Investment Disclaimer:

• I am not a registered investment, legal, or tax adviser or a broker/dealer, and all opinions expressed by me are from my research for educational purposes only.
• Past performance presented here is not an indicator of future performance.
• This post expresses my own opinion about the cryptocurrency mentioned herein and is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell the cryptocurrency mentioned in this post.
• I do hold a long position in NEAR as a token holder.

This analytics report was written as a follow-up from 20 JAN 2022 (THU)- Near Protocol (NEAR) Report Card

1. What Is Near Protocol ? 

1.1. Introduction to Near Protocol
Near Protocol is a high-throughput and sharded smart contract-based blockchain that runs on delegated proof-of-stake consensus. It has a block time of 1 second on average and could process up to 100,000 transactions per second.

1.2. Founders and Backers
Near Protocol was founded by 2 Silicon Valley bright minds, Alexander Skidanov who was a former Microsoft software engineer, and Illia Polosukhin who was a former Engineering Manager at Google. Near Protocol is backed by many well-known and established venture capitals, some of the big names are Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures and Baidu Ventures. 

1.3. Unique Features that Near Protocol Offers
Near Protocol operates on a smart contract-based account model where each account is a smart contract and each account also came with a human-readable address, which we usually have to pay for it with services like Ethereum Name Service (.eth) for other layer-one blockchains.

In addition, Near Protocol also offers a community contribution program called Guild, which consists of many decentralized communities where each community works on specific proposals/ projects that would help the Near ecosystem according to their specific skill set. Near team has set aside a budget from their treasury to incentivize and reward Guild which has contributed meaningfully to Near. 

Near Protocol also came with a layer 2 scaling solution called Aurora, which has Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility that allows Ethereum developers to easily port their projects to Near as easy as just changing the RPC endpoint.

1.4. Tokenomics

Details: https://near.org/blog/near-token-supply-and-distribution/

There were 2 phases of Near MainNet Launches,

MainNet Restricted ("Phase 1"):
This is a phase where token holders were restricted from directly transferring tokens (but they could still be used to pay for gas or storage, staked, delegated, used to deploy apps, etc)

Community-Governed MainNet ("Phase 2"):
At this phase, tokens can now be transferred as the main net is now unrestricted and decentralized. 

At this time of writing, Near has entered Phase 2 officially on 13 Oct 2020.

There is a total maximum supply of 1 billion Near tokens at genesis (also known as Genesis Tokens). Genesis tokens were allocated on an ongoing basis to individuals and organizations during the rollout of Phase 2 Main Net. The vast majority of tokens are subject to linearly releasing lockups where the tokens held by Near early backers and holders can only be sold after this lockup is released. All lockup periods will be counted from the day of Near's main net launch and the lockup release schedule is as followed:

Care should be taken on these key dates as there is a high chance for Near early-stage venture capitalists to cash out the tokens for profits on these lockup release dates, and a high sales volume would depress Near token price nearing these dates. 

Besides, Near token is also inflationary where there is a 5% additional token supply every year. 90% of these supplied tokens would be distributed to Near validators for dedicating their resources to secure the Near network while the remaining 10% would be kept in treasury.

Despite the 5% inflation rate, 30% of transaction fees are rebated to the contracts touched by the transaction and 70% are burned. Due to this burning mechanism, at high levels of transaction throughput the network could become deflationary.

2. How Near Performs Relative to Other Cryptos ?

Performance of All Cryptos Under Quantdoge Watchlist since 2021 (Sorted by % Return)

NEAR has undergone 717.75% return from USD 1.354 to USD 11.0723 (37.5% lower than 20 Jan 2022 snapshot) since 01 Jan 2021.
NEAR is the 13th best performing crypto assets among others here.

3. How Resilience Near Is Towards Bitcoin Crash Relative to Other Cryptos ?

Historically, all altcoins are somewhat dependent on Bitcoin price movement and it’s often the case where if Bitcoin falls, most altcoins would follow.

Top 3 Cryptos That Are Most Resilient To Bitcoin Crash During Each of BTC 4 Largest Crashes in 2021

NEAR has proven resilience against BTC crash in 0 out of the 4 instances.

During the last 4 BTC market crashes,
When BTC dropped by -13.47 %, NEAR returned -35.85 % at 20 May 2021,
When BTC dropped by -13.13 %, NEAR returned -12.66 % at 22 January 2021,
When BTC dropped by -12.16 %, NEAR returned 0.1 % at 13 May 2021,
When BTC dropped by -11.39 %, NEAR returned -21.61 % at 22 June 2021

4. Technical Analysis on Near

4.1. Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP)

VWAP is a technical indicator used by a trader to gauge the overall trend of an asset price movement. VWAP line (orange line) represents the volume-weighted average price (average price here is defined as the average of high, low and close prices) while close price line (blue line) represents the price when NEAR is closed at the end of every single day. 

Whenever blue line (close price) is above orange line (VWAP), it indicates that the asset is gaining momentum and being traded higher than its average price level. This would represent a 'buy' opportunity for short-term momentum trader whom task is to trade following the trend while a longer term mean-revision trader might take it as a 'sell' opportunity, anticipating that the price of NEAR (blue line) to fall to its average level (orange line).

Whenever blue line (close price) is below orange line (VWAP), it indicates that the asset is losing momentum and being traded lower than its average price level. This would represent a 'sell' opportunity for short-term momentum trader whom task is to trade following the trend while a longer term mean-revision trader might take it as a 'buy' opportunity, anticipating that the price of NEAR (blue line) to rise to its average level (orange line).

