Solana was in the news recently after addressing this week’s hack by highlighting the need to improve wallet address security. The NEAR Protocol took notice immediately and has now taken action to improve the security of all NEAR wallet users.
In fact, NEAR recently revealed that it conducted a security review of the wallet earlier this week. This includes searching for potential vulnerabilities that could affect users. The security update in question confirmed a vulnerability involving wallets whose SMS or email recovery data was handled by a third party.
On June 6, 2022, a bug was reported in the wallet. There are potential vulnerabilities in the security of wallets recovered using email or SMS when data is transferred to third-party services. The bug was patched the same day and no accounts were compromised.
— NEAR Protocol | NEARCON.org | Lisbon | September 11-14 (@NEARProtocol) August 4, 2022
The protocol is keen to move away from SMS and email recovery methods for increased wallet security. New addresses will no longer use this method, and NEAR encourages existing users to change their security settings.
The NEAR protocol’s decision to focus on security and protecting user addresses may have boosted investor confidence. In fact, NEAR jumped 17.5% on Aug. 5 within hours of the security update.
Source: TradingView
NEAR’s short-term price action is capped by an ascending resistance line. On August 5, the price surge produced a retest of the resistance line, which was even managed to break before encountering some friction. Prices have since retreated slightly.
The current retracement of NEAR is not surprising, as this rally briefly pushed the price into overbought territory.
giant whale splash
The cryptocurrency’s strong bullish gains on Friday were aided by strong gains in its market capitalization. The latter rose by more than $500 million in the same trading session.
When such a large amount of money is not moving quickly, this could explain why the recent pullback has been less pronounced.
Source: Santiment
At press time, the market cap remains above $3.8 billion. While large inflows supported the resistance breakout, they could also support higher price levels. However, volume metrics may suggest otherwise.
Why a stronger rally could be just around the corner
Friday’s price surge and massive market capitalization inflows were supported by the second-largest volume surge in the past four weeks. The last time there was such a spike in volume was July 19-20.
A small retracement followed, followed by another bullish move, pushing prices higher. NEAR’s weighted sentiment indicator could also favor another bullish outcome.
Source: Santiment
Interestingly, the sentiment-weighted news-time reading of -2.29 was the lowest in the past four months. This suggests that there may be more upside for the price. Only time will tell if this is indeed the case.
