Near Protocol is a decentralized development platform that runs on the Near Protocol blockchain, allowing developers to easily create decentralized applications by overcoming the blockchain trilemma (security, scalability and decentralization). The Near Protocol blockchain is “permissionless, efficient and secure.” In short, Near Protocol wants to enable developers to build high-performance decentralized applications. It believes it is the only project that can bring open source projects into the open web world in the future.
What problem is Near Protocol designed to solve?
When talking about Near Protocol use cases, we can take the example of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services to understand how and why Near Protocol is playing a crucial role in the blockchain space today. Both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services now power much of the web infrastructure around the world. These two are also the most commonly used cloud platforms for application deployment. There is no doubt that there are benefits to deploying applications on these cloud platforms. For example, it is easier for developers to update software when applications are deployed on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services cloud. But there are also quite a few disadvantages.
Both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are owned and operated by the same organization, which means that the centralized organization has access to user data. If they want to, they can censor, modify, hack, and sell your user data on their own or at the behest of the government. On the other hand, when a cloud platform is run by a distributed and open community that anyone can join, decentralized applications will become truly decentralized and secure. No parties with dubious intentions will be able to hack such a cloud platform as there is no single point of failure. Any changes will require consensus among community members to implement. This form of cloud deployment also gives an advantage to developers. The applications they deploy can be locked down to prevent any changes to them.
NEAR Tokenomics
Near Protocol’s proprietary token is NEAR, and it powers the economics in the Near Protocol ecosystem. Developers and users will use Near tokens to pay for data storage and transactions in the system. Any user who wishes to participate in the network as a node can do so by deploying NEAR tokens. All NEAR token holders also receive voting rights to participate in the Near Protocol governance process and vote on important issues that will determine the future path of the Near Protocol.
The Near Protocol Foundation Fund received 10%, while early members of the ecosystem received 11.7% of NEAR’s supply. 12% of its supply was for sale to the community, and 6.1% of NEAR supply was reserved for small project sponsors.
