Overview
Near Protocol is a sharded Layer 1 blockchain focused on usability and developer experience, founded by Illia Polosukhin (a Google AI researcher who co-authored the original "Attention Is All You Need" transformer paper) and Alex Skidanov. Launched in 2020 with mainnet Nightshade sharding, NEAR processes over 1,000 TPS across shards with sub-second finality. NEAR's Chain Abstraction vision — allowing users to interact with any blockchain without knowing they're using NEAR — is the core strategic focus for 2024–2025.
Who Created NEAR?
Near Protocol was created by Illia Polosukhin & Alex Skidanov and launched in 2020. It is a Layer 1 cryptocurrency using Proof of Stake (Nightshade) consensus.
Key Use Cases
NEAR's Chain Abstraction enables 'one account, every blockchain' — a user's NEAR account can control assets and trigger transactions on Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and other chains without separate wallets. This radical UX simplification aims to onboard mainstream users who don't want to manage multiple seed phrases and networks. NEAR is also home to Aurora (an EVM L2 on NEAR) and the Ref Finance DEX ecosystem.
Key Features
- +Chain Abstraction — one NEAR account controls assets across Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and more
- +Human-readable account names (alice.near) — eliminates the 0x address UX barrier
- +Nightshade sharding provides horizontal scaling without sacrificing decentralization
- +Co-founder Illia Polosukhin co-authored the original transformer (attention mechanism) paper
- +Aurora (EVM on NEAR) allows Ethereum DApps to deploy on NEAR infrastructure
- +30% of transaction fees burned, 70% to smart contract developers — novel fee sharing model
Official Resources
Official website: https://near.org