NEAR Protocol is a high-performance layer-1 blockchain designed for mainstream usability and, increasingly, for artificial intelligence. It was co-founded by Illia Polosukhin, one of the co-authors of the original Transformer research paper that underpins modern AI — a background the project leans into as it positions itself as an 'AI-native' blockchain. Technically, NEAR uses a sharding design (Nightshade) to scale by splitting work across the network, and it is known for a user-friendly account model with human-readable names that lowers the barrier for newcomers.
More recently, NEAR has focused on 'chain abstraction' and NEAR Intents — infrastructure that lets users and AI agents transact across many blockchains without dealing with the underlying complexity. The vision is a network where autonomous AI agents can hold accounts, move value and coordinate across Web2 and Web3. The NEAR token powers the network: it pays for transactions, secures the chain through staking, and is used in governance, with fee mechanisms that can route value back to the token.
For newcomers, think of NEAR as a scalable, easy-to-use layer-1 betting heavily on becoming the home base for on-chain AI.
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