• NEAR was up 151% over the past 30 days, while Grayscale pointed to other AI tokens like Venice, World, and Bittensor also posting strong September gains.

• Zach Pandl pointed to blockchains as potential infrastructure for AI agent payments, identity, and private compute.

• The rally came despite a $3.8 million exploit affecting NEAR Intents.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) edged lower on Saturday after Grayscale highlighted that the token led a September rally in artificial intelligence (AI) tokens, with the firm’s AI crypto sector gaining, more than double the broader market’s rise.

According to a research note published on Friday, Grayscale said that the broader crypto market rose around 24%, while…