NEAR Protocol

NEAR

What this page is: neutral, sourced facts about NEAR Protocol. Every line links where it was checked. 9 facts, 0 from primary sources. Educational, not financial advice.

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Launch

Founded in 2018 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, with mainnet launching in 2020. secondary source source

Founders and creators

Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. secondary source source
Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov; Polosukhin co-authored the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need" at Google Research. secondary source source

Origin story

Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov had previously founded NEAR AI as a startup in 2017 with the goal to teach machines to code, then discovered Web3 as users. secondary source source

Stated purpose

Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov founded NEAR Protocol in 2018 with the goal to build a scalable, usable blockchain. secondary source source

Consensus mechanism

Proof of stake with Nightshade sharding. secondary source source

Supply model

The total supply of NEAR is 1 billion tokens; CoinMarketCap lists a distribution including 17.2% community grants, 17.6% backers, 14% core contributors and 12% community sale. secondary source source

Main uses today

The NEAR token is used for fees for processing transactions and storing data, running validator nodes via staking, and governance votes. secondary source source

Notable events and controversies

In May 2020, the project closed a $21.6 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. secondary source source

Sources & studies

Last checked: 2026-11-04 · Prices, market caps and circulating supply are left out on purpose because they change by the minute. Educational, not financial advice.

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