BTC consolidates sideways, AI tokens move independently: NEAR and FET drive a reevaluation of on-chain AI infrastructure

The crypto market is experiencing a rare period of structural divergence. Since Bitcoin hit a record high of $126,198 in October 2025, it has undergone over seven months of adjustment and digestion, and after May 2026, it has continued to form a highly condensed long-short battle zone around the $80,000 level. Exchange BTC reserves have fallen to 2.21 million coins, the lowest since December 2017, with long-term holders accounting for 78.3% of the total supply, and on-chain accumulation signals are significant. However, at the same time, short positions in the derivatives market are extremely crowded, and funding rates have once turned negative in a rare occurrence. Both bulls and bears are increasing their positions at the same price point, causing the market to fall into a deadlock.

Against this macro backdrop, a group of AI sector tokens have charted completely independent price trajectories. NEAR Protocol has surged over 45% in seven days, and the ecosystem narrative of FET is also heating up in tandem. When the overall market lacks direction, capital is not exiting but reallocating across different tracks. The deep integration of AI and blockchain is becoming the most structurally tense capital rotation trend in 2026.

NEAR Explodes and FET Builds Momentum: Dual Engines of the AI Sector Activate

Around May 22, 2026, NEAR Protocol’s token experienced a single-day increase of about 27% to 30%, trading between approximately $2.25 and $2.34. The core catalyst for this rally was NEAR Protocol’s announcement of the upcoming “Dynamic Sharding” upgrade in June 2026—this feature allows the network to automatically split and add shards when shard capacity approaches its limit, without requiring validators to manually coordinate and wait for governance processes. The June upgrade will also introduce post-quantum secure signature mechanisms, a forward-looking deployment at the cryptography layer.

Meanwhile, although FET has not experienced a similar magnitude of single-day explosion, its underlying infrastructure transformation is accelerating. Fetch.ai’s autonomous AI agent payment system and the token migration process of the ASI alliance form another independent logic line from short-term price fluctuations.

According to Gate data, as of May 25, 2026, NEAR’s price was $2.3982, with a 45.37% increase over the past 7 days, a 68.56% increase over 30 days, and a 144.49% increase over nearly 90 days. During the same period, FET’s price was $0.2092, with a 7.41% increase in 7 days, but a nearly 75.43% decline over the past year. The difference in short-term performance between the two reflects the internal rotation gradient within the AI track, from infrastructure to application layers.

Funds Flow Under Bitcoin’s Sideways Movement: Why the AI Sector Becomes a New Reservoir

Bitcoin’s sideways trading does not mean liquidity is drying up but indicates that liquidity is seeking new narrative carriers.

From on-chain data, as of May 2026, the US spot BTC ETF saw a net inflow of $2.44 billion in April, the strongest monthly figure since October 2025. However, the derivatives market shows a rare hedging structure: institutions are long BTC on the spot side while systematically short on futures, with funding rates turning negative at times. This operation locks BTC prices within a narrow range but does not weaken overall market risk appetite. On the contrary, squeezed funds begin to spill over along the sector direction, seeking assets with differentiated narratives.

The AI sector happens to stand at the intersection of traditional technology and crypto assets. On May 20, 2026, NVIDIA released strong earnings, driving a synchronized rise in global AI-related assets. As the performance of traditional tech giants confirmed the ongoing acceleration of AI demand, all protocols related to AI in the crypto market gained external validation at the narrative level. NEAR, during this window, broke out upward thanks to its technological upgrade narrative.

From Roadmap to Dynamic Sharding: Building the “User-Owned AI” Narrative for NEAR

NEAR’s rise is not merely driven by sentiment but follows a clear structural development path.

In January 2026, NEAR announced its full-year roadmap, prioritizing the integration of AI-Intents and positioning “User-Owned AI” as a strategic goal. The protocol had already achieved key milestones: reaching 1 million transactions per second in public testing, expanding mainnet shards from 6 to 9, and launching AI products like NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat focused on privacy.

In February 2026, NEAR AI Agent Market officially launched, providing a decentralized marketplace for autonomous bidding, task execution, and settlement in NEAR tokens among AI agents. Later that month, the near.com super app was released, integrating wallet management, confidential transactions, AI insights, and cross-chain asset management.

By May 2026, the market’s valuation logic for NEAR shifted from “AI concept expectations” to “infrastructure implementation.” The announcement of the dynamic sharding upgrade became the direct trigger for a price explosion—this upgrade will enable the network to automatically expand to over 70 shards, with expected throughput surpassing Visa levels. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin publicly stated: “Blockchain users will be AI agents. AI will be at the front end, blockchain at the back end.” Dynamic sharding is precisely the underlying capability prepared for scenarios of “large-scale on-chain AI agents.”

Institutional signals are also noteworthy. Bitwise’s Near Staking ETP listed in Europe attracted about $3 million in new funds during the rally, increasing its management to approximately $36 million. Institutional pre-upgrade positioning in regulated channels amplifies market sentiment.

Settlement Layer of the Agent Economy: How FET Positions as Infrastructure for AI Agent Payments

FET’s narrative logic differs fundamentally from NEAR’s. NEAR aims to “build a chain for AI,” while the ASI alliance behind FET strives to become an “economic operating system for AI agents.”

In June 2024, three independent projects—Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol—announced a merger to form the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. The first phase involved converting AGIX and OCEAN token holders to FET, and the second phase planned to migrate FET to the ASI token at a 1:1 ratio, marked as a key milestone in the 2026 roadmap. However, Ocean Protocol officially exited the alliance in October 2025, breaking the original full-stack closed-loop concept, restructuring the alliance into a “proxy—computing power—service” tripartite architecture.

