NEAR Protocol is a layer-one blockchain that was designed as a community-run cloud computing platform and that eliminates some of the limitations that have been bogging competing blockchains, such as low transaction speeds, low throughput and poor interoperability. This provides the ideal environment for DApps and creates a developer and user-friendly platform.

NEAR Protocol was founded by Erik Trautman, an entrepreneur with experience on Wall Street and founder of Viking Education in 2017.

The biggest feature of NEAR Protocol is Nightshade technology, which can improve transaction throughput massively. It is a variation of sharding, in which individual sets of validators process transactions in parallel across multiple sharded chains, improving the overall capacity of the blockchain. In contrast to “regular” sharding, shards in Nightshade produce a fraction of the next block, called “chunks.” In doing so, NEAR Protocol is able to achieve up to 100,000 transactions per second and achieve near-instant transaction finality thanks to a one-second block cadence while simultaneously keeping transaction fees at virtually zero.

In August 2023, NEAR Protocol released its Q2 roadmap update, focus will shift to phase 2 of sharding, which includes both resharding the current mainnet state and turning off the requirement that block producers have to track all shards.

By 2024, NEAR Protocol continues to explore advanced Layer 2 solutions and strengthen partnerships with other blockchain projects, aiming to improve transaction processing efficiency and expand its ecosystem.

Above are only for introduction, not intended as investment advice.