The headline says NEAR Intents processed $10.41 billion in Q3 and directed more than $8 million to NEAR buybacks. Only the first part is a Q3 figure. The $8 million is everything the buyback mechanism has collected since it started.
The buyback itself is real, and you can watch it happen. Every hour or two, NEAR Intents’ contract sends a few hundred NEAR into a buyback account that now holds about $10.2 million. But NEAR’s own dashboard understates the balance, none of the tokens are staked, and the Q3 total still isn’t published anywhere. Let’s follow the fee data, the buyback rules and the account on-chain to see what can actually be verified.
NEAR Intents Posts a $10.41 Billion Quarter
The volume numbers are strong. NEAR Intents, the cross-chain swap layer that lets users trade across more than 35 chains without bridging assets themselves, processed $10.41 billion in Q3. That’s up 66.8% from the previous quarter and 891% from a year earlier.
Monthly volume doubled across the quarter, from $2.40 billion in July to $4.80 billion in September. Subtracting those two months from the total puts August at about $3.21 billion. The growth rates imply that Q2 was around $6.24 billion, and Q3 2025 was around $1.05 billion.
When I asked earlier whether NEAR Intents is becoming the default cross-chain layer, volume was the main evidence. Q3 adds to that case. According to Nansen’s NEAR Q3 report, near.com, NEAR’s own front end, handled about $2.57 billion, roughly a quarter of the total. That means most of the volume came through outside wallets and apps. Confidential Intents TVL also rose about 463% to roughly $160 million by the end of the quarter.
The $8 Million Is a Lifetime Figure
The buyback figure comes from Nansen’s report. It says NEAR Intents’ cumulative fees passed $52 million, and more than $8 million of that has been captured for NEAR buybacks. The report describes it as a running total: the share of lifetime fees going to buybacks was about 16.4% in an October 6 update, up from 11.5% in the Q2 report.
The math matches. 16.4% of about $52 million is about $8.5 million, so “$8M+” is the all-time number.
So how much went to buybacks in Q3? Nobody has published that. The rise from 11.5% to 16.4% shows the fee capture rate improved during the quarter, and Nansen puts the trailing 30-day rate at 28.4%, down slightly from 30.5%. But without the cumulative fee total at the end of Q2, the Q3 buyback amount can’t be calculated from these ratios. The flash coverage that combined “$10.41 billion” and “$8 million” in one headline mixed a quarterly figure with an all-time one.
How the Buyback Is Supposed to Work
NEAR’s tokenomics update from February explains the setup. NEAR Intents charges two kinds of fees: protocol fees, which go to NEAR Protocol, and distribution fees, which are shared with integration partners. NEAR says protocol fees are “intentionally low.”
Two details matter for anyone counting on buybacks:
- Buybacks are discretionary. The post says “governance retains full discretion over whether, when, and how any such tools are applied.” There’s no fixed percentage and no set schedule.
- Bought NEAR isn’t burned. Under the model NEAR calls “Buy Back and Earn,” repurchased tokens are meant to be staked or locked. That takes them out of liquid circulation, but they stay in total supply.
So “$8M to buybacks” means NEAR bought and holds tokens. It doesn’t mean $8 million of NEAR was destroyed.
Following the Buyback Wallet
NEAR’s revenue dashboard names the account involved: buybacks.multisignature.near. It shows a balance of 1,543,672.9 NEAR, alongside two DAO-controlled fund accounts, fefundsadmin.sputnik-dao.near and 1csfundsadmin.sputnik-dao.near.
The chain shows something different. On NearBlocks, as of October 23, the buyback account holds:
- Balance: 2,051,669.15 NEAR
- Value: about $10.18 million at $4.96 per NEAR
- Staked balance: 0
- Created: about seven months ago, after the February tokenomics update
That’s about 508,000 NEAR more than the dashboard shows, a gap worth roughly $2.5 million. The dashboard’s footer says its figures are “illustrative,” and the gap suggests it’s out of date.
The good news for NEAR is that the account’s value is above the “$8M+” claim. If the whole balance came from the $8 million to $8.5 million in captured fees, NEAR bought at an average of around $3.90 to $4.15 per token. That’s plausible, and the holdings have gained value since.
The surprising part is the staked balance of zero. NEAR’s tokenomics describe repurchased tokens as “staked or locked.” These tokens aren’t staked. They sit in a multisig. That does lock them in a sense, since moving them needs several signatures, but they aren’t staked as the “Buy Back and Earn” model describes, and they aren’t earning staking rewards.
What the On-Chain Record Shows
The account’s ordinary transaction list is misleading. It shows only 25 transactions, mostly small manual transfers and the multisig’s own add_request and confirm actions. Ten incoming transfers total just 8,227 NEAR, about $41,000.
The real flow appears in the account’s receipts: the transfers NEAR’s contracts make on their own. NearBlocks lists 2,831 of them. In the most recent entries, every one comes from intents.near, the NEAR Intents contract, and lands in the buyback account as a plain NEAR transfer. In the past day or so, I count 23 deposits totaling 6,943.69 NEAR, about $34,400. Each was between 204 and 707 NEAR, arriving every hour or two.
That’s the fee switch working on-chain, automated and continuous, from the protocol’s own contract to the buyback account. It’s the strongest evidence that NEAR’s buyback claim is real.
It also shows the scale. At this pace, a full quarter would bring in roughly 639,000 NEAR, about $3.2 million. That’s a run-rate estimate, not the Q3 total. Volume doubled over the quarter, and buyback deposits would have moved with it. The receipt count points the same way: 2,831 deposits at today’s average of about 300 NEAR would add up to only around 855,000 NEAR. That’s less than half the balance, so earlier deposits were larger or some NEAR came from elsewhere. The exact Q3 figure is in those receipts, but NEAR hasn’t added it up publicly.
What NEAR Should Publish Next
NEAR Intents’ Q3 is impressive, and the chain backs up the buyback: the protocol’s own contract sends NEAR into the buyback account around the clock, and the account holds more than the “$8M+” figure implies. But the disclosure is still behind the volume reporting.
Three additions would close the gap:
- A quarterly buyback figure in USD and NEAR, taken from the intents.near receipts NEAR already has
- A dashboard that matches the chain, since it currently shows about 508,000 NEAR less than the account holds
- An explanation of the staked balance of zero, given that NEAR’s own tokenomics say repurchased tokens are staked or locked
NEAR has made revenue capture central to its pitch. Its buyback is real, automatic and visible on-chain. It just needs a quarterly number to go with its quarterly volume headline.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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