As you dive into the world of cryptocurrency, it's easy to get lost in the sea of new projects and promising tokens. But there's one project that's been making waves in the industry and is definitely worth paying attention to:
Near Protocol.
A Layer 1 protocol whose sharding architecture allows for high throughput and low transaction fees, making it a real competitor to Ethereum according to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder.
But before we delve into the technical details, let's take a step back and talk about what makes Near Protocol worthy of being on an investor’s watchlist.
It is very apparent that the near foundation has a game plan to onboard as many developers as possible. The idea is that if they can succeed in getting the best built projects, then the user base will follow.
Developer Royalties
One of the ways near goes about this is by offering royalties on code chunks that are used across the network! Rather than just node operators receiving monetary incentive through staking, application developers are also rewarded for their work.
Its delegated proof of stake system using Rust and Java Script coding languages to make it easier for developers to build on the platform. And with 30% of gas fees going directly to developers, there's a strong incentive for them to continue creating and improving the ecosystem.
The other 70% of gas fees are burned, which over time should create a deflationary pressure on the $NEAR supply.
I do have a concern though that by making it too easy to build, and incentivizing developers to get things out to market because they can actually be paid for their work through royalties. Then developers might view the opportunity as a cash grab and rush unfinished projects to market.
That is where the opensource nature should come in and the community should be able to call them out. We will have to wait and see if this is a worthwhile concern.
Near Protocol is also very focused on interoperability, with its Aurora feature enabling developers to bring Ethereum-built projects over to Near Protocol without needing to recode the entire thing.
Scalability
The platform incentivizes node operators to shard the network more anytime there is an increased level of congestion, with each shard having 100 seats for nodes, each of which must pay to have a seat on the shard. This creates a supply and demand market for nodes and encourages the creation of new shards.
Perhaps one of the most impressive features of Near Protocol is its focus on near instant transaction finality through the Doom Slug feature. With transactions being finalized in an average of 2.4 seconds, it's a vast improvement over Ethereum's network, which can take up to 4 hours on rare occasions. (five minutes on average)
Near Protocol's sharding feature, Nightshade, has the potential to enable 100,000 transactions per second at less than $0.01 fee. Although in practical use, the network is averaging about 400,000 transactions per day. A far cry from the theoretical max.
Near is more energy-efficient and secure than other blockchains. In fact, Near Protocol's energy consumption is just a fraction of what Bitcoin uses.
Just three minutes of Bitcoin's energy use equals one year of Near's energy consumption.
Tokenomics
While I had some concerns about the tokenomics of Near Protocol at launch, most of the issues seem to have resolved themselves with time.
My concerns were rooted in the fact that Near has received over half a billion dollars form VC funds. As an investor, I like to front run smart money. So seeing this is reassuring that there is potentially something worth watching happening at Near. At the same time, Those VC Investors are going to want their money out at some point.
The above chart depicts what I am talking about. There is a monetary incentive for the VC investors to dump their tokens as the price appreciates. Which is exactly what we saw happen over the first two years of Near’s existence. Luckily those days appear to be behind us.
The $NEAR coin has a max initial supply of 1 billion coins, with a 5% inflation rate per year. Current circulating supply is 900 million give or take a few million (5/3/2023)
Overall, Near Protocol has the potential to be a major player in the smart contract platform space. With its sharding architecture, developer-friendly environment, and interoperability features, Near Protocol has already seen significant adoption and growth. Although the tokenomics are not the best, with most of the lockup periods behind us now, this is unlikely to be a significant issue moving forward.
The Near Foundation's plan to hand over development and governance to a series of Guilds (DAOs) once the network is fully operational is a great example of the platform's commitment to decentralization and community involvement.
Do you hold Near?
Your time is your most valuable asset, hopefully this was a worthy investment! Let me know your thoughts!
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TLDR:
Near Protocol is a Layer 1 protocol with a sharding architecture
It offers high throughput and low transaction fees, making it a competitor to Ethereum
Near incentivizes developers to build on the platform through royalties and gas fee rewards
The platform is focused on interoperability, with its Aurora feature enabling projects built on Ethereum to be brought over to Near
Near incentivizes node operators to shard the network and create new shards
The Doom Slug feature enables near-instant transaction finality
Near's energy consumption is much lower than Bitcoin's
Near has a max initial supply of 1 billion coins, with a 5% inflation rate per year and current circulating supply of 900 million
The Near Foundation plans to hand over development and governance to DAOs once the network is fully operational
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