Draft:Near Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a layer one open source blockchain protocol that uses sharding technology to provide smart contract functionality, scalability and security as the network grows. Its native cryptocurrency is NEAR.

NEAR Protocol was launched in October 2020 by NEAR Foundation founded by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. .

History
Prior to NEAR protocol, one of the co-founders was employed at Google Research in 2017 working on the landmark research paper Attention Is All You need. Eventually, the co-founder departed from Google Research to start Near.ai in 2017 which started out as an artificial intelligence endeavor and not as a blockchain technology. However, due to the founders being unable to pay programmers for their contributions towards enhancing Near.ai, the founders decided to turn to blockchain technology to resolve the payment problem by starting a blockchain protocol called NEAR Protocol in 2017.

NEAR Protocol was launched in October 2020.

According to NEAR Protocol's white paper, NEAR Protocol runs on sharding technology. This vastly lowers energy use due to its sharding technology.

In February 2022, NEAR Protocol assisted with raising millions of dollars through its blockchain technology to support Ukrainians that no longer had access to their bank accounts after Russia attacked the country. In November 2022, after the FTX bankruptcy, NEAR Protocol's native currency (NEAR) suffered a significant market decline along with one of its initial venture capital firm contributors portfolio, Tiger Global

In 2024 NEAR Protocol would begin working on interoperability, chain abstraction, and ai agents with respect to the blockchain while still retaining its initial goal of open source, scalability and security.