The NEAR Protocol is, in essence, a decentralized app platform. The platform prioritizes user and developer usability. Many consider it as a competitor to Ethereum. Its blockchain supports smart contracts and a PoS method. NEAR is the NEAR Protocol's native token, and it is used to store data on the platform as well as to pay transaction fees. Additionally, NEAR owners may utilize tokens for staking. As a result, they can act as transaction validators and contribute to network consensus.

Using sharding technologies, NEAR Protocol's blockchain intends to compete with other similar platforms. It has been dubbed "Nightshade" by its creators. Sharding is a technology that has received a lot of attention in the crypto world. Ethereum 2.0, for example, promises to introduce a comparable notion.

History

Erik Trautman, the creator of Viking Education and an entrepreneur with Wall Street experience, founded NEAR Protocol. Illia Polosukhin, who has more than 10 years of industry experience, including 3 years at Google, and Alexander Skidanov, a computer scientist who worked at Microsoft before joining memSQL as the director of engineering, were his co-founders.

NEAR Protocol has a large staff of professional developers, including multiple gold medallists and winners from the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). The company claims to have experts who have built some of the only real-world sharded systems at scale, which is a solution the protocol is pursuing to improve blockchain scalability.

How does it work

NEAR employs a delegated PoS blockchain. To improve performance, the network makes use of sharding. NEAR's sharding technique is distinct from that of other cryptocurrencies. For example, sharding is used in the blockchains of Zilliqa and Polkadot. On NEAR, all shards are part of the same blockchain. They are not separate. Using Rainbow Bridge, NEAR may also communicate with the Ethereum network. Nightshade is the mechanism that permits this to happen. Nightshade provides a snapshot of each shard's current state to every NEAR blockchain block. Each shard has its own set of validator nodes that broadcast the current status of each shard whenever a block is produced.

Nightshade:  One of the most significant advantages of Nightshade is its architecture. It allows for fewer security points of failure. Smaller sections are the responsibility of participating nodes. This can assist the blockchain in becoming a truly scalable solution in the crypto industry. NEAR's sharding technique significantly improves efficiency by emulating a complicated railroad system. The primary station is the NEAR blockchain. The shards serve as parallel train tracks that all go to the focal point.

Rainbow Bridge: The Rainbow Bridge application of the NEAR Protocol allows participants to swiftly move Ethereum assets between Ethereum and NEAR. The Rainbow Bridge enables the usage of any cryptographically confirmed information on NEAR within Ethereum smart contracts. To transfer tokens from Ethereum to the NEAR Protocol, the user must first deposit tokens in an Ethereum smart contract. These tokens are then locked. The NEAR Platform then generates fresh tokens.

Total supply and circulation

The NEAR Protocol's mainnet went live on April 22, 2020, with 1 billion NEAR tokens issued at genesis. Each year, 5% of extra supply is released to sustain the network as epoch rewards, with 90% going to validators (4.5% total) and 10% going to the protocol treasury (0.5% total). The remaining 70% of transaction costs are paid out as rebates to contracts that engage with a transaction.