NEAR: Network upgrade to boost token price by 23%
Despite a 2% market decline today, NEAR continues to rise. According to data, the platform's native token NEAR has surged nearly 23% since last week. This is largely attributed to positive on-chain development, indicating that the altcoin has sufficient strength to maintain its current position in the market. Just recently, NEAR announced the deployment of its acclaimed 'innovative Sharding design' Nightshade 2.0 on the platform's mainnet, further enhancing the powerful and reliable system that users have enjoyed for years.
According to a recent blog post, the network upgrade introduced stateless validation, which is the new Sharding architecture of the protocol. This new architecture improves the performance of the network's individual Sharding. NEAR has deployed six Sharding on the network, with the goal of reaching ten by the end of the year. It also dropped the hardware requirements to become a validator. Nightshade 2.0 has improved the validator experience by eliminating the need to track all Sharding of NEAR, thereby stimulating the growth of encryption currency validators.
NEAR Protocol leader Bowen Wang said, "In particular, the new Sharding implementation has paved the way for a significant increase in the already fast transaction throughput of the token." NEAR Protocol co-founder and NEAR Foundation CEO Illia Polosukhin said that this network upgrade addresses the "fundamental bottleneck problem of how to achieve scalability while maintaining availability and security on most L1s."
As the market experienced a downturn in today's trading activity, NEAR is currently in a bearish trading state as the token has been rejected at the $5.2 upper limit, shifting the momentum towards the short side. This will inevitably result in short-term losses. With the market declining, the momentum is turning towards the Bear Market, which, if sustained, will continue to affect the performance of encryption currencies. However, recent developments with NEAR may alleviate fears, uncertainties, and doubts as they contribute to the long-term growth of the network.
Once the effect of Nightshade matures, NEAR will have a solid foundation to enhance investor confidence.
Currently, NEAR may take two paths in the midterm. If the market rebounds after the current downturn, it may break $5.7 in the next few weeks. However, if the decline continues to worsen, NEAR may fall back to $3.8, and in the worst case scenario, $3.0.
Currently, investors should carefully monitor the overall market trends as any fluctuations may affect the performance of altcoins.
(Data Source: Christian Encila)