ZEC’s jump to $1,200 on Sept. 6, along with a 370% gain over three months, has sparked a shift in trading talk. Instead of focusing only on whether ZEC can keep running from four digits, traders are looking at the infrastructure under the move. In this case, that points to NEAR Intents.
ChainCatcher’s report frames the idea as a classic “picks-and-shovels” trade. Grayscale’s spot ZEC ETF, ZCSH, drew more than $460 million in assets within two weeks of launch, marking what the report described as the sharpest repricing for a privacy coin in a decade. From there, the market conversation moved to the rails handling conversion into and out of shielded ZEC.
Zashi wallet sits at the center of the flow
Zashi, developed by Electric Coin Company, is described in the report as the most complete self-custody entry point in the ZEC ecosystem from a user-experience standpoint. In October 2025, Zashi rolled out Zashi Swaps, a cross-chain swap function built on NEAR Intents. The feature lets users convert assets such as BTC, SOL and USDC directly into shielded ZEC.
CrossPay went live after that and opened the path in the opposite direction, allowing payments from shielded ZEC into assets on any chain. That makes NEAR Intents both the on-ramp and the off-ramp for ZEC activity moving through Zashi. Every cross-chain swap initiated from Zashi, regardless of direction, passes through the NEAR Intents settlement layer.
Fee Switch changed how value is captured
NEAR Intents activated its Fee Switch on Feb. 23, 2026. From that date, all protocol-level fees are charged in NEAR, and 100% of protocol fees are used to buy back NEAR in the open market.
The transmission chain described in the report is straightforward: higher demand for ZEC leads to more cross-chain swaps on Zashi; more swaps lift NEAR Intents volume; higher volume generates more fees; and those fees feed back into NEAR buybacks.
Volume is large, but buybackable revenue is much smaller
According to the official NEAR Intents dashboard cited in the article, the protocol had processed about $27.6 billion in cumulative volume by early September, across more than 26 blockchains. It had generated about $45 million in cumulative fees, with around $3 billion in volume over the past 30 days.
The next question is how much of that activity is tied to ZEC. Data from late 2025 showed ZEC trades made up about 10% of NEAR Intents’ average daily volume, or about $15 million per day. But CoinGecko pair data points to a much larger share now. USDT/ZEC accounts for 27.4% of total volume on NEAR Intents, while USDC/ZEC accounts for 7.1%, SOL/ZEC for 2.5% and ETH/ZEC for 2.2%. Taken together, ZEC-related pairs represent nearly 40% of total volume.
That gives the narrative a real data base. NEAR Intents is not merely adjacent to the ZEC trade; it is handling a sizable portion of the actual flow.
Fees, protocol revenue and buybacks are not the same thing
The report puts the biggest emphasis on this distinction. DefiLlama data shows that while NEAR Intents has generated $45 million in cumulative fees, only about $5.51 million has counted as protocol revenue flowing into the treasury and into NEAR buybacks. Over the past 30 days, protocol revenue was about $910,000, implying monthly buybacks of around $900,000.
That is materially below earlier reports that put average monthly buybacks near $3 million. The difference comes from accounting scope. Most of the $45 million in fees did not enter the buyback pool. Instead, it went to solvers, meaning market makers or settlement counterparties, and to distribution channels. The article says SwapKit alone took in more than $4.4 million, while Zashi contributed about $760,000. Only the protocol-layer portion ultimately feeds NEAR buybacks.
The logic holds, but the transmission is weaker than social media suggests
On the facts presented, the “picks-and-shovels” case for NEAR does hold at the product and mechanism level. The integration between Zashi and NEAR Intents is real. The post-Fee-Switch buyback design is verifiable on-chain. ZEC’s share of volume on NEAR Intents is also significant.
Even so, the article argues that the efficiency of that transmission is lower than community discussion implies, and heavily tied to the durability of ZEC’s own move. If ETF inflows into ZEC continue at the current pace over the coming weeks, the chain can keep working. If ZEC enters a period of sharp volatility or a pullback, the distribution of volume on NEAR Intents could reveal a concentration risk that is higher than the “multi-chain infrastructure” story suggests.
What traders are watching next
The report says the key metric is not just whether NEAR Intents can push cumulative volume above $30 billion. Traders also need to watch how ZEC’s share of that volume changes.
Its framework is specific: if ZEC’s share drops from 40% to below 15% while total volume continues to grow, NEAR would be closer to moving from a shadow trade on ZEC to a broader cross-chain settlement infrastructure story.