Ethena and NEAR are ending the week as two of the strongest performers in the crypto market, with ENA/sENA gaining around 49% over seven days and NEAR climbing roughly 41%, according to Santi
Ethena and NEAR are ending the week as two of the strongest performers in the crypto market, with ENA/sENA gaining around 49% over seven days and NEAR climbing roughly 41%, according to Santiment’s latest market snapshot.
The strength has continued into the latest session. Santiment’s chart puts ENA/sENA up roughly 17% and NEAR around 15% on the day. They aren’t alone: SUI pumped about 20%, while Chainlink rose around 15%.
More importantly, this isn’t a rally confined to a handful of tokens. Santiment reports that 93 of the top 100 assets it tracks were higher on the day, with altcoin participation reaching a three-month high.
That broader rotation helps explain why Ethena and NEAR have been able to produce such outsized moves.
Santiment’s chart places ENA/sENA at the very top of its seven-day leaderboard with a 49% gain. SUI follows at 45%, NEAR at 41%, ONDO at 39% and XRP at 22%.
For Ethena specifically, there doesn’t appear to be one brand-new announcement responsible for the latest daily surge. Instead, ENA is benefiting from a combination of the wider altcoin rally and several developments that have been building throughout September.
Source: X/@SantimentData
One important theme has been Ethena’s tokenomics. Earlier this month, the Ethena Foundation reportedly bought out early investor positions, while governance backed a fee-switch plan that could eventually direct 95% of net protocol revenue toward ENA buybacks once specified conditions are met. Ethena Pay has also been part of the recent narrative around the project.
Current market reporting describes the latest ENA advance as an extension of its September rally rather than a reaction to a single new event. The approaching final large investor token release has also become a focal point for traders, although a large unlock can create additional supply risk rather than automatically benefiting price.
That distinction matters after a 49% weekly move. Ethena has fundamental narratives supporting investor attention, but part of the latest acceleration is likely coming from traders chasing one of the strongest-performing assets in an increasingly risk-on altcoin market.
NEAR’s rally has a clearer network-activity component.
NEAR Intents, its cross-chain transaction infrastructure, has seen a substantial increase in activity, with privacy-focused trading and Zcash swaps becoming an important part of the story.
Earlier this week, NEAR Intents had processed approximately $29.3 billion in cumulative volume, including about $842 million over seven days and a record single day exceeding $300 million on September 18. NEAR has also expanded privacy-focused functionality, including confidential deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading.
That gives NEAR’s rally something beyond price speculation: actual usage of its cross-chain infrastructure has increased substantially.
However, there is an important caveat. Some of the growth associated with NEAR Intents is connected with ZEC, meaning rising Zcash valuations can increase the dollar value of assets inside the system without representing an equivalent amount of fresh capital entering NEAR. Derivatives positioning has also increased rapidly during the rally.
Perhaps the most important feature of Santiment’s chart isn’t ENA’s 49% or NEAR’s 41% individually.
It’s how much green there is across the board.
The seven-day section shows substantial gains across Layer 1s, DeFi, tokenization and cross-chain projects. ONDO is up 39%, XRP 22%, while numerous other large-cap assets have posted double-digit advances.
The one-day panel tells a similar story. SUI leads around +20%, ENA/sENA is near +17%, NEAR and LINK are around +15%, and numerous other assets are comfortably positive.
That breadth points to capital moving beyond Bitcoin and into higher-risk parts of the crypto market. Bitcoin’s recovery from below $63,000 in August toward nearly $87,000 helped create the backdrop for that rotation, while the latest session shows altcoins increasingly taking center stage.
The risk now is that some of these moves have become extremely fast. Weekly gains of 40%-50% can attract profit-taking, particularly when derivatives positioning expands alongside price.
For now, though, Ethena and NEAR are two of the clearest examples of what is happening across crypto: capital is spreading into altcoins, traders are responding aggressively to project-specific catalysts, and one of the market’s strongest weeks of the year is ending with altcoins firmly in control.
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The post Here’s Why Ethena and NEAR Prices Are Exploding Right Now appeared first on CaptainAltcoin.
