NEAR Protocol just landed on Hyperliquid’s spot market, giving the AI-linked token a direct buying route on the busiest perpetuals exchange in crypto — and it arrives with more than 344 million USD already riding on NEAR leveraged bets.
By Diego Rivera | September 23, 2026
NEAR, the token that powers the NEAR Protocol blockchain, can now be traded directly against USDC on Hyperliquid, according to NEAR’s September 23 announcement. Until now, Hyperliquid users could only get leveraged exposure to NEAR through perpetual futures — contracts that borrow money to amplify bets. Spot trading is different: when you buy on spot, you own the actual token, the same way buying a share on a stock exchange means owning the share. The pair still needs several more days to join Hyperliquid’s Strict List, the exchange’s tier of fully vetted tokens, as part of its normal rollout process.
Why a Spot Listing Matters When Derivatives Already Exist
Hyperliquid is best known for derivatives. Data compiled by HyperAcademy showed NEAR perpetual open interest — the total value of unsettled leveraged bets — at roughly 344.2 million USD early on September 23, with 24-hour volume near 269.1 million USD. A later snapshot still showed about 248 million USD in daily volume, placing NEAR among the platform’s most heavily traded markets. Funding was positive at 0.0017 percent per hour, meaning longs were paying shorts to keep their positions open, and Hyperliquid allows up to 10 times leverage on the NEAR perpetual contract.
Here is the catch for regular investors: a market dominated by leveraged futures can move violently, because forced liquidations — automatic sales when a leveraged trader’s collateral runs out — cascade during sharp price swings. A spot market changes that dynamic in two ways. First, it lets people buy and hold NEAR without leverage at all. Second, market makers can now trade both the spot and perpetual markets on the same platform, hedging between them, which typically tightens spreads and improves pricing for everyone.
The Rally That Brought NEAR to the Party
NEAR has posted one of its strongest weekly runs of the year. On September 17, the token traded near 3.05 USD after gaining 20.8 percent in a single day, leading a rally among AI-linked crypto assets. It has since pushed above 4 USD — roughly 40 percent above the mid-September level — and traded near 4.33 USD after the Hyperliquid announcement, just shy of its 52-week high of 4.46 USD.
The move coincided with real network activity rather than pure speculation. NEAR’s “Confidential Intents” system — a private transaction router that connects more than 30 blockchains and is designed to stop trades from being front-run in public mempools, the waiting rooms where pending transactions are visible to everyone — crossed 70 million USD in locked value on September 17. That automatically triggered the first snapshot of NEAR’s incentive program, setting aside 333,333 milestone tokens for eligible users who keep more than 100 USD in confidential balances and have an active swap history, with each wallet capped at 2 percent of the distribution. Those rewards stay locked until NEAR’s three-day volume-weighted average price reaches at least 3.33 USD — a threshold the token has already cleared.
Elsewhere in the ecosystem, Aurora Labs said its solver network has routed more than 30 billion USD in cross-chain transactions after adding Sui as a destination, and NEAR Intents solvers were used to convert assets during a Zcash NFT auction that saw more than 19 million USD pass through 1,718 swaps.
Hyperliquid Keeps Expanding — and NEAR Keeps Attaching to It
The listing also reflects how central Hyperliquid has become to crypto trading. The platform generated 429.04 million USD in revenue between January 1 and September 15, according to figures cited in September — 12.62 percent of a 3.40 billion USD revenue pool in CoinGecko’s adjusted comparison of crypto projects, finishing more than 106 million USD ahead of Pump.fun. Hyperliquid recorded nearly 237 billion USD in perpetual trading volume over a recent 30-day period, and it added trailing stop orders — triggers that follow a favorable price move before executing after a chosen pullback — across its perpetual markets on September 21.
NEAR’s integration with the exchange’s world runs deeper than one spot pair. One day before the Hyperliquid deployment, NEAR partnered with Ondo Finance to add 20 tokenized assets through near.com and NEAR Intents, including exposure to Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, plus products tied to the QQQ index, silver, and gold. Eligible users can route supported crypto from more than 30 connected blockchains into these Ondo Stocks without opening a brokerage account — though United States users are excluded under Ondo’s securities restrictions.
What This Means for You
For NEAR holders, the spot listing is a modest but genuine positive: easier access usually means deeper demand, and it gives the token a presence on the fastest-growing trading venue in crypto without relying solely on leveraged speculation. The caution flag is the open interest itself. More than 344 million USD in leveraged positions means a sharp reversal could trigger heavy liquidations, so the next test is whether spot volume grows quickly enough to balance that derivatives exposure. Watch whether NEAR holds above 4 USD and whether the 52-week high at 4.46 USD gives way — and remember that a token up roughly 40 percent in a week can retrace just as fast.
Market snapshot at time of writing: Bitcoin trades near 85,700 USD, Ethereum near 2,714 USD, and Solana near 117 USD, with the Crypto Fear and Greed Index at 71 (Greed).
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
344M in open interest on NEAR perps before spot even existed. the second it hits the Strict List that OI is gonna flip sideways on some real spot flow
@hype liquidity real, been farming NEAR perp basis on CEXs for months, hyperliquid spot finally makes that trade one venue
Spot listing matters more than people think. You can hedge perp positions without eating a funding rate every 8 hours on a USDC pair.
Still waiting on the Strict List. Plenty of spot pairs launched on HL and quietly never made it past the vetting tier. I will believe it when I see it.
strict list in a few days or it stays in limbo like half the recent pairs. until then NEAR spot on HL is basically a demo with 344M watching
344 million in open interest with 10x available and the spot market only just launches now? that is a liquidation cascade waiting for one bad candle. good luck longs
the 248M in daily volume sitting on 10x is what worries me more than the spot launch. one flush and the book gaps straight through
^ funding at 0.0017% per hour sounds tiny until you realize longs paid it nonstop all week while price ran 3.05 to 4.33. somebody is carrying a heavy bag into this listing
0.0017% an hour compounds to roughly 3.7% a month just for being long. basis traders eat that, retail longs are the ones paying the toll
The Ondo integration matters more than the spot pair long term. Tokenized Nvidia and Tesla through NEAR Intents across 30+ chains is an actual use case, not just another listing.