NEAR gains 15.9 percent as the confidential SOL vault cites a 5.12 percent yield: what to watch now

NEAR trades at $5.27 on Thursday midday, 15.87 percent above its level of 24 hours ago (CoinGecko). The occasion is a product NEAR presented on October 15, 2026 through its own channel on X: anyone depositing Solana (SOL) via the near.com app should no longer have to disclose their wallet address. The money then works in a vault at Kamino Finance. NEAR itself does not claim a link between the product launch and the price jump, and no such link can be substantiated.

Two details here matter to investors in Germany, and most reports pass over both. The yield on offer comes from lending coins out, not from running the blockchain. And the confidentiality stops at the edge of the NEAR blockchain. Both change how this vault reads for tax and for supervision.

NEAR at $5.27: 15.87 percent in 24 hours, a $4.54 low

The NEAR price has moved through a range of $4.54 to $5.43 over the past 24 hours. On a weekly view it is up 9.02 percent, market capitalisation stands at $6.91 billion and ranks 19th. Coins worth $1.32 billion changed hands in 24 hours.

Measured against its own history, the picture is sober. NEAR reached its all-time high of $20.44 on January 16, 2022. From today's price, that is about 74 percent away. Supply in circulation is 1.309 billion NEAR, practically the entire issued amount, so no unlock on that side is likely to add selling pressure.

Against the broader market, the move stands out. Bitcoin added 1.61 percent over the same period and ether 4.30 percent. NEAR is therefore moving far harder than the two large caps, which points to a trigger of its own rather than a general recovery.

Confidential SOL vault on near.com: Kamino runs it, Gauntlet curates it

NEAR calls the new offering "confidential SOL yield" and runs it inside the near.com app. The sequence: you deposit Solana from a confidential account, the balance moves into a vault at Kamino Finance, a lending platform on the Solana blockchain. That vault is curated by Gauntlet, a firm that sets the risk parameters for vaults of this kind. Gauntlet has run curated Kamino vaults since November 11, 2025 and put their volume at more than $2 billion at launch; Solana Compass has assembled the details of the structure.

A curated vault is not a bank account. The curator decides which collateral is admitted, how far it may be borrowed against and when positions are force-closed. If that judgement lags reality in a violent downturn, depositors carry the loss, not the curator.

There is no minimum holding period, according to the product page. Balances can be swapped or spent while they earn. Sign-in works with a wallet or a passkey. NEAR's product page also notes that deposited SOL is exposed to market and protocol risk and flows into third-party smart contracts. That sentence deserves a second read: it shifts liability from the provider to someone else's code.

What the confidential mode hides and what stays public

The confidentiality is created in a shielded section of the NEAR blockchain, a shard. Activity inside that section cannot be inspected from outside. What stays hidden is the originating wallet and the link between the source of the deposit and its destination.

The other side stays open. On the destination blockchain, the transaction, the asset, the amount and the recipient remain visible to anyone. So if you believe a deposit makes the whole trail disappear, you are mistaken. One link of the trail is covered, namely the attribution to the original address.

NEAR put it this way in its announcement post on X on October 15, 2026: "Your SOL can earn yield in a dozen places. All of them public, until now." Kamino wrote in its own post that users reach the vault "directly on near.com, without exposing their wallet address to the vault". On its home page, NEAR describes the principle as an account whose balances and activity stay confidential, "when you want them to, with control over what you reveal".

Which address the vault does see, who holds the position economically and what fees apply: neither company has published any of it so far. NEAR cites a volume of $1.29 billion over 30 days for its confidential infrastructure. That figure comes from the company itself, is not externally audited and covers every confidential operation on near.com, not this vault alone.

The 5.12 percent is a lending yield, not a staking reward

At launch the product page cited an example rate of 5.12 percent a year on SOL, while making clear that the yield fluctuates and is not guaranteed. Where that number comes from is what counts. The yield arises from borrowing demand: whoever wants to borrow SOL pays interest, and part of it reaches the depositors. It has nothing to do with the reward a validator earns for securing the Solana blockchain.

The distinction matters for the yield itself. A staking reward follows the blockchain's issuance schedule and moves sluggishly. A lending yield falls as soon as demand for borrowed SOL eases, and in quiet weeks it can slip well below the advertised figure. To see the offers side by side, the established providers are in our comparison of staking and yield platforms, which also shows which of them are licensed in the EU.

MPC signing network reaches 17 operators, NEAR token now trades on Solana too

Two further items landed in the same few days. First, NEAR's signing network, which rests on multi-party computation (MPC), now runs with 17 operators on mainnet. It is funded out of the protocol's emissions, and NEAR holders decide how those are used. This network carries the chain signatures with which NEAR Intents triggers operations on other blockchains.

