NEAR blockchain
Overview
NEAR Protocol is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain designed for developer usability and scalability. It uses a sharding mechanism called Nightshade to achieve high throughput and low transaction costs. NEAR is primarily used for decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi, and NFT projects.
Within the DeFi Intel graph, NEAR connects to 4 tracked entities, most strongly to Wormhole, Circle, Wormhole Foundation (2023 spinout).
Relations
Top connections in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph (confidence-weighted, 4 of 4 total).
| Relation | Connected entity | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
integrates | Wormhole | 90% |
integrates | Circle | 85% |
supported_by | Wormhole Foundation (2023 spinout) | 85% |
supported_by | Wormhole Connect (v1) | 80% |
More on NEAR
Frequently asked questions
Who founded NEAR Protocol?
NEAR was founded in 2018 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov; Polosukhin previously worked at Google Research and co-authored the transformer paper.
How does NEAR scale?
NEAR uses a sharded proof-of-stake architecture designed to raise throughput compared with traditional single-chain blockchains.
When did NEAR mainnet launch?
NEAR's mainnet launched in April 2020, initially operating in a restricted proof-of-authority mode before full decentralization.
Sources
Facts on this page were verified against the following sources.