NEAR Protocol: $1.24B OI Meets a 4-to-1 Liquidation Skew Signal
NEAR Protocol is trading at $4.497 with about $1.24B in open interest, yet its liquidation map is sending a more fragile signal than the headline account split suggests. The latest hour saw $2,236.39 in short liquidations against only $79.25 in long liquidations, but the four-hour window flipped sharply: $609,213.57 of longs were liquidated versus $6,368.98 of shorts. Across 24 hours, long liquidations reached $4.65M, ahead of $3.31M for shorts.
Recent coverage has portrayed NEAR as an alternative-asset winner while also highlighting tokenized-stock distribution and a falling-wedge breakout. The derivatives data, however, points to a crowded long side that remains vulnerable if support gives way.
OI is concentrated, but broadly shrinking
Binance holds the largest reported NEAR OI share at 18.7%, or $232.70M, followed closely by Bybit at 17.8%, or $221.58M. Gate carries 8.2%, equal to $102.44M, while Bitget contributes 5.9%, or $73.13M. The concentration matters because the largest venues are not adding risk: Binance OI fell 5.5% over 24 hours, Bybit declined 1.5%, and Bitget slipped 1.4%. Gate is the outlier, with OI up 27.1%.
That divergence leaves the market with a mixed internal structure rather than a clean expansion signal. Aggregate OI is down 2.2% over 24 hours, while the latest one-hour change is up 1.2%. A short-lived OI rebound is therefore appearing inside a wider deleveraging trend, increasing the odds that a fresh move will test existing positions instead of confirming a durable trend.
Funding is split across venues
The average funding rate is negative at -0.0051%, but venue-level pricing is unusually uneven. Binance is charging longs +0.009196%, OKX is at +0.005884%, and Gate is at +0.0013%. Bybit is negative at -0.00502%, while Bitfinex is deeply negative at -0.144591% and CoinEx is at -0.079487%.
This split suggests that the long bias is not being expressed uniformly. Positive funding on the largest reported OI venue indicates a cost for bullish exposure on Binance, while negative rates on Bybit and Bitfinex show that other books are leaning toward short demand. The negative aggregate rate can therefore cushion a short squeeze in isolated venues, but it does not remove the liquidation risk embedded in the broader long-heavy account structure.
Positioning favors pullback risk
Account data shows 60.8% long overall, close to the 60.1% long share among takers. On Binance, accounts are 62.1% long, but takers are only 56.0% long; that gap implies active trades are less aggressively bullish than the passive account inventory. Bybit accounts are 61.3% long, while OKX takers are almost balanced at 51.5% long. Gate is the sharpest divergence: 53.6% of accounts are long, but takers are 80.2% long, a 4.0-to-1 long-to-short ratio.
The liquidation windows reinforce that imbalance. Four-hour long liquidations were roughly two orders of magnitude larger than short liquidations, and the 24-hour total reached $7.96M across 1,794 events. The largest listed event was a $404,391.42 Bybit short liquidation at $4.604, but the largest cluster of major individual events came from long liquidations on Hyperliquid between $4.080 and $4.185.
Verdict: NEAR's liquidation skew is bearish on a pullback while price remains below the $4.604 short-liquidation level and OI sits near $1.24B after a 2.2% daily contraction. A move toward the $4.080 long-liquidation area with renewed OI growth would expose the crowded long side; the view is invalidated if price reclaims $4.604 and OI expands instead of continuing to contract. Data as of 13:05 Beijing time on Sep 25, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.