NEAR Protocol is a fully decentralized, community-driven Layer1 blockchain Protocol and smart contract platform. NEAR Protocol is a developer-friendly, sharding POS blockchain that is a scalable, low-cost platform on which developers can create decentralized applications. NEAR Protocol, as a L1 public chain, focuses on developing high-speed blockchain infrastructure using sharding technology and building a concise and user-friendly experience around its protocols.

NEAR Protocol is dedicated to achieving usability improvements for developers and their end users so that applications can cross the divide and reach a wider audience.

Capacity expansion has always been one of the bottlenecks hindering the development of blockchain. For this reason, NEAR adopts the night shadow protocol dynamic sharding technology and unique consensus mechanism to divide the system into multiple parallel sharding, each of which is responsible for processing part of the calculation work. According to the network usage, the system dynamically allocates the number of fragments to ensure the system running speed and avoid resource waste.

According to NEAR's parallel scaling scheme, 10 shards is 500 to 1000 times. In addition to excellent capacity expansion, NEAR's gas costs will be 1,000 to 10,000 times cheaper than Ethereum, making NEAR much more usable. Theoretically, there is no upper limit to NEAR's ability to expand. The developer experience and end-user accessibility are the two most important aspects of NEAR. With the development environment provided by NEAR, developing a DApp becomes as easy as developing an app in a traditional Internet environment. Developers can use familiar tools such as Rust or AssemblyScript to develop on NEAR's WASM-based Runtime. In addition, the entire process of building/testing/deploying NEAR applications is faster and simpler than most networks. Transaction fees are predictable and developers receive 30% of the gas fees that flow through their smart contracts. NEAR believes that the future of blockchain will require the constant introduction of new users. Many new users may not have NEAR tokens or have never been exposed to blockchain before. NEAR's unique contract-based account model provides great flexibility for guiding such new users in a few simple steps, while NEAR Drop, a transfer tool similar to Wechat hongbao, significantly lowers the barrier to entry for users. Many other networks require many steps, often require fiat currency exchange, and are not very friendly to novices. To further improve the user experience, NEAR uses readable account name addresses instead of long, meaningless hexadecimal strings. Users will not feel the presence of cryptocurrency while using decentralized applications on NEAR. Gas charges, storage costs, mnemonics, and keys are all hidden until users are ready to claim their wallets and hold their tokens, creating a product experience comparable to that of the traditional Internet.

Every node in Bitcoin has to run all the code, and as the blockchain grows, the code gets bigger, which is actually a waste of resources. To address this issue, the NEAR protocol employs a sharding technology that splits the blockchain network so that many nodes can compute simultaneously, increasing efficiency. Ethereum 2.0, while also offering sharding, is very expensive in terms of hardware and requires at least 32 ETH to be pledged to run a node. In the NEAR protocol, NEAR allows small enough nodes to run on the cloud, and low threshold means high degree of decentralization. Unlike Ethereum, whose sharding technology has multiple blockchains, the NEAR protocol is a single blockchain. To put it simply, Ethereum sharding is splitting the ledger, with different nodes managing parts of it so that everyone doesn't have to store everything; Near sharding is in the same ledger block, which is then subdivided, leaving the entire ledger block unchanged. The NEAR protocol is like a traditional blockchain in that each block contains all transactions for all shards, but this data does not exist in a single physical block; Therefore, each node does not have to store all data. Instead, the verifier stores only transactions in its particular shard, and the list of all transactions in that block is physically stored in each verifier's "chunk" of the network. This pattern ensures that NEAR does not double flower in cross-shard transactions without sacrificing high throughput. The "chunk" design and constant reallocation of resources enable NEAR to achieve more efficient cross-shard communication.

