NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a first-layer blockchain developed to function as a community-driven cloud computing platform. It addresses several challenges faced by rival blockchains, including slow transaction speeds, limited throughput, and inadequate interoperability. This creates an optimal setting for decentralized applications (DApps) and ensures the platform is both developer and user-friendly. For instance, NEAR employs account names that are easy for humans to read, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses typically used on Ethereum. Additionally, NEAR tackles scaling issues with innovative strategies and operates on its own consensus mechanism known as "Doomslug."

The NEAR Collective, the community behind NEAR Protocol, is responsible for maintaining and enhancing the initial code and rolling out updates to the ecosystem. Their mission is to establish a platform that is "secure enough to handle high-value assets like money or identity, and efficient enough to be practical for everyday users."

Projects like Flux, which allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, and real-world events, and Mintbase, an NFT minting platform, are being developed on the NEAR Protocol.

NEAR Protocol was initiated by Erik Trautman, an entrepreneur with Wall Street experience and the founder of Viking Education. His co-founders include Illia Polosukhin, who has over a decade of industry experience, including three years at Google, and Alexander Skidanov, a computer scientist who worked at Microsoft and later served as director of engineering at memSQL. The NEAR Protocol team comprises skilled developers, some of whom are International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) gold medalists and champions. This team claims expertise in developing real-world sharded systems at scale, a solution they are pursuing to enhance blockchain scalability.

NEAR leverages its Nightshade technology to significantly boost transaction throughput. Nightshade is an advanced form of sharding where separate validator groups handle transactions simultaneously across various sharded chains, thereby enhancing the blockchain's overall capacity. Unlike standard sharding, Nightshade shards generate sections of the subsequent block, known as "chunks." This approach enables NEAR Protocol to process up to 100,000 transactions per second and allows for near-instant transaction finality due to a one-second block interval, all while keeping transaction fees effectively negligible.

Furthermore, NEAR Protocol simplifies the often complicated onboarding process associated with other blockchains by offering human-readable addresses and building decentralized applications with familiar registration processes. It also provides modular components for developers, facilitating quicker project initiation, such as token contracts or NFTs.

The total supply of NEAR tokens is capped at 1 billion, distributed as follows:

* 17.2% - Community Grants
* 11.4% - Operation Grants
* 10% - Foundation Endowment
* 11.7% - Early Ecosystem
* 14% - Core Contributors
* 17.6% - Backers
* 6.1% - Small Backers
* 12% - Community Sale

NEAR Protocol's mainnet was launched on April 22, 2020, with an initial creation of 1 billion NEAR tokens. An additional 5% supply is generated yearly for network support as epoch rewards, where 90% is allocated to validators (4.5% of the total) and 10% goes to the protocol treasury (0.5% of the total). Of transaction fees, 30% is distributed as rebates to contracts involved in transactions, while the rest, 70%, is burned. The NEAR token serves several purposes:

* Covers fees for transaction processing and data storage.
* Facilitates validator node operation on the network through NEAR token staking.
* Used in governance voting to decide resource allocation across the network.

NEAR employs a specialized version of proof-of-stake called Doomslug, which relies on two rounds of consensus. A block is finalized following the first round of communication, enabling near-instant finality as validators take turns generating blocks rather than competing based on their stake alone.

The NEAR Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit, is dedicated to managing protocol upkeep, funding the ecosystem, and steering the protocol's governance. Additionally, NEAR has created a bridge to Ethereum, allowing the transfer of ERC-20 tokens from the Ethereum blockchain to NEAR.

You can purchase NEAR on platforms like Binance, Huobi Global, Mandala Exchange, and OKX.

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