‘NEAR’ is the chain abstraction stack, empowering builders to create apps that scale to billions of users and across all blockchains.
Near’s Blockchain Operating System (B.O.S) enables you to host and serve your applications entirely on the blockchain, eliminating reliance on traditional web hosting services.
NEAR is a layer-one, sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain built with usability in mind.
Layer-1 means NEAR is the foundation that supports everything else built on it. It keeps all the transaction records safe and unchangeable which keeps the network secure and trustworthy.
Sharded means the network is broken into pieces that work in parallel. This helps NEAR process transactions quickly and efficiently.
Proof-of-stake uses less electricity compared with other blockchains which use proof-of-work. Users show they own NEAR tokens to help run the network. This makes it cheaper and lets more people use it.
Why Choose NEAR?
NEAR is a technical marvel, offering built-in features such as named accounts and account abstraction. For developers, NEAR offers everything needed for their applications, from smart contracts to indexers. All while being interoperable with other chains.
⭐ Simple to Use
Use named accounts like alice.near
Simple sign-up: make an account using email or telegram
Transactions are fast (~1.3s transactions) and cheap (< 1¢ in fees)
You don’t need to buy crypto thanks to built-in account abstraction
Access Keys make it safe and easy to use.
Control accounts on other chains thanks to chain signatures
🛡️ Battle-Tested
4 years of 100% uptime with more than 800M transactions processed
NEAR has sustained peaks of >13M transactions in a day
In March 2024, the top three monthly dApps, based on unique active wallets, were built on NEAR:
Kai-ching
Sweat
Hot Wallet
🧑💻 Great Developer Experience
Build smart contracts with Javascript or Rust
Simple onboarding, thanks to its complete documentation and examples
Get answers and learn at NEAR DevRel office hours, where anybody can participate
Earn from your contract’s gas fees
EVM compatible with Project Aurora (Deploy your Solidity contracts with ease)
What is Chain Abstraction?
The idea behind chain abstraction is quite simple: blockchain technology should be abstracted away from the user experience. In other words, people should not realize when they are using a blockchain, nor which blockchain they are using.
To help on this task, NEAR Protocol provides services that allow to create and recover accounts using email addresses, use the account without acquiring funds, and control accounts in other chains. All in the most seamless way possible.
Fast-Auth: Email onboarding
One of the first barriers that new users face when entering the world of Web3 is the need to create a crypto wallet. This generally implies the need to choose a wallet, create and store a recovery phrase, and obtain deposit funds to start using the account.
With FastAuth, users only need to provide an email address to create a NEAR account. Using the same email address the user will be able to use their account across applications and devices.
INFO
FastAuth accounts are kept safe through multi-party computation (MPC) on a decentralized network. This means that the user’s private key is never stored in a single location, and thus it is never exposed to any single party.
Relayers: Cover gas fees
Allowing users to start using a dApp without having to acquire funds is a powerful tool to increase user adoption. NEAR Protocol provides a service that allows developers to subsidize gas fees for their users.
This concept, known as “Account Abstraction” in other chains, is a built-in feature in NEAR. User can wrap transactions in messages known as meta-transaction, that any other account can relay to the network.
TIP
In NEAR the relayers simply attach NEAR to cover gas fees, and pass the transaction to the network. There, the transaction is executed as if the user had sent it.
Multi-chain signatures: One account, multiple chains
Currently, users and applications are siloed in different chains. This means that a user needs to create a new account for each chain they want to use. This is not only cumbersome for the user, but also for the developer who needs to maintain different codebases for each chain.
NEAR Protocol provides a multi-chain signature service that allows users to use their NEAR Account to sign transactions in other chains. This means that a user can use the same account to interact with Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and NEAR.
INFO
Multi-chain signatures work by combining smart contracts that produce signatures, with indexers that listen for these signatures, and relayers that submit the transactions to other networks. This allows users to hold assets and use applications in any network, only needing to have a single NEAR account.
Chain Abstraction: The Holistic View
The combination of these services allows to create a seamless user experience, in which users can use blockchain-based applications without realizing they are using a blockchain.
Users will simply login with an email, and a zero-fund account will be created for them. No seed phrases to remember, no private keys to safe keep, and no need to acquire funds.
Once having their account, apps can ask the user to create meta-transactions and send them to any relayer. The relayer will pass the transaction to the network, attaching NEAR to pay for the execution fees. The transaction will then be executed as if the user had sent it, since the relayer is only there to attach NEAR to the submission.
If the user wants to interact with other blockchains, they can use their account to interact with a multi-chain signature relayer, which will relay the transaction to the right network, covering GAS fees.
As an example, this would allow users to collect NFTs across different chains, without ever needing to explicitly create an account or acquire crypto. All with just a single email login.
What is Data Infrastructure?
NEAR offers ready-to-use solutions to access and monitor on-chain data easily. This is very useful to automate actions based on specific events, cache data to reduce latency, gather usage data of the blockchain, and even study user preferences.
NEAR offers three main solutions to access and monitor on-chain data: BigQuery Public Dataset, QueryAPI, and NEAR Lake. Each of these solutions is designed to fit different needs and use cases, and can be used in combination to create a complete data infrastructure for your application.
BigQuery: Public Dataset
A large dataset with on-chain data publicly available on Google Cloud Platform. Obtain near real-time blockchain data using simple SQL queries. All the data, zero setup.
Instant insights: Historic on-chain data queried at scale. No need to run your own infrastructure.
Cost-effective: Eliminate the need to store and process bulk NEAR Protocol data. Query as little or as much data as you like.
As easy as SQL: No prior experience with blockchain technology is required. Just bring a general knowledge of SQL to unlock insights.
QueryAPI: Indexers Made Simple
A fully managed solution to build indexer functions, extract on-chain data, and easily query it using GraphQL endpoints and subscriptions.
Your data, your way: Decide how you want to store data. Design the tables and databases that better suit your needs.
Indexers made simple: Create the logic of your indexer and we will execute it for you. Forget about infrastructure—focus on solutions.
Plug & play to your app: Fetch your data from any application through our API. Leverage GraphQL to query exactly what you need.
NEAR Lake
A solution that watches over the NEAR network and stores all the events for your easy access.
Cost-efficient solution: Cost-efficient solution for building self-hosted indexers in Rust, JavaScript, Python, Go and other languages
Streamlined data management: Use NEAR Lake Framework to stream blocks to your server directly from NEAR Lake
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NEAR | Blockchains, Abstracted