What Is NEAR Intents and Why Its Swaps Averaged 14.9 Basis Points in Fees

NEAR Intents is NEAR's cross-chain swap protocol, and in the 30 days to 26 September 2026 its swaps paid an average of 14.93 basis points in fees. You state the outcome you want, such as 1 ETH on Ethereum turned into USDC on Arbitrum, and competing solvers work out the route. The swap either completes in full or refunds.

The protocol's own fee is almost nothing. At the documented 0.0001% per transaction, it came to about $4,487 of the $6.70 million in gross fees DefiLlama logged over those 30 days. The frontends that route swaps collected the rest, and DefiLlama counts 24.7% of the total as revenue NEAR captured.

NEAR Intents at a Glance

How Does a NEAR Intents Swap Work?

In the docs' standard flow, a NEAR Intents swap starts with a quote request to the Message Bus. That off-chain relay broadcasts the request to every connected solver, the solvers answer with signed intents, and you pick one and sign it. The bus then bundles the matching intents and submits them for settlement.

Settlement happens in the Verifier contract, which lives at intents.near on NEAR's mainnet. It credits deposited tokens to accounts in its own ledger. Swaps and transfers only update those records, and tokens leave the contract only on withdrawal. The docs promise atomic execution, so a swap completes in full or you get your tokens back. Apps don't have to touch the contract directly, since the 1Click Swap API handles quotes and execution, and the NEAR Intents explorer records each 1Click swap and its status.

The Verifier's design folds the bridge into the trade, since one swap can take tokens in on one chain and pay them out on another. DefiLlama files NEAR Intents under its Bridge category, and our guide to how chain abstraction hides bridges and gas tokens covers the wider idea NEAR builds on.

The docs' Supported Chains page listed 32 networks on 27 September 2026, from Bitcoin and Zcash to Solana and TON. Other teams build on intents too, and Anoma's XAN intent chain puts the same sign-the-outcome model at the base of its architecture.

What Are the NEAR Intents Fees?

The fees page in the NEAR Intents docs starts with the protocol fee of 0.0001% per transaction, which the intents.near contract collects on every transfer and swap. That's one hundredth of a basis point, so a $10,000 swap owes the protocol one cent.

What you pay beyond that depends on the app you swap through. The 1Click Swap API adds 0.25% to a quote made without an API key and 0.20% to one made with a key. With a key, stablecoin pairs such as USDC to USDT drop to 0.01%, and so do same-asset routes across chains. An app can add its own fee on top of that. Under the default policy for keyed partners, 1Click splits that app fee 50/50 and its own half has a 0.20% minimum on standard pairs.

The docs also list a 0.2% fee on swaps made through near-intents.org. That site's own page says NEAR Intents has moved to near.com and gives 30 June 2026 as its decommission date, and the fees page names no rate for near.com.

Some of the cost never shows up as a quoted percentage. If a cross-asset swap fills better than its quote within about 30 minutes, the protocol keeps half of the improvement and you keep the other half. The docs' intro page also lists network gas and market-maker spreads on top of the fees.

What Did 30 Days of NEAR Intents Swaps Cost?

Method: we summed DefiLlama's daily volume, fee and revenue series for NEAR Intents across the 30 UTC days from 28 August to 26 September 2026. We read the series at 16:49 and 16:56 UTC on 27 September, got identical numbers both times, and the sums match DefiLlama's own 30-day totals.

Those 30 days carried $4,486,971,445 of volume and $6,700,975 of gross fees. That's a volume-weighted average of 14.93 basis points, or $14.93 for every $10,000 routed. The window's volume alone was 14.4% of the $31.16 billion DefiLlama has logged since its series began on 10 December 2024.

DefiLlama defines those fees as the protocol fee plus the affiliate fee each frontend collects. The protocol's 0.0001% slice is 0.07% of that total, so the other 99.93% is the price of distribution, and the app or API you choose sets it.

Solver spreads and gas never enter that number, so the all-in cost of an average swap ran above 14.93 basis points by whatever the spread and gas added. Neither DefiLlama's fee series nor the fees page puts a number on that spread.

The rate climbed through September. In the prior 30 days, 29 July to 27 August, swaps paid 13.70 basis points on $2,617,457,183 of volume. The window to 26 September moved 71.4% more volume and collected 86.9% more in fees. Week by week, the average rose from 10.81 basis points in the seven days to 5 September to 17.31 in the seven days to 26 September.