Second, the NEAR token has traded on Solana since October 15 via Sunrise, a route built by the team behind Wormhole, with NEAR Intents serving as the bridge. First-day numbers stay small: on the evening of October 15, Solana Compass counted 18,918 holders, roughly $13.0 million in 24-hour turnover and about $615,000 of on-chain liquidity. For a top-20 asset that is little, and it tempers any expectation that this venue alone carries the price jump.

What has changed since the perpetuals report of October 15

On the evening of October 15, NEAR stood at a gain of 9 percent, and in 74 of 86 perpetual markets examined buyers were paying the funding rate to sellers, as our analysis of NEAR, leverage and open interest showed. The price has risen further since, to $5.27 and $5.43 at the peak.

That leaves the futures market as the largest near-term risk. An imbalance in which leveraged buyers pay continuously tends to resolve either through prices that keep climbing or through a wave of forced closures. The $4.54 low of the past 24 hours marks the spot where that pressure last became visible.

MiCA and the Transfer of Funds Regulation: the legal framework in Germany

Since 2025, crypto service providers in the EU may only operate with authorisation under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). What that authorisation demands of a provider is set out in our overview of MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies. Whether an EU-authorised provider sits behind near.com is not apparent from the announcement. BaFin keeps a register of providers licensed in Germany, ESMA one for the EU as a whole. A look there costs two minutes and answers the question bindingly.

Alongside it stands the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation (Regulation 2023/1113). It obliges authorised crypto service providers to collect and pass on details of the originator and the beneficiary for every transfer. A product whose purpose is to hide the originating address stands in obvious tension with that duty as soon as an authorised provider is involved. For a deposit from a self-custodied wallet the duty does not apply in that form; for a withdrawal to an account at a regulated exchange it very much does.

Article 79 of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation: what applies from July 10, 2027

The EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (Regulation 2024/1624) applies directly in every member state from July 10, 2027; no German implementing act is needed. Its Article 79 prohibits credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto service providers from maintaining anonymous accounts. Accounts that prevent attribution through anonymity-enhancing crypto-assets are named expressly.

Two misunderstandings persist. First, the regulation names not a single coin, and no official list exists. Second, the provision addresses companies, not private holders. A wallet on your own device is not a corporate account and does not fall under it.

In practice the rule still reaches investors, by way of access. If authorised exchanges and custodians turn away confidential transactions as a precaution, a legally permitted position becomes one that is hard to convert back into euros. Roughly 20 months remain until July 2027, and large platforms have a record of acting well before a deadline.

Holding period, tax and custody for your portfolio

For tax, the matter splits in two. The deposited SOL itself falls under disposal taxation in Germany pursuant to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act: hold for more than a year, then sell, and the gain is untaxed. The interest from the vault is to be treated separately, because it is current income and must be declared in the year it accrues.

That creates a practical duty, and a tedious one: every inflow needs a date, an amount and the euro rate at the moment of crediting. With interest accruing daily, that quickly adds up to hundreds of individual entries a year, which can hardly be kept straight by hand. The established tools for it are in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

An additional problem arises from the confidentiality itself. If the transaction shows no outward link to the originating address, you are the one who has to prove that link to the tax office. So secure the records from the app while you still have access, rather than relying later on a public blockchain explorer that does not carry precisely this trail.

Levels above and below: $4.54, $5.43 and $6.00

On the downside, the daily low at $4.54 is the first level worth anything, because buying actually took place there over the past 24 hours. Below it lies the five-dollar line, which NEAR broke through on October 13 and has since reclaimed.

On the upside, the daily high at $5.43 caps the move for now. The next station above it is the area around $6.00, which NEAR touched briefly on October 10 before the price gave way again. A daily close above that zone would be the first signal that the advance carries more than a counter-move.

Our assessment: the product launch does not explain the price jump on its own. The measurable quantities are too small for that, with $615,000 of liquidity on Solana on day one and an example yield below what lending markets pay in good weeks. What supports the move is the funding situation in the futures market, where leveraged buyers are paying. Against it stands the fact that this very situation can turn against the price just as quickly. None of this is a buy or sell recommendation, and total loss remains possible with any crypto-asset.

NEAR vault: without EU authorisation, the deposit is your risk

1. Settle the authorisation question before money moves. Look the provider up in the BaFin register and the ESMA register. If you do not find it there, MiCA's protective provisions do not apply to you. Which venues hold an EU licence is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Read the yield for what it is. The 5.12 percent is an example rate from the lending market, not a commitment. Pull the current rate before any deposit and reckon with a markedly lower figure in quiet market phases. What licensed providers currently pay on SOL is shown in our comparison of staking and yield platforms.
3. Secure the records and keep holdings apart. With confidential transactions you are the only one who can still evidence the attribution later. File the date, amount and euro rate of every inflow, and keep long-term holdings separate from this in your own custody; the devices for that are in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 16, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)