Near Protocol adopts Bitcoin Inscriptions: Here’s the impact

• Within four days, transactions on the blockchain jumped 12x.
• 100% of the inscriptions have been minted.

Transactions on the NEAR Protocol [NEAR] blockchain surged to unexpected levels between the 1st and 2nd of December, according to Near Blocks. As of the 29th of November, the total transaction count on NEAR was 1.84 million.

But at press time, the same metric was 13.93 million, indicating a 12x increase within a few days.

Source: NearBlocks.io

The reason for the sudden spike in transactions was not without cause. Based on the investigation by AMBCrypto, NEAR has become the latest Layer-one (L1) blockchain to have inscriptions on board.

NEAR and NEAT: An interesting bromance

On the 28th of November, the NEAT inscriptions first appeared on the NEAR blockchain. During the launch, the Neat Inscription team described it as a new standard for launching public tokens on the network.

The development team also admitted that it found the Bitcoin Ordinals’ experiment valuable. It also added that it was one of the reasons it followed the same step using the Ordinals protocol.

Other L1s like Litecoin [LTC] and Dogecoin [DOGE] have also trodden a similar path.

Like Bitcoin’s BRC-20, NEAT also created its own NRC-20, the fungible side of its inscriptions. As of this writing, 100% of the total NRC-20 assets have been minted and burned.

According to AMBCrypto’s assessment of NEAT, there are now 24,139 holders of the NRC-20 tokens.

A historical record of 13.19m transactions in the last 24 hours and 350k NEAR tokens burned.

That’s NEAT! 📸

Inscription is a new mechanism of creating digital assets on blockchain, originating from the Bitcoin network via Ordinals Protocol.

Learn more about the first… https://t.co/u1KyhLLFVP pic.twitter.com/BGK7ZEfF1C

— NEAR Protocol (@NEARProtocol) December 1, 2023

Because of this increase in activity, NEAR gained $173,000 in fees. So, the protocol was able to make a 67.90% jump in revenue, Token Terminal revealed.

Source: Token Terminal

Besides the rise in revenue, NEAR’s Social Volume has also been affected. The Social Volume, tracked by the on-chain analytic platform Santiment, is the total number of searches or messages connected to a project.

The market is listening

In the early hours of the 3rd of December, the Social Volume jumped to 12.14 before decreasing. This means there has been an increasing discussion related to NEAR.

However, the sentiment around the project seemed indecisive between the bullish and bearish side.

Source: Santiment

In terms of its Total Value Locked (TVL), DefiLlama showed that the metric had increased. At press time, NEAR’s TVL was $51.58 million.

How much are 1,10,100 NEARs worth today?

The TVL measures the total value of assets locked in a protocol. 

When the TVL decreases, it means that market participants are refraining from depositing their assets into a protocol. So, NEAR’s TVL increase implies that the protocol seemed trustworthy enough to have liquidity deposited in return for yield.