NEAR there are three core technology highlights: 1, dynamic fragmentation is one of them, with the increase of dosage, the technology can be provided according to requirements expansion ability, and don't need the developer to release a new block chain, transfer contracts, etc. 2, account model - the secret key is hidden to the user, will thus emerges some new cases: Meta transactions, payments using other cryptocurrencies, and NEAR Drop features. With this feature, you can even transfer assets to users who don't already have a wallet. In public chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, users are known to have to keep their private keys in order to have an account. NEAR Protocol does not require users to remember public and private keys, but only user names. In addition, all fees for Dapp on NEAR will be borne by the developer, giving users a perfect experience. But when users use dApps, they don't even need to understand those esoteric blockchain knowledge, which is the trend of the future, simplicity and popularization. Untrusted Ethereum Bridge -- The bond between Ethereum and NEAR, through which any ERC-20 asset or non-homogeneous token (NFTs) can be transferred between the two chains; In addition, NEAR can use the tool to invoke ethereum contracts. From a technical point of view, NEAR Protocol significantly reduces the barrier to entry for developers. NEAR is compatible with Rust, Solidity and Type and is perfectly compatible with cross-chain Polkadot contracts, making it easier for more Web3 projects to develop and integrate in the future. NEAR's consensus mechanism is a CONSENSUS algorithm based on DAG, which is called "Thresholded Proof of Stake". Thresholded Proof of Stake has certain similarities with POS algorithms, such as the ability to exchange network rewards through Stake tokens, while on the other hand, Thresholded Proof of Stake should be more secure in terms of system destruction. In TPoS, there is no leader node that can be maliciously manipulated, and the witness is rotated out of all the debris in detail. In addition, a participant who wants to be a witness will need to lock up a certain number of tokens, which will be deducted if the participant commits malicious acts.

Nightshade Protocol: Nightshade consensus design. It has a novel cross-shard communication approach that enables Internet-level scale, composability, predictable Gas prices, and economically efficient cross-shard transactions. NEAR's Nightshade consensus assumes that a transaction involves multiple shards and that cross-shard transactions are not priced differently. Conversely, if some shards exceed others in usage and size, it will re-shard or rebalance the network.

The main functions of NEAR token are as follows: NEAR is the original token of NEAR protocol. The first function is to ensure network security. Since running nodes need to pledge NEAR tokens, they can be punished once they commit evil acts. This mechanism can effectively guarantee network security. Medium of exchange. Users need to use NEAR as the medium of exchange when trading NEAR. Used to vote on network governance to determine how network resources are allocated and the future technical direction of the protocol. The initial supply of NEAR tokens is 1 billion. An additional 5% of the supply is issued annually as a block award, of which 90% is allocated to verifiers (4.5% in total) and 10% to the Agreement Reserve pool (0.5% in total). Thirty percent of the transaction fee is paid as a rebate on contracts that interact with the transaction, and the remaining 70 percent is destroyed.

According to its design architecture, D1 Ventures divides the underlying public chain, Layer1, into two categories: "DApp chain" and "cross-chain platform". There is no absolute superiority between the two categories, which are suitable for different scenarios. The "DApp chain" is represented by ETH2.0 and NEAR. The vision is for all DApps to be built on a common Layer1, sharing the security and performance of the underlying chain, without the DApp having its own separate chain, thus leaving chain security and governance out of the question. Unlike Ethereum, NEAR is a single blockchain on which shards are rooted. Like traditional blockchains, each block contains all transactions for all shards, but this data does not exist in a single physical block; Therefore, each node does not have to store all data. Instead, the verifier stores only transactions in its particular shard, and the list of all transactions in that block is physically stored in each verifier's "chunk" of the network. This pattern ensures that NEAR does not double flower in cross-shard transactions without sacrificing high throughput. The "chunk" design and constant reallocation of resources enable NEAR to achieve more efficient cross-shard communication. NEAR is a scalable blockchain that uses sharding technology. The best comparison is Ethereum 2.0, but that doesn't mean they're competitors. On the contrary, NEAR is compatible and interoperable with current Ethereum 1.0. NEAR hopes to address many of the pain points developers face, helping them overcome cost and expansion barriers without having to choose between NEAR and Ethereum.

