NEAR Protocol spikes 21% as Worldcoin and AI infrastructure coins attract fresh flows

Quant’s QNT token also broke higher, adding 8.76% on the day to roughly 79.28, while modular data availability project Celestia’s TIA climbed 8.74 to around 0.445. These gains come after periods of heavy drawdowns for both projects, with earlier analysis noting that TIA had suffered double digit intraday declines in January as emissions and weak demand weighed on price, and QNT remained well below its all time high above 400.

What is driving the divergence with edgeX

While major AI and infrastructure tokens pushed higher, edgeX was among the notable laggards in the same top 100 basket, falling 7.76 on the session. Data from market trackers shows edgeX currently trades around the 1.20 to 1.50 range with a market capitalization above 500 million and a 24 hour trading volume in the high tens of millions, making its daily slide stand out against rising liquidity.

edgeX underperformance comes even as the decentralized exchange promotes a high performance model for perpetual and spot trading across multiple chains, with full self custody and no centralized order book. The pullback suggests profit taking or rotation away from DEX tokens, at least for the day, as traders reprice tokens tied more explicitly to AI infrastructure and cross chain interoperability narratives.

For NEAR, the day’s move fits into a longer repositioning of the project as a platform for the “agentic future,” with the team describing the network as an execution layer built for AI native applications, where agents can own assets, make decisions and transact across networks. In a recent explainer, the NEAR team wrote that the protocol is “a modular, high speed protocol designed for AI to act on behalf of users,” emphasizing that the blockchain serves as the trusted backend for identity, data and settlement while AI handles user facing intent.

Worldcoin’s rally comes against the backdrop of a controversial tokenomics overhaul, after the project co founded by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman announced that it will slash its daily token unlock rate by 43 from July 24, reducing combined emissions from roughly 5.1 million WLD per day to about 2.9 million. “On July 24 2026, the unlock rate for all token allocations will automatically decrease,” the team said, arguing that lower issuance could improve the token’s long term supply demand profile even as the project continues to face regulatory scrutiny over its biometric data collection model.

FET’s gains also follow renewed attention on the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, the umbrella entity created in 2024 when Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol merged to build open, decentralized AI infrastructure. The alliance describes itself as “the largest open source, independent entity in Artificial General Intelligence research and infrastructure,” with FET now the single asset powering the new ecosystem after it replaced the individual tokens used by the three projects prior to the merger.

Across these moves, the day’s tape sends a clear signal about where speculative attention is rotating inside the top 100. Tokens aligned with AI, identity and interoperability themes are attracting fresh flows, while at least one high profile DEX token has slipped, leaving edgeX bulls to decide whether today’s drop represents a short term setback or the start of a more sustained repricing.