The native token (NEAR) of layer-1 blockchain NEAR has witnessed a nearly twofold increase since March 5, fueled by the anticipation surrounding Nvidia's upcoming annual conference, which continues to propel AI-related tokens upward.

NEAR Protocol Co-founder to Feature on "Transforming AI" Panel

Near Protocol co-founder and CEO Illia Polosukhin is slated to participate in a panel titled "Transforming AI" at the conference, which will be hosted by Nvidia's founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. Polosukhin's presence and the imminent launch of Near Tasks, an AI facet of the business, have stirred speculation about potential collaboration between NEAR and Nvidia. Notably, NEAR is the sole crypto-related firm slated to present at the main panel.

The surge in NEAR's value is reflective of broader trends in the crypto AI market, with tokens like fetch.ai (FET), the graph (GRT), and singularityNET (AGIX) all registering gains exceeding 30% over the past week, according to CoinMarketCap. Concurrently, the CoinDesk 20 index (CD20) has seen a rise of 9.18% during the same period.

Bullish Momentum Propelled by Bitcoin's Record High

The bullish momentum driving NEAR's ascent has been further bolstered by Bitcoin's recent achievement of a record high, reaching $72,446 on Monday. Arthur Cheong, CEO of crypto venture capital firm DeFiance Capital, added to the optimism with a social media post proclaiming "the future is NEAR" on Monday, following NEAR's additional 20% surge to $7.00, marking its highest level since May 2022. Notably, on March 5, it was trading at $3.60.

According to Coin Desk, originating as NEAR.AI in 2017, initially an AI company unrelated to the blockchain, the NEAR team transitioned to building the NEAR protocol in 2018, with the mainnet launched in 2020. Before spearheading NEAR, Polosukhin contributed to Google Research, focusing on developing models and tools integral to AI advancement.

A Coingape report says the NEAR coin price has experienced a significant breakthrough, marked by a lengthy bullish candle, surpassing the $6.12 neckline resistance of the rounding bottom pattern.

Such a development indicates an optimistic market sentiment, suggesting a bullish outlook.

NEAR operates as a proof-of-stake blockchain, leveraging a consensus protocol called Nightshade. This protocol enables NEAR to process approximately 100,000 transactions per second and generate a block per second. According to CoinDesk data, the token boasts a market capitalization of $7.45 billion.

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