NEAR Protocol
NEAR#18NEAR is the native coin of NEAR, a smart contract blockchain for apps and AI agents.
- Market cap
- $6.14B
- Volume 24h
- $1.16B
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 1.31B
Passes all 8 Shariah criteria.
- 8 pass
- 0 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold NEAR Protocol?8 Shariah criteria
8 pass · 0 caution · 0 failHolding NEAR pays nothing; staking rewards are new NEAR paid for validation and depend on validator uptime, not a lending return.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Holding NEAR earns nothing by itself. The native return is staking: each epoch the protocol mints up to 2.5% a year of supply, about 90% of which goes to validators and the people who delegate NEAR to them, shared in proportion to stake and cut for validators whose uptime falls below 90%. The reward is variable and tied to validation work, so it is payment for network work, not interest; Islamic Finance Guru (IFG), Sharlife and CryptoUmmah all treat NEAR as permissible.
The score is not the maximum for one concrete reason: slashing (a penalty that destroys stake for misbehaviour) is not enabled on mainnet and the protocol lets holders delegate, so a delegator's return is largely passive and the principal carries no protocol penalty risk. veNEAR governance rewards are assessed under staking below.
NEAR runs a working network and the token has clear uses in fees, storage and staking.
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. NEAR clearly works: the chain has run since July 2020, 417 validators secured it on 27 September 2026, and NEAR is needed to pay fees, to lock storage for on-chain data and to stake. Its applications include NEAR Intents, which NEAR says has carried $19 billion of cross-chain swaps, and NEAR AI's private inference service. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG) rates NEAR permissible, as do Sharlife and CryptoUmmah.
Tier-1 bodies disagree on whether cryptocurrency in general is property, but none names NEAR or gives a reason specific to it, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
- Resolutions of the Shariah Advisory Council of the SC - Securities Commission Malaysia
- Ruling on trading and dealing in Bitcoin - Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah
- Kripto paraların kullanımının dini hükmü nedir? - Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu (Diyanet)
- Keputusan Ijtima' Ulama Komisi Fatwa se-Indonesia VII tentang Hukum Cryptocurrency - Majelis Ulama Indonesia
NEAR is not a gambling token; the score is lowered a little because futures dominate its market trading.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and NEAR has no chance-based payout of its own; no large memecoin or betting activity stood out on the chain. The score is lowered a little for one concrete fact: in a 24-hour snapshot on 27 September 2026, Binance's NEARUSDT perpetual futures traded about $765 million against about $176 million on the spot pair, so futures were about 81% of that volume (one exchange, one day, during a rally around the Bitwise ETF news).
Fees are burned or go to contracts; 10% of new NEAR funds a foundation treasury whose holdings include an undisclosed loans line.
This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. At protocol level the model is clean: 70% of each transaction fee is burned and 30% goes to the contract that was called, which is payment for a service. About 10% of NEAR's yearly issuance goes to a protocol treasury that the NEAR Foundation manages. The score is lowered a little for one concrete point: the foundation's last breakdown found, from January 2024, listed $70 million of 'investments and loans' next to $285 million in cash and 305 million NEAR.
Nothing shows that these loans earn interest or that interest reaches NEAR holders, and IFG rates NEAR permissible, so this is a pass; the foundation's current finances are recorded as a data gap.
Supply rules and code are public and enforced on-chain and the original unlocks are finished, though the foundation's treasury is not reported and stake is fairly concentrated.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. NEAR's supply rules are public and enforced by the protocol: maximum inflation is a readable on-chain parameter (2.5% a year), supply was about 1.307 billion NEAR on 27 September 2026, and the nearcore software is open source with each protocol change announced in release notes and adopted only when at least 80% of stake upgrades. The 1 billion genesis allocation has finished vesting, so no large scheduled unlocks remain. Weaker points are disclosed but real.
The October 2025 inflation cut was adopted by validators after a community vote fell short of its supermajority, and further economic changes are moving to the new House of Stake governance. The NEAR Foundation, which still held about 305 million NEAR in January 2024, has not published a newer treasury breakdown, so its future sales are unknown. The 9 largest validators hold more than one third of stake. None of this lets anyone mint tokens at will, so this is a pass, lowered a little for the undisclosed treasury and stake concentration.
