NEAR, GRASS, AGT Surge Amid Accelerating Shift from AI Hype to L1 Fundamentals
Escalating Structural Divergence in the Crypto Market: NEAR, GRASS, and AGT Surge Over 14% in a Single Day—Reflecting a Rapid Restructuring of the Layer-1 Competitive Landscape and an Accelerating Narrative Shift
The crypto market has recently exhibited a stark “dual-track” dynamic: ecosystem tokens from non-top-tier blockchains—including NEAR (+14.10%, $918M daily trading volume), GRASS (+19.55%, $259M), and AGT (+41.09%, $141M)—have collectively surged, while application-layer AI tokens once hailed as high-potential—such as BEAT and EDEN—have concurrently plunged over 22%. This inverse movement is no random fluctuation; rather, it signals a systematic market reassessment of narrative validity—capital is rapidly shifting away from vague conceptual speculation toward Layer-1 ecosystems demonstrating verifiable user growth, deployed infrastructure, and clear commercialization pathways.
Narrative Shift: From “AI Concept Bubble” to “L1 Technical Realization”
Over the past six months, “AI + Crypto” was the hottest narrative tag in secondary markets, enabling numerous tokens to achieve valuation leaps via ambiguous whitepaper terminology and marketing rhetoric. Yet, as the market enters a phase of heightened volatility sensitivity, projects lacking tangible delivery capacity have quickly exposed their fragility. In sharp contrast, the surges in NEAR, GRASS, and AGT are anchored in quantifiable fundamental progress:
- NEAR completed its mainnet upgrade “Aurora 2.0” on May 22, reducing EVM compatibility latency by 67%; it also officially announced a partnership with Coinbase to pilot DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), with initial nodes already deployed across North America and Southeast Asia;
- GRASS, leveraging its decentralized bandwidth-sharing protocol, reported a 47% week-on-week increase in active connected devices (per its on-chain dashboard), and has integrated with three edge-computing service providers;
- AGT—the core governance and incentive token of the Aptos ecosystem—has gained substantive validation following the official launch of its on-chain stablecoin protocol (Tether USDT) and a Total Value Locked (TVL) exceeding $210 million, significantly strengthening liquidity depth and protocol revenue models.
Collectively, these developments mark a pivotal inflection point: the market is moving beyond “PPT-driven cycles” into “code-driven cycles.” Investors are no longer paying premiums for hypothetical futures—they are pricing tangible present realities. Against a backdrop of modest BTC (+1.8%) and ETH (+2.3%) gains, the strong outperformance of mid-cap L1 tokens underscores how incremental capital is actively seeking structurally overlooked opportunities underpinned by robust technical execution.
Restructuring the Competitive Landscape: Modularity, Specialization, and Closed-Loop Use Cases as New Determinants of Success
The traditional logic of L1 competition is being fundamentally rewritten. While Ethereum retains dominance through ecosystem scale, its high gas fees and complex scalability roadmap have intensified demand for “vertically optimized L1s.” NEAR lowers the barrier to entry for Web2 users via account abstraction (AA) and seamless wallet experiences; GRASS does not pursue general-purpose computation but instead targets the concrete physical-world challenge of bandwidth resource ownership and scheduling; AGT deeply integrates Aptos’ Move-language security features to build reentrancy-resistant stablecoin infrastructure at the financial primitive layer. All three share a common strategic choice: abandoning the illusory dream of “doing everything,” and instead forging irreplaceable technological moats and tightly closed user-engagement loops within carefully selected niches.
This specialization trend is actively dismantling legacy market-cap ranking logic. When a blockchain supports 100,000+ daily active real-world devices (GRASS), processes multi-million-dollar stablecoin settlements (AGT), or becomes the preferred DePIN testbed for top-tier exchanges (NEAR), its valuation anchor shifts—from “potential number of developers” to “verified volume of economic activity.” This explains why their price appreciation far outpaces peers reliant solely on single-concept hype: the market votes with real capital to affirm that technical depth carries greater pricing power than narrative breadth.
Liquidity Siphoning Effect Intensifies: Valuation Stratification Enters Deep-Water Phase
A critical risk warrants close attention: this structural divergence is dramatically amplifying the market’s liquidity siphoning effect. According to CoinGecko data, on May 23, NEAR, GRASS, and AGT collectively absorbed approximately 18.3% of the entire mid-cap token trading volume, while average turnover rates for tokens with market caps below $500 million dropped by 31%. Capital is concentrating with unprecedented efficiency into “fundamental certainty high grounds,” pushing many projects lacking substantive progress into a liquidity drought trap—triggering a negative feedback loop: falling prices → declining trading activity → market maker withdrawal → further price erosion.
This stratification transcends simple bull/bear transitions—it represents a paradigm-level filtering mechanism. Over the next three months, two categories of tokens may face accelerated liquidation:
- “Air projects”—those with zero on-chain real users, sustained only by social media buzz;
- “Half-finished ecosystems”—technically capable but commercially ambiguous, failing to establish self-sustaining economic loops.
Regulatory dynamics add further pressure: The U.S. SEC has recently issued inquiries into multiple AI-related tokens, focusing squarely on alignment between token economic models and actual service delivery. As compliance scrutiny penetrates technical implementation details, the arbitrage space for narrative-driven speculation will shrink further.
Conclusion: Reconstructing the Value Coordinate System in the Era of Technical Realization
At its core, the crypto market is a distributed consensus engine continuously re-evaluating technological value. The synchronized surge of NEAR, GRASS, and AGT is not short-term speculation—it is the market’s self-initiated “value recalibration.” It declares: at this deepening stage of infrastructure arms races, long-term token value is determined not by grand visions in whitepapers, but by on-chain verifiable metrics—device counts, TVL visible in smart contracts, and user-perceivable interaction latency. Just as Iran nuclear negotiations seek “verifiable dismantlement” on the geopolitical front, the crypto market likewise demands “verifiable value delivery” on the technical front. Investors must urgently discard linear extrapolation-based valuation frameworks and instead adopt dynamic, multidimensional assessment models incorporating on-chain activity, protocol revenue, developer retention rates, and hardware integration density—because the true technical realization cycle rewards only those who quietly build walls line-by-line in code, not those who loudly draw pies on Twitter.