What is NEAR?
NEAR is a user-friendly and carbon-neutral blockchain, built from the ground up to be performant, secure, and infinitely scalable.
In technical terms, NEAR is a layer one, sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain built with usability in mind.
In simple terms, NEAR is blockchain for everyone.
Why Choose NEAR?
NEAR has been developed with a focus on performance and usability, both for developers and users.
Simple to Use
- Uses human-readable accounts (e.g.
alice.near). - Leverages a web-based wallet, no need for users to install programs or browser extensions.
- Possess a simple yet rich system of Access Keys to handle account permissions.
Fast and Environmentally Friendly
- Transactions are incredibly fast (~1s transactions) and cheap _(<1¢ in fees).
- The network is certified carbon-neutral.
- NEAR consumes in a year the same energy bitcoin consumes in 3 minutes.
Great Developer Experience
- Enables making smart contracts using Javascript or Rust.
- Simple onboarding, thanks to its complete documentation and a multitude of examples.
- NEAR DevRel holds office hours every weekday, where anybody can participate.
- 30% of gas fees goes to the developers.
A Technical Marvel
- Scales infinitely and resists short-term usage spikes thanks to its sharding.
- Interoperable with Ethereum using Rainbow Bridge (first trustless bridge ever created).
- EVM compatible with Project Aurora (Deploy your Solidity contracts with ease).