NEAR is used for fees, staking, cross-chain swaps and AI services; interest-based lending is a notable but not the main use.
This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. Most of it is permissible infrastructure: paying fees and storage, staking (about 41% of supply), cross-chain swaps through NEAR Intents, and private AI inference used by apps such as Brave and Venice AI. The score is lowered for one concrete fact: Rhea Lend, an interest-based lending market, held about $211 million on 27 September 2026, the largest on-chain DeFi protocol on NEAR and roughly a quarter of the non-exchange DeFi value DefiLlama tracks there.
IFG rates NEAR permissible with the same caveat, that riba-based DeFi on NEAR should be avoided. Lending is not the main purpose of the network, so this is a pass.
Fully paid spot NEAR is widely available, and it can be held in one's own wallet.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. NEAR trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on major exchanges such as Binance, and it can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet where the owner controls it and can stake it directly. A US spot fund, the Bitwise NEAR ETF, began trading on 29 September 2026 and holds NEAR itself. Ownership therefore does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers. How specific funds are structured is assessed separately under trading mechanisms. With no concrete obstacle, the criterion gets the maximum score.
NEAR provides open infrastructure for cross-chain payments and private AI, with no large abuse specific to it found.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is open infrastructure: cheap transactions, cross-chain swaps without manual bridging, and private AI inference that keeps users' data inside secure hardware. NEAR claims more than five years of mainnet uptime, and no major outage or large-scale fraud tied to NEAR was found in this research. Privacy features (the Confidential Mode of NEAR Intents and private inference) protect users but could also be misused to hide flows; no case of that was found.
Speculative trading losses are counted under maysir and lending under usage, not again here. With no concrete harm found, the criterion gets the maximum score.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying NEAR with full payment and immediate delivery is widely available on major exchanges, and coins can be moved to a self-custody wallet. Spot is acceptable for a HALAL-rated asset.
The Bitwise NEAR ETF (NRR) holds NEAR itself, but its structure needs checking: it intends to stake 100% of its NEAR (the sponsor may prefer its affiliate Attestant as staking agent), expects to receive about 67% of the NEAR its staking generates, and may borrow NEAR or cash from Coinbase Credit as trade credit to settle cash creations and redemptions and to pay trust expenses. The prospectus does not state the credit terms, borrowing is one of the fund features that Shariah screening checks for, and whether it will be used is unknown. Grayscale's NEAR products were not reviewed.
Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible, and paying with crypto is not allowed in Indonesia (Bank Indonesia) and is banned in Turkey (central bank regulation of April 2021). NEAR is used mainly for network fees rather than everyday payments.
Native staking, where you delegate NEAR from your own wallet to a validator's staking pool, pays rewards for validation work, depends on the validator's uptime and keeps ownership with you (about 48 hours to unstake), so it is rated pass. Slashing is not enabled, so the staked principal carries no protocol penalty risk. Liquid staking tokens (such as stNEAR or LiNEAR) and exchange staking are caution: they pool stake through an intermediary, and the receipt tokens can be deposited into interest-based lending. veNEAR governance rewards are paid for locking tokens and voting, not for validation, so their nature is unclear (caution).
Margin trading in NEAR is widely offered but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
NEAR perpetual futures carried about 81% of Binance NEAR/USDT volume in a 27 September 2026 snapshot, but futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending NEAR on markets such as Rhea Lend, or through exchange lending programmes, pays depositors interest from borrowers. This is riba.
NEAR yield products built on lending, leveraged looping or basis trading pay interest or interest-like returns and fail. Native staking is assessed separately above; products that only pass on staking rewards are closer to the staking assessment, but their source must be checked product by product.
Scholars quotes
Simply buying and holding NEAR is Halal.The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.As of now, the projects run by Near Protocol appear to be in accordance with Shariah principles.NEAR is similar to Ethereum and therefore by extension, we would deem it to be halal due to a similar analysis to ETH.As I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
Section in preparation
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