NEAR Protocol Price Heads Towards a 20% Jump

Summary:
• The Near protocol price tilted upwards on Friday as investors attempted to buy the coin’s dip. NEAR is trading at $8.413

The Near protocol price tilted upwards on Friday as investors attempted to buy the coin’s dip. NEAR is trading at $8.4138, which is about 20% above the lowest level in November. It has a total market capitalization of more than $4.7 billion, making it the 44th biggest cryptocurrency in the world.

What is the Near protocol?

The Near Protocol is a major blockchain platform whose parent company is headquartered in San Francisco. It has raised more than $12.1 million from investors like Dragonfly Capital and Fundamental Labs. 

Near is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (DAPPs). In November, the developers made the biggest announcement since it was founded a few years ago. 

They unveiled phase zero NEAR Nightshade Sharding, which is a technology that promises faster speeds by breaking down the number of blocks. It will also make it super-secure and capable of onboarding millions of people to the web 3 platforms. 

Phase 1 of this process will start in the first quarter of 2022. This new phase will introduce a chunky-only producer, who only validate one shard. Phase two will be known as the Nightshade while phase 3 will be known as the dynamic sharding. 

Near price prediction

The NEAR protocol price rallied sharply ahead of the Nightshade sharding announcement. This rally pushed it to a high of $12.67. Since then, however, the price has dropped by more than 33%. We believe that this price action is because of buying the rumour and selling the news.

In the past few days, the coin has approached the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level. The price also moved slightly above the 50-day moving average. The MACD has also moved above the neutral level. 

The NEAR price has formed an inverted head and shoulders pattern. Therefore, I suspect that the price will have a bullish breakout as bulls target the 50% retracement level at $10. This price is about 20% above the current level. On the flip side, a drop below the key support level at $6 will invalidate this view.