Near token pulled back for two consecutive days as the recent Nightshade 2.0 launch on mainnet and as traders position for the upcoming Nvidia earnings.

Near (NEAR) retreated to $4.83, down from last week’s high of $5.22. It remains slightly above the 50-day moving average and 57% above its lowest point this month.

Near DeFi inflows jump

A closer look at Near’s ecosystem reveals that most dApps in its Decentralized Finance ecosystem have experienced strong inflows in the past few weeks.

Burrow, a lending marketplace similar to AAVE (AAVE) saw its inflows jump by 23% over the last seven days, reaching $160 million.

Similarly, inflows into liquid staking apps like Linear Protocol, Meta Pool, Here Wallet, and AllStake have increased by over 25% in the same period.

Overall, the total value locked (TVL) in Near Protocol has soared to over $654 million, its highest level since July. In NEAR terms, the TVL has jumped to 47.6 million.

This rebound is likely due to the recent launch of the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, which introduced stateless validation and enhanced scalability through advanced sharding.

Sharding is a process that slices blocks into smaller shards, increasing a network’s throughput. It is also expected to localize congestion, so gas price increases do not affect the entire network. The developers aim to position Near as the preferred blockchain for launching decentralized applications.

Nvidia earnings ahead

The Near token is also in the spotlight as traders await Nvidia’s earnings, scheduled for Aug. 28. These results are significant because Nvidia has become the leading AI company, pushing its market cap to over $3 trillion.

The earnings report will provide more insight into whether the AI industry is still growing. In its last financial results, Nvidia’s revenue jumped by over 240% to $26 billion, surpassing its earnings from the entire fiscal year 2021.

Analysts expect Nvidia’s quarterly revenues to come in at over $28.7 billion, higher than the $26.9 billion it made in 2022.

Near Protocol has positioned itself as a prime blockchain for AI developers by offering agentic frameworks, payments, compute tools, and decentralized storage solutions. It has been adopted by companies like Ringfence, Masa, and Cosmose AI.

With a market cap of $5.3 billion, Near is the largest AI-focused blockchain, according to CoinGecko.

Near token is still in a downtrend

The daily chart shows that the Near token is still in a downtrend even after rising by over 57% from its lowest point in August. It remains below the upper side of the descending channel that connects the highest swings since May 26. 

Near has also been forming a series of lower lows and lower highs, meaning that there is a risk that it may resume the downtrend and retest the support at $4. A bullish breakout will be confirmed if Near rises above the descending trendline.