NEAR Protocol 

NEAR Price

What is the NEAR Protocol coin?

NEAR Protocol is a sharded proof-of-stake Layer-1 blockchain launched at mainnet on October 13, 2020. NEAR Protocol was founded in 2018 by Illia Polosukhin — co-author of the "Attention Is All You Need" transformer paper — and Alexander Skidanov. NEAR Protocol repositioned in 2024–2025 as an AI-native execution layer built around Chain Abstraction and NEAR Intents, where users declare a desired outcome and solvers compete to execute it.

How does NEAR Protocol's Nightshade sharding work?

NEAR Protocol scales through Nightshade, a sharding design that splits the chain into parallel shards while producing a single unified block. Each shard processes its own portion of transactions, and validators secure assigned shards rather than the entire network. Nightshade lets NEAR Protocol raise throughput by adding shards instead of increasing per-node load. Chunk-level state is merged into one block per slot, keeping NEAR Protocol a single logical chain.

What is the NEAR token used for in NEAR tokenomics?

The NEAR token pays gas and transaction fees, secures the network through validator staking, funds storage staking for on-chain data, and grants governance rights. NEAR Protocol burns a portion of transaction fees, creating a partial deflationary offset against emissions. Storage staking requires NEAR Protocol accounts to lock NEAR proportional to the data they store on-chain.

How do you stake NEAR and what yield does it pay?

NEAR token holders stake by delegating to validators who secure NEAR Protocol shards. Staking rewards are funded by protocol emissions, not fixed deposits. NEAR Protocol completed its issuance "halving" upgrade on October 30, 2025, cutting annual issuance from roughly 5% to 2.5%. That change lowered NEAR staking yield from approximately 9% to 4.5% at around 50% of supply staked.

What is NEAR Protocol's total supply and circulating supply?

NEAR Protocol has a total supply of 1,298,549,176 NEAR and no maximum cap — NEAR is uncapped and inflationary. Genesis supply was 1,000,000,000 NEAR at TGE on October 13, 2020. Supply grows through staking-reward emissions and shrinks through fee burns, leaving net issuance positive. The absence of a hard cap means NEAR dilution is structural, not a one-time event.

What does NEAR Protocol's token unlock schedule for 2026 mean for sell pressure?

NEAR Protocol's early investor and contributor cliffs — set on 12-to-36-month schedules from 2019–2020 — have fully unlocked, so discrete investor cliffs no longer drive NEAR sell pressure. NEAR Protocol allocated 14.5% of genesis to Core Contributors and 10% to the Foundation Endowment. The dominant supply pressure on NEAR is now continuous staking emission rather than a single large 2026 unlock event, per DropsTab vesting data showing no major discrete 2026 cliff flagged.

Who funded NEAR Protocol and what does the backing signal?

NEAR Protocol raised over $533M across 12 rounds between 2017 and 2022, per DropsTab fundraising data. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the $18.93M Venture Round 1 in November 2019. Tiger Global led the $350M round in April 2022, and Three Arrows Capital led the $150M round in January 2022. Two prominent early backers — Three Arrows Capital and Alameda/FTX — later collapsed, concentrating reputational risk among insolvent early investors.

Where can you trade, buy, and swap NEAR and how is liquidity structured?

NEAR trades across 15 spot venues, all centralized exchanges (CEX), including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Bybit, per DropsTab exchange data. NEAR Protocol liquidity concentrates on tier-1 CEX venues, with quote pairs dominated by USDT and USD. No decentralized exchange (DEX) venue appears in NEAR Protocol's tracked spot markets, so on-chain DEX liquidity is not a primary route for NEAR.

Is NEAR a coin or a token?

NEAR is a coin — it is the native asset of the NEAR Protocol Layer-1 blockchain, not a token issued on another chain. An Ethereum contract for NEAR exists only as a bridged wrapper, not the native asset. Native NEAR Protocol balances are tracked on nearblocks.io and explorer.near.org. NEAR also appeared among "network tokens" in the Crypto.com lawsuit against the SEC filed in October 2024.