ZEC climbed to $1,200 on Sept. 6, extending its three-month gain to 370%. Over the same stretch, Grayscale’s spot ZEC ETF, ZCSH, gathered more than $460 million in assets within two weeks of launch, setting off what the source described as the sharpest repricing for privacy coins in a decade.
Trading chatter has not stayed with ZEC alone. A growing share of the discussion has moved to the infrastructure underneath the move, with NEAR Intents emerging as the asset many traders are watching as the route behind ZEC’s cross-chain demand.
Zashi became a key entry and exit route for ZEC
The setup starts with Zashi, the self-custody wallet developed by Electric Coin Company. According to the source, Zashi is currently the most complete user-facing self-custody entry point in the ZEC ecosystem.
In October 2025, Zashi rolled out Zashi Swaps, a cross-chain swap feature built on NEAR Intents. It lets users swap assets such as BTC, SOL and USDC directly into shielded ZEC. CrossPay followed and opened a route in the other direction, connecting shielded ZEC with payments into assets on any chain.
That places NEAR Intents on both sides of the flow. It acts as the on-ramp for users coming into ZEC and the off-ramp for users moving out of shielded ZEC. Every cross-chain swap initiated from Zashi, regardless of direction, passes through the NEAR Intents settlement layer.
Fee Switch ties protocol activity to NEAR buybacks
On Feb. 23, 2026, NEAR Intents activated its Fee Switch. From that date, all protocol-level fees have been collected in NEAR, and 100% of protocol fees have been directed to open-market buybacks of NEAR.
The transmission chain circulating on Crypto Twitter is straightforward: rising demand for ZEC leads to more cross-chain swaps in Zashi; that lifts volume on NEAR Intents; higher volume generates more fees; those fees are then used to buy back NEAR; and the buybacks create structural demand for the token.
Volume is large, but protocol capture is much smaller
On headline numbers, the story has support. NEAR Intents’ official dashboard showed cumulative volume of about $27.6 billion as of early September, with support across more than 26 blockchains. Cumulative fees stood at about $45 million, while 30-day volume was about $3 billion.
ZEC’s share of that activity has also been meaningful. Data from late 2025 showed ZEC trades accounted for about 10% of NEAR Intents’ average daily volume, or roughly $15 million per day. More recent pair-level data from CoinGecko points to a steeper concentration: USDT/ZEC makes up 27.4% of total volume, USDC/ZEC 7.1%, SOL/ZEC 2.5%, and ETH/ZEC 2.2%. Taken together, ZEC-related pairs account for nearly 40% of volume.
The more important question is how much of that activity actually reaches NEAR through buybacks. DefiLlama shows cumulative fees of $45 million, but only about $5.51 million of protocol revenue has flowed into the treasury and been available for NEAR buybacks. Over the past 30 days, protocol revenue was about $910,000, implying an average monthly buyback pace of around $900,000.
The source noted that some earlier reports had put average monthly buybacks at around $3 million. The gap comes from different accounting definitions. Most of the $45 million in fees did not go to the protocol itself. A large share went to solvers, described here as market makers or settlement parties, and to distribution channels. SwapKit alone accounted for more than $4.4 million, while Zashi contributed about $760,000. Only the protocol-level portion flows into the NEAR buyback pool.
The thesis depends heavily on how long ZEC momentum lasts
As presented in the source, the “picks and shovels” case for NEAR is directionally grounded. The product link between Zashi and NEAR Intents is real, the post-Fee Switch buyback design can be verified on-chain, and ZEC already represents a sizable share of trading activity on the network.
Even so, the pass-through from ZEC demand to NEAR buybacks appears weaker than the community narrative suggests, and it remains heavily dependent on one asset.
If inflows into the ZEC ETF keep running at the current pace over the next few weeks, the chain could keep working. If ZEC enters a period of sharp volatility or a pullback, the volume mix on NEAR Intents may show a higher degree of concentration than the label of multi-chain infrastructure would imply.
For traders, the key metric is not only whether cumulative volume on NEAR Intents clears $30 billion. The more important signal is how ZEC’s share of that volume changes over time. The source argues that if the ratio falls from 40% to below 15% while total volume still grows, NEAR would be closer to moving from a trade tied to ZEC into a standalone cross-chain settlement infrastructure story.