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NEAR is a blockchain for applications built with smart contracts. Users interact with these applications through accounts and transactions, while validators process their activity across parallel parts of the network called shards.

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Accounts and smart contracts

An account holds a NEAR balance, access keys, and optionally a smart contract with its own storage. Access keys determine who can sign transactions and what those transactions can do. A smart contract is code deployed to an account. Applications call its methods to update stored data, transfer assets, or interact with other contracts. Learn more about Accounts and Access Keys.

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Transactions and receipts

A user signs a transaction to request actions, such as sending NEAR or calling a contract. NEAR processes these actions through receipts, internal messages that can produce further receipts when contracts call each other. This means a transaction can lead to several steps of execution across the network. The runtime applies the rules for executing these actions and updating account state. See Transactions and Lifecycle of a Transaction for the full process, and Gas for execution fees.

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Shards and data flow

NEAR distributes accounts across shards so the network can process activity in parallel. Accounts on different shards communicate through receipts. See NEAR Data Flow for how activity moves across shards, or follow a Token Transfer through the network.

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Tokens

The native NEAR token pays transaction fees, covers on-chain storage, and secures the network through validator staking. Smart contracts can also define fungible tokens, NFTs, and MultiTokens. Shared Token Standards define how wallets and applications query and transfer these assets.

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Storage

Accounts and contracts store data on-chain, such as access keys, token balances, and application records. Storage staking reserves NEAR to cover the space this data occupies. Removing data releases the corresponding storage stake. See Storage Staking for how storage is priced and managed.

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Network

Validators secure NEAR through proof of stake, producing and validating blocks and shard chunks. Validator assignments are updated in periods called epochs. Applications run on mainnet, testnet, or a local network. Mainnet is the live network; testnet and local networks let developers experiment before deploying there.