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Is NEAR Protocol (NEAR) halal?

Permitted

The six conditions are met for a spot purchase.

Verdict calculated by Halal Bourse's published rules from an investigation of primary sources (project documentation, registers, decisions), conducted on 10/07/2026 and not reviewed by a human.

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The asset

Native currency of the NEAR network (layer 1 smart-contract chain, proof of stake) Issuer: Near, Inc., a Delaware company conceived in 2018 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin (described this way in the SEC's 2023 complaint); the NEAR Foundation, a Swiss non-profit foundation (Stiftung) established in 2019; the protocol code is published in numbered versions (nearcore 2.9.0 announced by Near One on October 21, 2025).

NEAR pays transaction fees and data storage on the NEAR network and is used for staking with validators. The supply is not capped: the documentation states a target annual issuance of 2.5% of the total supply (reduced from 5% by nearcore version 2.9.0), distributed as validation rewards; transaction fees are burned, apart from the share paid to contracts.

Why this verdict

  1. Permissible purpose : met. NEAR is used to pay for computation and storage on the NEAR network, through transaction fees denominated in NEAR; the official documentation describes this use.
    • « NEAR is used to price computation and storage on the NEAR infrastructure. » NEAR (documentation) (2026-10-07)
    • « The network charges transaction fees in NEAR to process changes and transactions. » NEAR (documentation) (2026-10-07)
  2. No riba : met. Holding NEAR pays nothing in itself: the issuance set by the protocol rewards validators (and, by delegation, staked tokens) and transaction fees are burned. No loan is involved. Staking is covered in autres_constats.
  3. No gambling : met. A spot purchase is of a network's native token, used to pay for gas and transferable between accounts; it is not a contract on a price difference. In the SEC's 2023 complaint against Coinbase, NEAR was among the assets alleged to be securities; the action was dropped in 2025 (see c6). NEAR does not appear in the list of examples of “digital commodities” in the SEC-CFTC interpretation of March 17, 2026, a non-exhaustive list.
    • « Gas in NEAR is computed on gas units and charged using $NEAR tokens based on the network's gas price. » NEAR (documentation, gaz) (2026-10-07)
    • « NEAR is readily available on the protocol level, so it can be used to transfer value between NEAR applications and accounts. » NEAR (documentation) (2026-10-07)
  4. No excessive gharar : met. The initial allocation (1 billion NEAR, of which 35.7% to convertible note holders) and the issuance rule (maximum annual inflation of 2.5%, changed by adoption of a software version by 80% of validator stake) are published; the foundation's council is identified. Issuance can be changed by this validator vote, as the move from 5% to 2.5% shows. No anonymous party controlling issuance, the treasury or the keys was found.
  5. Real ownership : met. NEAR is held in an account whose private keys the user keeps; the documentation states that losing the full access key makes the funds unrecoverable, which indicates there is no intermediary. The choice of purchase platform was not studied.
  6. No fraud or manipulation : met. No ruling establishes deception of NEAR buyers. The SEC named NEAR among alleged securities in its 2023 complaint against Coinbase; it ended that action in 2025, “not on any assessment of the merits”. The AMF blacklist returns no result for “near”. The founding team is public.
  7. Réseau ouvert et généraliste : met. un outil neutre

Tolerance case

T1. NEAR is the native currency of a network where any node whose stake exceeds the seat price can join the validator set, and it is general-purpose (accounts, contracts, payments). Near, Inc. sold NEAR to investors, but NEAR gives no right to any company income; no share of impermissible income is published or estimated (case T2 not quantifiable, not applied).

Opinions found during the research

Opinions reported as read, named for what they are; they do not enter into the calculation of the verdict.

What could not be verified

Sources read

Other cryptos analyzed

General information: neither investment advice nor a fatwa. Verdict calculated by published rules, from financial statements read automatically and not reviewed by a human. Read the methodology