NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Wallet

How NEAR protocol works

NEAR Protocol is a Layer-1 blockchain that is based on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, which means that validators must stake a set amount of the native currency to secure the network and verify transactions in a block. NEAR uses a sharding solution called ‘Nightshade’. It allows each node in the chain to maintain only the information related to its partition (shard) and that seriously improves the transaction throughput. Nightshade makes the whole blockchain more secure, as participating nodes are only responsible for small pieces of the chain.

Aurora is a Layer-2 scaling solution built on NEAR Protocol. It allows developers to launch their ETH-based dApps on NEAR’s network. Aurora provides low fees and high throughput advantages of NEAR Protocol.

History of NEAR protocol

NEAR Protocol was founded by Erik Trautman, an entrepreneur and founder of Viking Education, Illia Polosukhin, and Alexander Skidanov. NEAR’s mainnet was released in 2020 as a decentralized cloud infrastructure to host decentralized applications (DApps) and it strives to become the best community-driven cloud computing platform.

NEAR and ETH

NEAR Protocol was developed to address Ethereum’s heavy congestion and provide higher scalability. However, Ethereum has already launched Ethereum 2.0 - an upgraded version of the blockchain that uses Proof-of-Stake (PoS) instead of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and has reduced gas fees.

USN Stablecoin

USN is a stablecoin native to NEAR Protocol introduced by Decentral Bank. USN is soft-pegged to the U.S. Dollar that uses a Reserve Fund, containing both NEAR and USDT, as collateral. The stability of USN is ensured by on-chain arbitrage and the above-mentioned fund based on the Currency Board principle. It was launched in April 2022 and was initially double-collateralized.