The NEAR team is one of the early adopters while Numerous teams are investigating various scaling methods for blockchain networks. Still, due to the NEAR ecosystem, its developer community has been growing significantly over the previous few months. As a result, most of the developers are choosing Near blockchain to build, so let’s find out why it is getting so much popularity.
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. The project is being developed as a community-operated cloud infrastructure for hosting decentralized applications (DApps).
About its design, the NEAR Protocol was designed as a community-run cloud computing platform and features a public Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain with smart contract functionality. NEAR, created by the NEAR Collective, aims to compete with Ethereum and other top smart contract-enabled blockchains like EOS and Polkadot by being built to host decentralized applications (dApps). The native token of NEAR, also known as NEAR, is employed to cover transaction costs and storage costs. Token owners who take part in reaching network consensus by acting as transaction validators may also stake NEAR tokens.
The goal of NEAR Protocol is to provide a platform that is both user and developer-friendly. NEAR has added functions including the possibility for new users to communicate with dApps and the usage of human-readable account names rather than just cryptographic wallet addresses to fulfill this aim.
Near Protocol’s history :The NEAR main net was launched on October 13, 2020, and In September 2020, it switched to community operation and in October 2020, token transactions were approved. Since its launch, it has been growing since then. They developed a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and combined it with a new sharding approach called Nightshade. To expand the network’s processing capacity NEAR combines a horizontal scaling strategy with a novel consensus mechanism that divides the network into parallel shards and dynamically distributes the computing.
How does Near protocol work?
Near Protocol aims to solve the problem of sharing bandwidth between users and telecom providers, Using blockchain technology. Furthermore, the Protocol provides a solution for a better payment transaction experience. The number of decentralized apps (DApps), which range from financial services to games, has exploded in the cryptocurrency industry. But it’s also become clear that scaling is still an issue for the majority of blockchains.
Scalability is a problem that affects many blockchains, particularly more established ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Blockchains’ inability to handle massive quantities of transactions at affordable prices and quick speeds is the fundamental cause of the problems.
This problem is being addressed by initiatives like Near, which is creating a brand-new blockchain with a different architecture. Sharding was the Near team’s implementation of a solution to the issue. The sharding approach allows Near to divide the blockchain into smaller, easier-to-manage chunks. As a result, the network isn’t put under as much strain.
Features of using Near protocol.1. The Near Protocol is an open-source protocol that allows developers to create experiences for their users that more closely resemble familiar web experiences. This means simple onboarding, easy subscriptions, familiar usage styles, and predictable pricing to make it more ‘usability-centric’ as outlined in their official whitepaper.
2. NEAR employs a sharding strategy, When network utilization is high enough, the nodes are dynamically split into numerous shards. With this method, the network may scale up and down according to the demand. To grow, a future-proof protocol should share both state and processing.
3. The governance of NEAR is intended to allow for fast protocol improvement, while also giving the community enough input and supervision to secure the protocol’s independence. Near’s Long-term objectives include combining community-led creativity with efficient decision and execution, as well as receiving sufficient representation of each of the network’s important stakeholder positions.
4 Near Protocol, is an open-source protocol that allows developers to create experiences for their users that more closely resemble familiar web experiences. This means simple onboarding, easy subscriptions, familiar usage styles, and predictable pricing to make it more ‘usability-centric’ as outlined in their official whitepaper.
Let’s know the Advantages of using Near Protocol1. Usability: According to NEAR, apps installed on the platform should be simple for both developers and end-users to utilize. The actual technology ought to “fade to the background” or be entirely hidden from end-users. While more complex programs should still be secure, basic applications should be user-friendly and straightforward to develop.
2. Scalability: As long as there is a sound business case, the platform should be scalable indefinitely.
3. Simplicity: Near has designed each element as straightforward as feasible. To accomplish its main goal, Prioritize brevity, practicality, and understandability over perfection.
4. Sustainable Decentralization: The platform should encourage significant decentralization both in the short and long term to properly secure its value. To maintain sustainability, both technological and community governance mechanisms should allow for practical iteration while avoiding capture by any single party.