An average can climb while the published schedule stays put, because it moves with the mix of apps and routes behind the volume. A keyed stablecoin route pays 1Click 0.01% and a keyless quote pays 0.25%, so a month heavy in stablecoin transfers averages low. DefiLlama doesn't split its fees by route. The docs changelog entries dated 28 August to 18 September cover limit orders, two temporary swap minimums and a new chain, and none of them changes a fee.

How Much of the Fee Money Does NEAR Keep?

DefiLlama counts $1,652,977 of the 30-day fees as revenue NEAR captured, which works out to 24.7%. By DefiLlama's breakdown, that money flows in from NEAR's own frontend wallet and from its cut of 1Click fees and quote improvement. In the prior window the share was 18.6%, so NEAR's take grew 147.9% as gross fees grew 86.9%. The remaining 75.3% stayed with solvers and third-party distribution channels, by DefiLlama's definition.

NEAR's tokenomics post of 24 February 2026 said the Intents fee switch was live, with revenue-share payouts to distribution partners denominated in NEAR. It describes a governance-run treasury structure for product revenue that can fund NEAR buybacks. The same post says no mechanism is guaranteed and that governance keeps full discretion over when and how any buyback happens.

Under the post's buy-back-and-earn definition, bought tokens get staked or locked and stay part of NEAR's total supply. DefiLlama's methodology books captured revenue from 23 February 2026 onward as buyback money for holders, a classification that doesn't tell you the size or date of any purchase.

That 24.7% is the slice of swap fees governance can spend on buybacks. It's the number to watch if you hold the token of NEAR Protocol, the layer 1 designed to accelerate dApps.

What Did NEAR Do While Intents Volume Climbed?

NEARUSDT closed at 5.036 on Saturday 26 September 2026, 161.47% above its 1.926 close on 27 August and 40.36% above its 3.588 close on 19 September. That's the highest close of 2026 on the Phemex perpetual, and the 50-day average has run above the 200-day since a golden cross on 26 May 2026.

The 26 September close still sat 43.32% below the 8.885 close of 14 March 2024. That's the highest of the 1,000 daily closes we measured from 1 January 2024, and it isn't an all-time high.

DefiLlama's biggest NEAR Intents day in its 652-day series came on 17 September, when swaps moved $303.4 million and NEARUSDT closed up 20.18%. EDGAR shows the Bitwise NEAR ETF filing an amended S-1 on 16 September and a Form 8-A for its listing on 24 September. Those are dates on a calendar, and nothing in the data here ties any of them to the price.

For how NEAR's chain compares on locked capital, our look at Sui vs NEAR on TVL per dollar of market cap ran the numbers at the 18 September close.

If you trade NEAR through its Phemex perpetual, your running cost is funding, which settles every 8 hours on NEARUSDT. Read up on how the funding rate in crypto futures works before you size a position, because the contract allows up to 50x leverage.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did NEAR Intents launch, and when did it pass $30 billion?

NEAR announced it in beta on 10 November 2024 and planned the full launch for the first quarter of 2025. DefiLlama's cumulative volume crossed $30 billion on 20 September 2026.

Does NEAR Intents take custody of the tokens you deposit?

The Verifier docs say Intents Technology doesn't custody those balances, and control stays with the keys that can sign for each account. The contract has no testnet deployment, so the docs tell developers to test with small amounts.

What is Confidential Intents and who can use it?

NEAR made Confidential Intents generally available on 7 July 2026, so any app on the 1Click Swap API can switch on confidential execution with one parameter. NEAR's announcement put confidential swaps at roughly 42% of near.com volume within weeks of that mode's launch.

How much Zcash volume has moved through NEAR Intents?

NEAR's 7 July 2026 announcement put cumulative ZEC volume across NEAR Intents above $1.5 billion. The fees page also lists a 0.1% withdrawal fee when NEAR, ZEC or STRK tokens leave for Solana.

Bottom Line

NEAR Intents runs a settlement layer that costs a swapper next to nothing, and it sells the swap itself through apps that set their own price. Over the 30 days to 26 September that price averaged 14.93 basis points, and the share NEAR kept climbed six points in a month. The fees page documents a rate for NEAR's old frontend and none for near.com, the app whose revenue DefiLlama books to NEAR. Before you sign a quote there, compare what you'll receive against the market price, because the protocol's cut won't be what moves your number.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.