust accrue to shareholders as an increase in the fund's net asset value per share.
The fund's own risk disclosure is explicit about the structural distance between holding NRR shares and holding NEAR directly. NRR is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, meaning it does not carry the same regulatory protections as mutual funds or ETFs registered under that act. The disclosure states plainly: "An investment in NRR is not the same as a direct investment in NEAR." Foreside Fund Services, LLC serves as the fund's marketing agent, and staking rewards are explicitly not guaranteed and subject to change based on network conditions.
The launch extends Bitwise's pattern of bringing niche layer-1 and application-specific tokens into regulated ETP wrappers, following its earlier Hyperliquid and Lighter staking products, both of which targeted platforms positioned at specific technical or narrative intersections within crypto.
Kristian Koch
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