Near Protocol (NEAR) is an intelligent contract platform that scales the network using parallel processing. This technique, known as sharding, is similar to what Eth2 is trying to achieve, and the consensus mechanism for demonstrating the use of Near also allows token holders to wager their coins.
Over the past month, NEAR is up 107%, and that raises questions about whether the project is making significant progress in a highly competitive smart contract industry.
NEAR / USDT (Binance). Source: TradingView
Compared to its competitors, NEAR is a relatively new project as the mainnet only started in April 2020. In contrast to Ethereum, NEAR’s consensus mechanism aims to stabilize fees. According to its website, the protocol is intended to accelerate the development of decentralized applications.
Interestingly, the Near ICO took place four months after the mainnet launched. One possible reason for this is that the team raised $ 35 million in private funding rounds in July 2019 and May 2020. His investors include Andreessen Horowitzs a16z Crypto Investments, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital and Ripples Incubator Xpring.
In the past three months, Near Protocols network activity has increased significantly, and information on the Near Blog shows that some exciting applications are already live.
Daily log number of transactions. Source: explorer.near.org
One of them is Berry Club, a revenue arming app / game that allows players to draw with pixels and earn tokens. Another application called Paras also allows users to interact with an NFT digital art card marketplace.
DeFi integration is accelerating
On November 24, 2020, the 1inch.exchange supported Mooniswap project announced its plan to develop AAM (Automated Market Making) capabilities on NEAR. The aggregator of the decentralized exchange is supposed to bring together liquidity and pricing from all important DEXs on one platform.
Sergej Kunz, CEO and co-founder of 1inch, stated, “If we build on NEAR, we can experiment with sharding and prepare for the arrival of Ethereum 2.0.”
On January 19th, Crypto.com also intends to open a new pool offering NEAR tokens valued at $ 250,000 at 50% below the market price. Customers must use CRO tokens and meet the specified trading volume requirements on the exchange.
One area of concern is how the treasury is managed. A significant number of NEAR tokens are managed by a handful of people who do not have to adhere to clear guidelines and rules.
Close to Twitter user activity compared to Price (USD). Source: TheTie
Data from TheTie, an alternative social analytics platform, shows that the recent price hike has been accompanied by increased activity on social networks. Even so, transmissions and transactions on the main Near Protocol network only began three months ago.
Compared to its competitors, the NEAR protocol appears to be in an early stage of development. The effective deployment of the Mooniswap integration is likely to be a major milestone for the project, and if successful, NEAR Token could potentially see further benefits.
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