According to U.Today, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) has reported significant community and developer achievements, including a record user retention rate among L1 altcoins over the past year. The blockchain's major adoption metric reached 9.53%, according to data provider Artemis, outperforming all of its competitors. For comparison, Avalanche (AVAX) saw only 8.19% of users returning in 12 months on its C-chain, while BNB Chain's retention rate barely exceeded 7%. Even the largest blockchains by Total Value Locked (TVL), Ethereum (ETH) and Tron (TRX), failed to achieve a 5% user retention rate over the same period.
NEAR Protocol currently hosts 19 active decentralized finance applications (DeFis) with a combined TVL of $306 million. The largest DeFis on NEAR by TVL include Burrow, LiNEAR Protocol, and Meta Pool Near, which operate in the areas of decentralized lending and liquid staking.
In addition to its community and developer achievements, NEAR Protocol's core native cryptocurrency, NEAR, has been one of the best performers over the past week. According to CoinGecko, NEAR was the top-performing large altcoin and the fifth fastest-growing altcoin overall, with a seven-day growth rate of 26%. This performance was only surpassed by leading meme coins FLOKI, BONK, and PEPE, and the Hedera (HBAR) token, which was boosted by a major announcement. The recent rally in NEAR's price may be linked to potential AI integrations that are key to the use of NEAR Protocol in this burgeoning sector.