What is NEAR Protocol?
Near Protocol is an open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. The network exploits Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism termed Nightshade, meant to provide scalability and constant fees. Developers Alex Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin established the protocol in 2017 in San Francisco, California. Near protocol has its native utility token NEAR. On April 22, 2020, the company issued 1 B NEAR tokens at genesis. Every year the network releases 5% of extra supply as term bonuses. 90% of the created tokens go to validators (4.5% overall) and 10% to the treasury (0.5% overall). 30% of activity fees are distributed as redemption to contracts that concerning a transaction, while the left 70% are burned. $NEAR is used for paying fees for transactions implementation, data storage, and staking. It is a unit of value on the platform that enables token holders to use applications on NEAR, take part in network governance, and earn token rewards by staking to the network. The token trades on many exchanges. Cryptocurrency-stablecoin pairs are also available.