As of 03 Feb 2022, VWAP is suggesting that NEAR has been losing a lot of momentum and is now trading at a deep discount from its month-long volume-weighted average price. Despite NEAR's attractive valuation at this low price level, there is a risk for NEAR to continue its fall should crypto market continue to sell off.

4.2. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD)

MACD is often used by trader as a momentum indicator. There are 2 lines that form the above charts, namely MACD (12, 26) lines and Signal(9) line, while the histogram is calculated by subtracting Signal (9) from MACD (12,26). Histogram would fall to the negative territory whenever MACD (12, 26) is trending at a lower level than Signal (9) and rise to the positive territory whenever MACD (12,26) is trending at a higher level than Signal (9).

MACD (12, 26) is computed by subtracting the 26-day exponential moving average (EMA) of NEAR closing price from its 12-day EMA. 
Signal (9) on the other hand is calculated as the 9-day EMA of MACD (12,26). 

As MACD (12, 26) goes higher away from Signal (9), it signifies that NEAR is gaining momentum and whenever it goes trends at a lower level than Signal (9),it signifies that NEAR is losing momentum. 

As of 03 Feb 2022, MACD is suggesting that NEAR has lost a significant amount of momentum.

4.3. Bollinger Band

Bollinger band is often being used by mean-reversion trader as a gauge to assess how undervalued or overvalued an asset is. Its chart made up of 4 lines, namely:

- SMA (20) (blue line), which is the 20-day simple moving average price of NEAR
- Upper Band (orange line), which is computed by adding 2 standard deviations of NEAR on SMA (20)
- Lower Band (red line) , which is computed by subtracting 2 standard deviations of NEAR from SMA (20)
- Close (green line), which is the daily closing price of NEAR

Whenever close line (green) touches the lower band (red), it indicates that NEAR is corrected too much and is being traded at an undervalued level, representing a 'buy' opportunity. On the other hand, whenever close line (green) touches the upper band (orange), it indicates that NEAR is gaining too much momentum and is being traded at an overvalued level, thus indicating a 'sell' opportunity. 

As of 03 Feb 2022, Bollinger Band is suggesting that NEAR is now trading within an undervalued territory. 

4.4. Relative Strength Index (RSI)

Just like Bollinger Band, Relative Strength Index is often being used by mean-reversion trader as a gauge to assess how undervalued or overvalued an asset is. There are 2 psychological levels, i.e. 30 and 70 in RSI. Whenever the RSI reaches 30, it indicates that NEAR is corrected too much and is being traded at an undervalued level, representing a 'buy' opportunity. On the other hand, whenever RSI reaches 70, it indicates that NEAR is gaining too much momentum and is being traded at an overvalued level, thus indicating a 'sell' opportunity. 

As of 03 Feb 2022, RSI is suggesting that NEAR has been oversold across 14-day moving average trading window.

4.5. Price and Volume Analysis

NEAR daily active trading volume in Jan 2022 is less than Dec 2021 on average. 

Based on the technical analysis presented above, quantdoge is bullish on NEAR but I only bought it in a reasonable amount that suits my risk appetite so that I do not need to worry much should there be a big crypto market sell-off. However, I could be wrong, hence please make your careful due diligence before making any financial decision.

5. Near Risk Profile

Based on the 100-day 95% historical Value-at-Risk (VaR) profile of Near defined above, NEAR seems to trade at a similar risk level on 03 Feb 2022 as compared to 10 days before on 24 Jan 2022, with its biggest pullback being seen at -15.39% on a single day during the last 100 days. However, I could be wrong, hence please make your careful due diligence before making any financial decision.

The probability distribution chart of NEAR's daily return has been shifted left (i.e. having greater probability of losing more than 10%), indicating that the downside risk of NEAR remains and becoming more influential at this volatile period.

6. Google Trends Analytics

"near protocol" reached its peak in Google Search on 2022-01-16  with a Google Score of 100
Over the last quarter, "near protocol" Google Score has increased 187.73 % from 29.75 to 85.6
Over the last 6 months, "near protocol" Google Score has increased 259.66 % from 23.8 to 85.6

Over the last month, "near protocol" is most saught after on Google from Ukraine (where Near Protocol's co-founder Illia came from), followed by Norway and European crypto valley, Switzerland.

7. Developer Activity Analytics

Fork

Fork refers to the amount of time where the Github repo of current cryptocurrency is being copied. Higher fork number could mean that this cryptocurrency project is getting more interest in the developers community who likes to explore more on the deep technical of this project.

Near forks increased 116.22% from 111 to 240 in the past year.

Star

Star refers to the number of developers who bookmark the Github repo of current cryptocurrency. Higher star number could mean that this cryptocurrency project is getting more general interest in the developers community.

Near stars increased 74.12% from 796 to 1,386 in the past year.

Pull Request

Pull request contributor refers to developer who has made a successful improvements/ modifications on the Github repo of this current cryptocurrency project. Higher number of pull request contributors could mean that there is a high number of commitment given by developers to this cryptocurrency project.

However, a low number also could mean that the developer community of this project applies a strict standard when it comes to code review, so only developers who have published a high quality code with highly impactful features got approved.

Near pull request contributors increased 54.76% from 42 to 65 in the past year.

8. Binance Futures Activities

The amount of traders who are taking long positions on NEARUSDT futures is equivalent to the amount of traders who are shorting against it.

Futures traders are expecting crypto prices to fall with many of them started taking short positions after today's 4.3% rise in BTC, 8.7% rise in ETH and 5.4% rise in NEAR. Please take note that this long-short ratio is simply just dividing the number of accounts who are long by the number of accounts who are short, without taking any buy/ sell volume into consideration. 

At the time of writing, bulls are still in control as there are more buy volumes than the sell volumes across all BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT and NEARUSDT futures in today's market uptrend.

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