On Monday, July 20, NEAR Mobile shipped version 3.11.0 and quietly did something most crypto wallet apps avoid: it made the free tier genuinely better while raising the bar for paid access. The three-tier membership structure is gone. Two tiers remain, Basic and Premium, and the change benefits the largest slice of the user base immediately.

Basic is now fully free, no NPRO required at all. Users on this tier get up to two wallets, full Investor Info access, price change notifications, a standard swap fee of 0.88%, and a standard staking fee of 5%. That last point matters: a feature set that previously required holding a token is now unlocked the moment someone downloads the app. NEAR Mobile announced the update on X, framing the restructure as a way to bring more features to free users, refine the premium experience, and reinforce the long-term utility of NPRO.

What the New Premium Tier Actually Requires

Premium now demands 500 NPRO held for a minimum of one year. That is a meaningfully higher entry point than the previous threshold of 250 NPRO over one month. In return, Premium members get unlimited wallets, direct human support, a reduced swap fee of 0.66%, and zero staking fees entirely. Existing members keep their original 250 NPRO and one-month terms grandfathered in, so no one is forced to upgrade immediately.

The staking layer ties directly into NPRO supply mechanics. Users can stake NEAR natively inside the app to earn NPRO. Current pool metrics show a 7.50% variable APY based on market value, $204,000 in liquidity, and 2.81 million NEAR already staked across the pool. That staking volume gives the NPRO token a concrete demand mechanism rather than a speculative one.

The broader context here is worth noting. Most crypto apps trend toward quietly restricting free tiers over time, a pattern visible across wallets, exchanges, and data platforms alike. NEAR Mobile moved in the opposite direction, at least in this release cycle. Whether the simplified two-tier model holds as the project scales is a separate question, but version 3.11.0 lands as a structural departure from the norm in mobile crypto wallet development.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.