Daily active accounts on NEAR reached ATH in Q1 2023

With the crypto market on an upswing, NEAR Protocol had a robust first quarter, with the circulating market cap of the native token NEAR rising 55% from the previous quarter to $1.67 billion at the end of Q1 2023, according to a Messari report.

Comparatively, the global crypto market cap recorded a 46% increase.

NEAR’s quarterly revenue — total gas spent on the network — reached $120,000. But the most notable growth was in the number of daily active accounts, which reached an all-time high for the third consecutive quarter in Q1 2023. According to the report, NEAR had 64,000 daily active accounts on average during Q1.

NEAR’s developer community has also been thriving. According to Electric Capital’s annual developer report, NEAR saw a 40% increase in developers in 2022 and a 20x increase in total developers since 2018. The report also noted that NEAR, along with Solana and Polygon, has the highest number of monthly active developers growing at the fastest pace last year outside of Ethereum.

Not all good news

But the number of new accounts created on NEAR fell for the third consecutive quarter, the report noted. The network’s average daily transactions also fell 13% quarter-on-quarter to 393,000, as per the report. Non-fungible token (NFT) activity on the NEAR Protocol also reduced over the first quarter.

Additionally, the total value locked (TVL) on NEAR decreased by 32% to $97 million compared to the previous quarter. But the report attributed this decline to an Alameda Research-linked wallet removing liquidity and closing positions.

NEAR’s liquid staking ecosystem, however, had better luck. The liquid staking protocols on the network had $36 million in TVL at the end of Q1, increasing 98% quarter-on-quarter.

Increasing decentralization

In January, NEAR said it was working towards a “more decentralized model of capital allocation.” In simple words, NEAR was trying to decentralize the process of handling capital, so community-led decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) were created. These include Marketing DAO, Developer Governance DAO, Creatives DAO, and the NEAR Digital Collective (NDC).

The Marketing DAO focuses on improving the funding of marketing-focused projects. Developer Governance DAO decentralizes the developer community on the network. The Creatives DAO is for all creative contributors in the ecosystem, offering them a platform for collaboration. The NDC will govern the NEAR ecosystem.

Additionally, the number of validators on the network has also crossed 200, leading to more decentralization.