NEAR adopts the original sharding technology, each sharding can process 1000+ TPS at most, 10 sharding is 10000+ TPS, theoretically can achieve unlimited capacity. On March 3, 2021, "CV VC Top 50 Report", an authoritative Report on global blockchain technology, was released, and NEAR was listed as a unicorn with a valuation of $1.1 billion. Along with NEAR, ethereum, Cardano, Boca, Aave, Cosmos, Solana, Tezos, Dfinity, Nexo and Diem are ten other projects. (Note: The report is jointly compiled by CV VC(Crypto Valley Venture Capital), a Swiss firm focused on blockchain investment, and Pricewaterhousecoopers, an internationally renowned consulting institution. It mainly evaluates blockchain projects from the perspectives of financing, valuation and employees.) D1 Ventures just released an in-depth report on NEAR. According to D1 Ventures, NEAR is one of the most competitive players in the "DApp chain" direction, with a clear late-mover advantage, a sharding solution better than ETH2.0, and world-class engineering capabilities. But the disadvantage is that there has been a lack of community support. (NOTE: D1 Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on the native blockchain sector, supports the future growth of the crypto economy by providing global market insight, building cross-market liquidity, providing strategic advice and Meme communication strategies. Key investments include NEAR, Polkadot, Ethereum, Handshake and ecological native scene applications.)

At present, NEAR's ecological development has entered a fast lane. Many well-known projects have announced to enter NEAR platform or reached cooperation intention with NEAR, including NFT project Mintbase, Prediction market Flux, decentralized exchange 1Inch, etc. The cross-chain tool Rainbow Bridge is currently deployed on the NEAR main network and will be released soon. Users and developers will be able to seamlessly transfer assets, DApps, and even user experiences between NEAR and Ethereum. In the future, we will also support EVM and ethereum peripheral tools to enable existing Ethereum developers to migrate seamlessly without having to rewrite code. At the same time, the native application of NEAR ecology can also be built on the basis of ethereum's increasingly mature financial infrastructure to break the ecological barrier and achieve overtaking on curves.

Near sharding is subdivided in the same ledger block, and the whole ledger block remains unchanged. The design is complicated, the implementation is difficult, and the actual operation is prone to error. Near's team of highly talented software engineers have extensive professional experience and achievements in top companies. NEAR has great innovation in technology, and the token mechanism design is also impressive. With strong team strength and well-known venture capital background, its development prospect is worth looking forward to. Due to the unique design, the TPS of NEAR network is about 1000, but the number of nodes is too small at present, and the ecological map needs to be further expanded. The sharding technology used by Near is not really full sharding in the strict sense, but rather a kind of ledger shredding into chunks, which is logically different from the sharding technology of Ethereum. It is also uncertain whether business and marketing matters will fall short. A team full of developers can be good for the technology, but it can also be bad for the project as other areas, such as business development, marketing, and community development, are in danger of being neglected.

Advances in sharding technology suggest that this may be the best option for expanding blockchain now and in the next 10-20 years. Both Ethereum 2.0 and NEAR use sharding, and the two teams learn from each other. Ethereum has a strong developer community and a wide distribution of tokens, which will facilitate the implementation of 2.0. How ethereum transitions from 1.x to 2.0 will be the focus of attention for at least the next two or three years. NEAR sharding design differs from ETH2.0 in that it prioritizes network resource balancing across shards and does not discriminate between shards. NEAR's Nightshade consensus works with a "large block" design that allows it to act as a single blockchain to achieve internet-level scale. Bitcoin showed the initial promise of blockchain, but after a decade of research and figuring out how to fix it to the Internet level, NEAR comes to market with a fully functional proof-of-stake sharded blockchain that doesn't have the burden other chains once had, helping to attract new non-crypto developers. ETH2.0 still has a few years to land, during the NEAR window, and sharding will develop its own ecology if it lands. One project to watch is Near Protocol, an infrastructure project where competitors' benchmark valuations are quite high and investment returns may be attractive.