On the technical side, Fetch.ai launched an autonomous payment infrastructure for AI agents on the ASI:One platform at the end of 2025 and early 2026, supporting USDC and FET transfers, with integrated Visa payment channels. Demonstrations showed two AI agents completing restaurant searches, reservations, and payments offline. In May 2026, Fetch.ai further introduced AEVS (AI Agent Verifiable Credentials on-chain), positioned as the “verification layer” after collaboration and payment.

At the industry level, infrastructure for the agent economy is accelerating. Circle launched Nano Payments in April 2026, supporting USDC transfers with zero gas fees as low as $0.000001, enabling high-frequency microtransactions among AI agents. On BNB Chain, the number of on-chain AI agents deployed exceeded 150,000, up from about 400 at the start of the year—a growth of over 37,000%. Haun Ventures and a16z crypto raised a combined $3.2 billion in new funds within the same week, explicitly targeting the agent economy as a core investment focus.

FET’s current dilemma is that its price has not fully reflected these infrastructure developments. It has declined 75.43% over the past year, but the deployment of the agent economy is moving from narrative to large-scale implementation. The gap between these stages constitutes the core tension in current market discussions.

Divergence of Long and Short: Are AI Tokens’ Explosive Gains a Structural Revaluation or Short Squeeze?

Market interpretations of this round of AI token rally vary significantly and can be summarized as follows:

Optimists believe this is a structural revaluation driven by technological catalysts. NEAR’s dynamic sharding upgrade addresses the scalability bottleneck faced by Layer 1 blockchains with large-scale on-chain AI agents, and the inflow into Bitwise ETFs indicates institutional allocation through regulated channels. Against the backdrop of accelerating AI infrastructure formation, NEAR and FET, as core infrastructure assets in this track, are experiencing a shift from “concept validation” to “value capture” in their pricing logic.

Cautious analysts argue that much of the upward momentum is due to short covering. NEAR’s rapid surge was accompanied by massive liquidations of short positions, and this “squeeze” pattern differs structurally from fundamental-driven growth. Additionally, features like chain abstraction may be commoditized by large trading platforms at the application layer, and network execution fees could be driven close to zero due to solver competition, weakening token value capture.

Neutral observers focus on data trends. Over the past 7 days, the overall AI token sector outperformed the market benchmark, but gains were concentrated mainly in top assets. NEAR’s 90-day increase of 144.49% suggests that capital has been gradually positioning since Q1, with the May surge merely accelerating confirmation.

Fact-Checking and Boundary of Narrative: The Anchors and Limits of AI Token Stories

In the complex narrative of AI tokens, it is necessary to clearly distinguish three levels of information:

NEAR announced its official roadmap in January 2026, prioritizing AI-Intents integration. NEAR AI Agent Market launched in February 2026 and has been operational. The dynamic sharding upgrade is scheduled for June 2026. The ASI alliance behind FET completed its first phase of token conversion, with the second phase migration listed as a roadmap item. The AI autonomous payment feature has been demonstrated on the ASI:One platform. Over 150,000 on-chain AI agents are deployed on BNB Chain. These are all verifiable events.

Market participants generally agree that the integration of AI and blockchain is one of the most promising growth tracks in 2026, but there are significant differences in valuation assessments and technical competitiveness among different analysts. NEAR co-founder’s positioning of AI agents as future users of blockchain has received widespread industry support, but whether this can translate into token value capture remains to be seen.

Whether the dynamic sharding can launch smoothly as scheduled in June, whether it can effectively support large-scale AI agent transactions after launch, and whether the ASI token migration can proceed as planned are all pending issues. Longer-term, whether on-chain AI agent economies will form an “infrastructure protocol capturing most value” pattern or whether value will ultimately migrate to the application layer remains an open strategic question.

Industry Shift: How AI Tokens’ Independent Rally Reshapes Crypto Asset Valuation Framework

This round of independent AI token rallies is exerting profound influence on crypto asset valuation at three levels:

In terms of allocation logic, the correlation between AI tokens and traditional tech stocks is being systematically incorporated into investor decision-making. After NVIDIA’s earnings report, the crypto AI track also surged, indicating that cross-market narrative linkage has become a reproducible price transmission mechanism. Investors are translating signals of traditional AI industry prosperity directly into on-chain AI asset prices.

At the ecosystem level, the implementation of expansion technologies like dynamic sharding is providing real throughput support for on-chain AI agent economies. If NEAR’s June upgrade proceeds smoothly, its auto-scaling capability will set a new technical standard for other Layer 1 chains, intensifying differentiation in the public chain sector. Chains still relying on manual capacity planning may be re-evaluated regarding their suitability for AI workloads.

At the narrative evolution level, the AI track is transitioning from an early “co-movement” phase to a gradient differentiation between infrastructure and application layers. NEAR represents the foundational infrastructure logic providing throughput for the AI economy; FET embodies the middle layer offering payment and verification services for AI agents; while protocols like DeFAI at higher levels focus on end-user interaction and value capture. Investors need to distinguish the positions of different layers within the entire AI value chain rather than treating all “AI concept” tokens as homogeneous assets.

Conclusion

The AI token rally in May 2026 is essentially a “cross-validation” at the narrative level. NVIDIA’s earnings confirmed the ongoing acceleration of AI demand from the traditional tech side; NEAR’s technological upgrade provided a tangible infrastructure path; and FET’s agent economy deployment demonstrated the potential for scale from the application side. The combination of these factors forms a more solid narrative foundation than market sentiment alone.

Bitcoin’s sideways movement is not a market dormancy but a window for reallocation of sector funds. During this window, protocols that can translate narratives into verifiable data will be better positioned for the next directional market move. The most critical variables now are the success of the June technical upgrade and whether on-chain AI agent activity can continue to accelerate—these indicators will determine whether the current rally is the start of a new structural revaluation or just a short-term fluctuation driven by narratives.