What is the Near Protocol blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Near Protocol was created by programmers Alexander Skidanov and Ilya Polosukhin. Work on the project began at the end of 2018. Subsequently, developers from leading IT companies joined the NEAR team, including Facebook, Google and Niantic. Two team members twice won the World Programming Championship.

During the ICO NEAR, which took place in August 2020 on the Coinlist platform, 120 million NEAR coins (12% of the initial emission of 1 billion tokens) at a price of $ 0.3 were sold.

The remaining tokens from the original reserve will be distributed as follows:

• 17% – on grants and community programs;
• 14% – the NEAR team;
• 17.6% of tokens were sold during seven closed rounds of attracting funding for $ 35 million;
• 11.7% – to finance the implementation of initiatives for the development of the ecosystem;
• 10% for Near Foundation, which delegates its share of the Near network.

Tokens of all the above categories blocked for a period of three months to five years.

The launch of the main network Near Protocol took place on October 13, 2020.

The history of the development of the NEAR ecosystem

In the spring of 2021, the developers launched one of the most important components of the NER ecosystem-the Rainbow Bridge cross-bridge, which provides intrapeisability with Ethereum and allows you to translate the ERC-20 Standard into Near Protocol and vice versa.

Soon after, a second level solution called Aurora was presented, which allows you to perform Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts on the Near Protocol network.

Since 2021, the NearCon conference dedicated to the ecosystem has been held in Portugal every fall. In October 2021, it announced the creation of a fund in the amount of $ 800 million financing of developers and projects on the Near Protocol blockchain https://gagarin.news/news/pumas-new-metaverse-opens-new-opportunities/.

In the spring of 2022, the NEAR team managed to attract investments in the amount of $ 350 million from several venture funds, including Tiger Global, FTX Ventures, Dragonfly Capital and others. Shortly afterwards, Consensys announced the partnership of NEAR and supplier of infrastructure solutions Infura.

In the summer of 2022, Bitgo became the NEAR partner-one of the largest casteral services for institutional investors.

In mid-September 2022, Near Foundation announced the start of the work of the fund of $ 100 million for the development of the Web3 direction.

How does the NEAR protocol work

The NEAR protocol operates on the consensus algorithm Proof-OF-Stake and uses to optimize performance of the cartriding technology-blockchain division into small segments (hearts), which can perform operations in parallel. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, such as Polkadot, all the hearts in NEA are considered as parts of one blockchain.

The integrity of the blockchain provides the NightShade mechanism, thanks to which only a picture of the current state of each heart is added to the block in Near Protocol. Each Shard supports its own set of NOD vestigators, which transmit the condition of their hearts whenever the block is produced. Nightshade renewal was activated in Near Protocol in November 2021.

This mechanism can be represented as a crossing of many roads. The intersection is a NEAR blockchain, each road is a spell. Chardies are able to work in parallel, since transactions performed on them do not intersect. This model significantly increases the performance of the system.

Another important component of NEAR is a mechanism called Doomslug, which allows the nodam-nodes to create blocks in turn, which is every era lasting 12 hours. The new block is created approximately every second.

The source of remuneration for the creation of blocks is the emission of new Near coins. 90% awards for creating a block are received by validators and pools of delegated stakeing. 10% receives the treasury NEAR.

NEAR cryptocurrency and USN stablecoin

NEAR – NEAR PROTOCOL blockchain cryptocurrency. It is used for all transactions on the network, as well as for stakeing with note-nodes and delegating participants. Although the issue of new coins serves as a source of remuneration to validators and delegates, some are burned to pay for the network commission.

NEAR cryptocurrency is necessary to pay for network commissions. At the same time, 30% of the fees are automatically sent to the developers of the used smart contract, the remaining 70%-validators. In addition, NEAR has an option of “free” transfers: when it is activated, the transaction is paid by the contract operator.

The maximum emission of NEAR cryptocurrency is 1 billion coins. According to CoinmarketCap at the beginning of September 2022, more than 781 million NEARs are already in circulation. By the indicator of the general capitalization, NEAR is included in the top 30 cryptocurrencies.