Near’s Ecosystem:There is around a list of 692 projects building on NEAR including AURORA, and OCTOPUS protocols.
Aurora ecosystem: Aurora is an Ethereum Virtual Machine created by the team at the NEAR Protocol, This scaling solution is delivering a turn-key solution for developers to operate their apps on an Ethereum-compatible, high-throughput, scalable and future-safe platform, with low transaction costs for their users.
Octopus ecosystem:- This is a sidechain network to bootstrap and run Web3.0 app chains. The Octopus Network launched its mainnet in September and its first app chain on October 8th. When Octopus runs at its full capacity, 30–50 app chains will be launched in the network annually. In total there are 692 developments which include,
The Aurora ecosystem contains 167 developments, and the rest in the infrastructure 149 Developments. In these developments, there are all types of wallets, explorers, Bridges, dApps, exchanges, launchpads, stablecoins and gaming, and other developments.
Near’s community support for developers:
To help the community to participate better in the creation of everything from core infrastructure to design sprints, this repo is designed to surface the key needs discovered by people who are working on the NEAR Project and in its ecosystem. It is the basic precursor to future Grants Program activities and it is intended to help anyone clearly and transparently participate in meaningful projects that support NEAR. NEAR has the funding to survive any prolonged crypto winter, it raised a combined $500 million from venture capitalists in funding rounds this past January and April. Last October, NEAR also announced an $800 million ecosystem fund meant to encourage development on its platform.
Moreover, Funding from the Near Foundation (NF) comprises the programs like Direct Grant, Education Grants, Grant Pools, Direct Investments, Ecosystem Funds, our Backer Network, and DAO Investments moreover near also has an accelerator program and a supportive community for blockchain and web3 startups to remove the hurdles of web3 company building and make the journey into the blockchain revolution easier for promising builders.Below are some helpful links :1. The Events Repo where events that team members might sponsor, speak at, or host are submitted and tracked. Any of the repos in the NEAR Github will have READMEs listing their contribution process.
2. The NEAR Grants Program is where to go if you have a project idea and need support.
3. Near have The main Contributor Program page where you can participate in a wide range of community-focused activities (usually these are more bite-sized than projects in this repo).
4. The Community coordination repo where community activities are coordinated.
Near Protocol’s Bridging system
Near has its ETH <> NEAR Bridge known as Rainbow Bridge which Seamlessly migrates assets to NEAR’s developer-friendly and low-cost platform, without compromising on speed. The NEAR Rainbow Bridge is a trustless, permissionless protocol for connecting blockchains.
Anyone can deploy a new bridge by using an existing bridge or joining the maintenance of an existing bridge without getting approval from anyone else. For instance, Near Users can move digital assets via Rainbow Bridge from the very valuable Ethereum blockchain to the emerging Near blockchain,
The bridge protocol removes the need to trust anyone except the security of the connected chains. This means a user can vote with their ETH balance in a NEAR DAO without sending a transaction on Etherate.
How to build on NEAR?The blockchain ecosystem depends heavily on developers. Blockchain technology has to remove entry barriers for developers so they can make engaging and complex apps that the average person can use to become widely adopted. Due to Assembly Scripts' resemblance to JavaScript. NEAR’s smart contracts are created for just this purpose. Below are some Developer-friendly tools that will help while buidling on Near Blockchain.
1. SDK for JavaScript From any JS context, connect, sign, transact, and deploy to any NEAR network.
2. Contract SDK for Rust. Create contracts that are safe and secure and handle valuable assets.
3. Interface for the command line. for developers and validators, a fully featured command line toolkit.
4. NEAR Navigator is a search engine for the blockchain that enables programmers to see information about accounts, blocks, and transactions
5. Near has its own NEAR Explorer. A blockchain search tool allowing developers to view transaction details, accounts, block details, and more.
6. NEAR has its Wallet with the help of which users can create accounts, manage access keys, and more with their User-Friendly UI. Near’s Bridge is Fast and has secure interoperability.
So I hope in the end you have clear information about Near protocol and the reason behind its growing ecosystem. so keep following us for more informative Blogs like this we will cover deep depth information about more Blockchain platforms also.
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