Introduction

As cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology became more popular, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other networks started facing scalability challenges due to increased demand. The growing interest in decentralized applications and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) make these challenges particularly noticeable on the Ethereum blockchain. The network often faces increased gas prices and transaction costs due to heavy traffic, which can be discouraging for many users and developers.

While there are several teams exploring different scaling solutions for blockchain networks, the NEAR Protocol (NEAR) team is focused on addressing the limitations through sharding. [Source]

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What is NEAR Protocol?

NEAR Protocol is a layer 1 blockchain that uses sharding technology to achieve scalability. NEAR uses smart contracts and adopts the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to secure its network. Built by the NEAR Collective, the NEAR Protocol was co-founded by Alex Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin in 2020. The project is being developed as a community-operated cloud infrastructure for hosting decentralized applications (DApps).

The NEAR platform contains a wide range of programming tools and languages, as well as smart contracts with cross-chain functionality to help developers build DApps. The platform counts with a simplified onboarding process and features human-readable account names instead of cryptographic wallet addresses. As a PoS blockchain, NEAR was awarded the Climate Neutral Product Label in 2021 for being carbon neutral. [Source]