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Draft:NEAR Protocol

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NEAR Protocol is a sharded blockchain that uses proof-of-stake as consensus mechanism. NEAR accounts can be named (e.g. `alice.near`), hold smart contracts, and handle permissions through multiple private key ]. NEAR's native cryptocurrency is NEAR.

History

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NEAR was conceived in 2018 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin as a solution to pay contributors in their AI crowdsourcing platform, with the network releasing in 2020. [1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2021 the network started migrating towards a sharded design designed by Polosukhin and Skidanov, named Nightshade. [5] [6], becoming fully sharded by 2024.[7] [8] [9]

To enable cross-chain applications, NEAR introduced the chain signatures technology in 2024, allowing accounts to sign transactions for foreign chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. [10]

Also in 2024, the Enterprise Node Operators program was launched, onboarding large enterprises to help further decentralize the network [11] [12]

As of 2025, NEAR has consolidated as one of the blockchains with the highest amount of monthly active users. [13]

Architecture

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NEAR Protocol is a decentralized network, in which a fixed number of validators (currently about 300 [14][15]) use a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to validate transactions and store them in a blockchain. Particularly, NEAR relies on a sharded architecture, meaning that validators are grouped into shards, each responsible for a portion of the network's state and transactions, which are then stored into a single block. Approximately every 600 milliseconds a new block is produced, and the network's state is updated. [16][17]

Anyone can create an account on NEAR, and any NEAR account can become a validator by staking a minimum amount of tokens (known as the "seat price"[18]) which variates based on the network's total stake. Approximately every 12 hours (known as an epoch) the network's validators are re-elected and re-assigned one of the existing shards. [19]

Accounts

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In order to act within the NEAR network, users must create an account. Accounts are identified through either human-readable name, an alphanumeric string or a hexadecimal string.

NEAR accounts do not require to hold tokens, being possible to create accounts with zero balance.

Keys

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To secure accounts, NEAR uses public-key cryptography. Particularly, each account is associated with one or more private keys, which are used to sign transactions. NEAR Protocol distinguishes between two types of keys: Full-access keys, which allow complete control over the account, and function-call keys, which grant limited permissions to calling specific functions on a specific smart contracts.

Multiple keys can be added or removed from an account, and accounts can be locked by removing all their keys.

Smart Contracts

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All NEAR accounts can host programmable logic known as smart contracts, which are written in high-level languages such as Rust or Python and compiled into WebAssembly.

In the account, the contract's code remains separated from its storage, for which it can be updated. Accounts cover the costs of storing their contract's data.

Smart contracts can interact with each other through asynchronous function calls. They can yield execution and resume once an external stimuli is received.

NEAR supports a global registry of smart contracts, allowing accounts to share and reuse code across the network. [20]

Transactions

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Transactions allow accounts to perform an action (or series of actions) against a specific target account on the network. An account can perform the following actions: call a function on a contract, create a sub account, deploy a contract on itself, add or remove a key on itself, delete itself.

All transactions incur a fee, which is paid by the account initiating the transaction. Fees are computed in a unit known as gas. Before executing a transaction, the gas fee is translated into NEAR tokens based on the current gas price, determined by the network's congestion. Users can attach an arbitrary amount of gas to a transaction (up to 300 trillion units), and will be refunded for any unused gas after the transaction is executed.

Accounts can also delegate the transaction costs to another account, allowing accounts with no tokens to perform actions on the network.[21]

  1. ^ "Illia Polosukhin: Building Near's Blockchain, Embedding AI".
  2. ^ "NEAR Protocol: Self-Sovereignty in the Age of AI - Case - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School".
  3. ^ "Announcing NEAR Protocol's MainNet Genesis".
  4. ^ "Explained | What is Near Protocol and how does it work? - CNBC TV18". 22 February 2022.
  5. ^ https://pages.near.org/downloads/Nightshade.pdf
  6. ^ "NEAR Launches Nightshade Sharding, Paving the Way for Mass Adoption".
  7. ^ "Phase 2 of NEAR Sharding Launches".
  8. ^ "State of NEAR Q3 2024". 27 November 2024.
  9. ^ "NEAR Protocol Review: Enhancing Blockchain Speed and Usability | Bitget News".
  10. ^ "Near Protocol's Illia Polosukhin on enabling transactions across multiple blockchains". CNBC. 5 April 2024.
  11. ^ "Deutsche Telekom collaborates with NEAR Blockchain: Data sovereignty, security and decentralized AI". 11 November 2024.
  12. ^ "NTT DATA Collaborates with Meta Pool to drive Data Sovereignty, Identity, Security, Governance, and Decentralized AI for NEAR Protocol".
  13. ^ "Active users (Monthly) | Token Terminal".
  14. ^ "NEAR Validator List | Nearblocks".
  15. ^ "NEAR [TPS, Max TPS, Block Time & TTF]".
  16. ^ "What is NEAR Protocol (NEAR)?".
  17. ^ "Blink and It's Final: NEAR Launches 600ms Blocks and 1.2s Finality". 13 May 2025.
  18. ^ "NEAR Validator List | Nearblocks".
  19. ^ https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/21979643328449
  20. ^ "Global Contract: A New Layer of Composability on NEAR". 8 May 2025.
  21. ^ "[NEAR] Chain Abstraction and MPC Protocols". 26 September 2024.
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