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What is NEAR's Chain Signatures?

What is NEAR's Chain Signatures?

NEAR's Chain Signatures is a foundational protocol feature designed to enable NEAR accounts—including smart contracts—to sign transactions on other blockchains directly, without the need for traditional cross-chain bridges or separate contract deployments123. It leverages a decentralized multi-party computation (MPC) network to generate signatures, thus allowing secure, decentralized, and seamless interaction across a wide range of blockchains from a single NEAR account.

Key Features

  • Multichain Transactions: NEAR accounts and smart contracts can generate valid transactions for ECDSA-based blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, with support for additional blockchains (including EDDSA-based ones like Solana and TON) planned by the end of 20241.
  • No Bridges Needed: Chain Signatures eliminate the necessity for risky and complex bridging mechanisms, reducing vectors for user loss and improving UX.
  • Unified Developer Experience: Developers can build multichain dApps with one NEAR smart contract, instead of deploying and maintaining different contracts on multiple chains.
  • User Experience Improvements: Users no longer need to manually bridge assets or switch networks—the unified abstraction provides a smoother, safer experience4.
  • Multichain Gas Relayer: Users can pay for transaction fees on supported external chains using NEAR or stablecoins on NEAR, further simplifying usability15.

How It Works

  • The protocol relies on a decentralized MPC network that acts as a “signer,” able to control associated accounts on various supported blockchains.
  • When a user (or smart contract) on NEAR wishes to sign a transaction on another blockchain, the MPC network generates the appropriate cryptographic signature using a shared key that never exists in one place, maintaining security.

Ecosystem & Adoption

  • Live applications include the Sweat Wallet (bridging assets for millions of users), Allstake (omnichain restaking), HERE Wallet, and Bitte Wallet (multichain wallets with passkey and social features)67.
  • Chain Signatures is a critical step in NEAR's broader chain abstraction vision, aiming for seamless, secure, and universal blockchain interoperability through a single user account interface5.

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