About
NEAR Protocol is a decentralized Layer-1 blockchain platform engineered to tackle the scalability, usability, and cost challenges faced by earlier blockchains while preserving strong security and decentralization. It introduced its sharded architecture under the “Nightshade” model, which partitions the network into parallel shards that process transactions concurrently, dramatically increasing throughput and keeping fees low. This design enables NEAR to achieve near-instant transaction finality with minimal cost, positioning it as a competitive smart contract platform for decentralized applications (dApps).
The foundational vision for NEAR was conceived by co-founders Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, who began development as early as 2017 with the aim of creating a developer-friendly blockchain with a robust economic model. This vision includes features like human-readable account names (instead of long cryptographic strings), intuitive wallets, and an ecosystem-oriented framework that lowers barriers to entry for both developers and users.
NEAR’s native token, NEAR, plays a central role in the network’s operation and economics. It is used to pay transaction fees, compensate validators through staking rewards, and participate in on-chain governance decisions. The protocol’s inflationary model originally set at around 5% per year and subject to governance proposals for potential adjustment supports network security by allocating a significant portion of newly issued tokens to validators and delegators, while fee burning introduces deflationary pressure under active usage.
The ecosystem around NEAR has expanded to include interoperability solutions such as the Rainbow Bridge, which facilitates transfers between Ethereum and NEAR, and the Aurora environment, which provides Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility on NEAR. These extend NEAR’s reach into decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and multi-chain applications. NEAR’s architecture and tooling also support modular and app-chain integrations, reinforcing its position as a scalable infrastructure choice for Web3 developers and enterprises.
