About

NEAR Protocol is a high performance platform built to power decentralized applications and intelligent agents. It provides the infrastructure for AI to transact, operate, and interact across Web2 and Web3. NEAR combines three core elements: User-Owned AI, which ensures agents act in users’ best interests; Intents and Chain Abstraction, which eliminate blockchain complexity for seamless, goal-driven transactions across chains; and a sharded blockchain architecture that delivers the scalability, speed, and low-cost execution needed for real-world AI and Web3 use. This integrated stack makes NEAR the foundation for building secure, user-owned, AI-native applications at internet scale.

History

NEAR was originally founded as “NEAR.ai” in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidano. The project was dedicated to exploring program synthesis proclaiming (or computer-automated software development). After trying to build the project on Ethereum, the founders determined that the blockchain’s technology was insufficient for the full vision of the NEAR.ai project.

In August 2018, the project team began developing the NEAR network to provide developers with easier tools to build scalable decentralized applications. After nearly two years, NEAR officially launched in April 2020 and performed the last phase of its mainnet launch (enabling token transfers) in October 2020. Functionalities such as decentralized applications, executing smart contracts, and transacting on the network are all live as a result of achieving mainnet.

In September 2021, the protocol launched “Simple Nightshade,” kickstarting the Phase 0 sharding process for the network. In September 2022, the protocol announced that it was moving forward with Phase One of the sharding process. On Jan. 30, 2024, the NEAR Foundation announced the beginning of testing for Phase Two of Sharding via the introduction of stateless validation. Sharding enables NEAR validators to retrieve state change information directly from the network, rather than maintaining it locally. The launch of Stake Wars IV: Attack of the Transactions on Feb. 1, 2024, was designed to incentivize community participation in testing the new sharding architecture, with Phase Two expected to be implemented on mainnet in May 2024.

In March 2023, NEAR announced the Blockchain Operating System (BOS), which is designed as a common layer for browsing and developing open web experiences compatible with any blockchain.

Nearcore v1.36.0 was released on Oct. 31, 2023. This release introduced a protocol change (support for fixed shards in shard layout removed), protocol upgrade (voting to protocol version 63), database upgrade (additions for support of state sync), and non-protocol changes. Nearcore v1.36.5 was released on Jan. 31, 2024, which “fixes a bug around shard management that, if exploited, can lead to a node crash crash.”

In November 2023:

• Polygon Labs and the NEAR Foundation entered into a collaboration to develop a zero-knowledge (ZK) prover specifically designed for Wasm (WebAssembly) blockchains. Based on a commercially reasonable search, no verifiable planned release date for the ZK prover could be identified. A related development occurred on Jan. 18, 2024, when the collaborating teams announced that NEAR DA was available for Polygon CDK.
• The NEAR Foundation partnered with Nym Technologies to enhance security with end-to-end encryption and metadata privacy services.
• The Near Foundation partnered with Eigen Labs to begin development on the first-ever fast finality layer for Ethereum Layer-2s. This development is aimed at drastically reducing transaction times from minutes or hours to just three-to-four seconds, while also decreasing transaction costs by a factor of 4,000.
• NEAR DA, a data availability solution for Ethereum rollups, was announced at NEARCON '23. By leveraging Nightshade's infrastructure, NEAR DA intends to prove a cost-effective way for rollups to store and access transaction data. As Nightshade evolves and the number of shards increases, NEAR DA enables rollups to run lightweight nodes that track only the relevant shard.

On Jan. 1, 2024, NEAR Wallet was discontinued, evolving into a wallet hub with migration options and continued asset security.

In late 2024, NEAR Protocol saw a wave of institutional interest with the establishment of staking ETPs by 21Shares created in November 2024, and Bitwise launched on Deutsche Börse Xetra (Q3 2025). In October 2025, CoinShares launches ETF Offering Access to multiple altcoins, among which NEAR is also listed.

Besides the institutional interest surge, in October 2025, NEAR Foundation also announced the addition of five key executives to their team.