NEAR Protocol: the eco-friendly and scalable L1 blockchain for dApps
NEAR Protocol is a fast, scalable, user-friendly, and eco-friendly layer 1 blockchain. It’s ideal for developing dApps, smart contracts, and multichain applications in sectors like DeFi, NFTs, payments, and gaming.
In this article, we’ll explain what NEAR Protocol is, how it works, and why it’s gaining traction in the blockchain world.
What is NEAR Protocol?
NEAR Protocol was founded by Illia Polosukhin, a former Google engineer involved in the early language models that inspired tools like ChatGPT, alongside Alexander Skidanov.
It’s a blockchain network designed to be fast, secure, and easy to use, with the goal of enabling the creation of decentralized applications accessible to millions of users.
It runs on a unique consensus mechanism called Thresholded Proof-of-Stake (TPoS), the Aurora virtual machine, and an innovative dynamic sharding technology called Nightshade, which allows for high transaction throughput without congesting the network.
Additionally, NEAR has been awarded the climate neutrality label by South Pole, thanks to its commitment to measuring, reducing, and offsetting its carbon footprint through green projects—a key advantage in an increasingly sustainability-conscious ecosystem.
Its robust ecosystem includes an active global community, regular hackathons, and institutional backing, with over $500 million raised to support its development.
NEAR Protocol development environments
If you’re a developer, you’ll be glad to know that NEAR Protocol offers several development environments to build smoothly and securely:
- Mainnet: the main network where production applications run.
- Testnet: the testing network for developing applications without real cost or risk before launching on mainnet.
- Localnet: allows you to run a NEAR Protocol network in a local testing environment, useful for custom development and testing.
How NEAR Protocol innovates
It improves traditional blockchain infrastructure through the following key components:
- Sharding: divides the network into shards to process transactions and smart contracts in parallel.
- Nightshade: a unique sharding mechanism that increases capacity and speed.
- Rainbow Bridge: enables interoperability with Ethereum, allowing assets and data to move between blockchains.
- Human-readable names: simplifies usage with easy-to-remember identifiers.
- Fee delegation: developers can cover transaction fees to enhance user experience.
What problem does NEAR Protocol solve?
- Scalability without compromising security or decentralization: using sharding (Nightshade), it can process thousands of transactions per second with very low fees and latencies of around 1.3 seconds.
Gas is charged in fixed units per action with a dynamic price that adjusts based on demand. For example, a simple transfer costs about 0.000045Ⓝ, just a fraction of a cent depending on NEAR’s price. Moreover, 30% of the fees go to developers, incentivizing efficient applications.
Lower barrier to entry: enables users without technical knowledge to create accounts with readable names (like user.near) and register via email or Telegram, without needing to install a wallet upfront.
Better user experience: its access key system allows for different permission levels within a single account, improving both security and usability.
Developer-friendly: compatible with multiple languages like Rust, JavaScript, Go, and Python. It offers tools like near-cli and create-near-app to speed up smart contract development.
Interoperability with Ethereum: through Aurora, NEAR Protocol allows Ethereum-written contracts to run directly on its network.
The NEAR token and its staking system
NEAR, its native token, is used to pay transaction fees, interact with smart contracts, participate in protocol governance, and stake.
- Initial NEAR supply: 1 billion tokens.
- Programmed annual inflation: 5%.
Part of the transaction fees is burned (destroyed), reducing the token’s net inflation.
NEAR Protocol represents a natural evolution of first-generation blockchains. Its combination of scalability, usability, efficiency, and sustainability positions it as one of the most complete platforms for building the new decentralized internet.
Whether you’re a developer or a staker, NEAR Protocol is a network you definitely should get to know.