At the end of April 2022, NEAR was released on the NER network USN. Initially, its price was provided by arbitration operations and a reserve fund from NEAR and USDT. The launch of USN coincided with an unfavorable market conjuncture, in particular with the collapse of the Terra (Luna) project.

In the summer of 2022, Decentral Bank, which is responsible for managing the project, introduced the second version of the USN. According to the new system, the price of stablecoin is fully provided with USDT reserves. You can buy or sell any USN for USDT on the Decentral Bank website. The commission for swap is 0.01%.

NEAR cryptocurrency staging

To manage the node of the veilist in the NEAR, it is necessary to send the NEAR cryptocurrency to the Steaking smart contract. In addition, you will need equipment that meets the requirements of the protocol.

The specific size of the steak depends on the number of coins in other validators in a particular cartoon. This indicator also determines the size of the share of remuneration for blocks that pay each era (12 hours).

Each Shard in the NEAR contains 100 seats (Seats). To perform the function of the validator, you must have at least one “place”. The cost of each “place” is determined by the total number of NEAR tokens blocked in the steel contract of the hearth. Validators that violate the rules risk losing part of their steak.

Such a model is designed to motivate validating nodes to ensure the work of new or smaller hearts, which have the entrance threshold below. If the user does not have enough funds for buying a NEAR cryptocurrency in an amount sufficient to purchase a “place”, he may try to persuade delegate persons to transfer funds to him through staying pools. For delegation of tokens, users receive part of the award for new blocks from validators on which they rely.

According to the Staking REWARDS website, in September 2022, the profitability of NEAR stakeing is 5-6% per annum.

Who controls Near Protocol

Key developer and project development Institute – Non -profit organization Near Foundation registered in Switzerland. Its leaders include well -known representatives of the industry, including the co -founder of NEAR Ilya Polosukhin.

Near Foundation also disposes of funds from the Treasury of the project. The Near Protocol community can make initiatives to the execution of which can be directed from the treasury. In addition, community members are combined into various groups devoted to certain areas of development. The proposals are published and discussed at the official NER forum.

Near Protocol blockchain projects

According to the AWESOMENEAR website, the NEAR ecosystem has about 800 crypto projects in various directions.

Aurora

The second -level protocol using the NEAR blockchain and the Ethereum Virtual Machine virtual machine. Aurora is designed to simplify the migration of decentralized applications on Ethereum in the Near ecosystem. Native project token – Aurora. Protocol management is carried out by Tao called Auroradao.

The protocol has already integrated a number of large decentralized applications, such as 1inch and Curve. The volume of blocked liquidity (TVL) in Aurora, according to Defi Llama for September 2022-about $ 175 million, of which a significant part is blocked in Bastion (BSTN) and Trislaris (TRI). In total, about 200 applications operate on the basis of Aurora. In May 2022, Aurora Plus stake platform began work.

Ref Finance

The largest decentralized exchange on the NEAR blockchain. Uses the automatic market make -up mechanism. In Ref Finance, liquidity pools, as well as the so-called Sauce (SAUCE) for stable cryptoactives, operate in Ref Finance. The protocol has a program of increased rewards for the streaming of native refrener Ref. The project of the project as of September 2022 – about $ 234 million.

Burrow

Burrow Cash is a platform for decentralized lending, in which you can release synthetic assets secured by NEAR cryptocurrency blocked in stakeing and other assets (for example Linear and USN). As an award for activity, the protocol accrues Native BRRR tokens. The total volume of deposits, according to the official Burrow website, is approximately $ 75 million, loans – $ 12.9 million.

Other projects

During 2021-2022, NEAR partners became:

• Brave blockchain-browser;
• infrastructure provider for private charm Calimero;
• Multichain network Octopus.
• Pagoda Web3-Startaps Platform and others.
• In September 2022, Tether released a USDT stabilcoin on the NEAR.

One of the main directions for decentralized applications based on Near Protocol is Tao. The creation of decentralized organizations greatly facilitates the ASTRODAO platform, which does not require programming skills.

On the NEAR network, several GameFi projects are launched, such as Armored Kingdom, Niche, Endless and Sweat. In addition, the ecosystem has startups in the field of NFT: Seatlab, Mintbase, Stack Sports and others.