NEAR Protocol is the blockchain for AI. A high-performance, AI-native platform built to power the next generation of decentralized applications and intelligent agents. It provides the infrastructure AI needs to transact, operate, and interact across Web2 and Web3. NEAR combines three core elements: User-Owned AI, which ensures agents act in users’ best interests; Intents and Chain Abstraction, which eliminate blockchain complexity for seamless, goal-driven transactions across chains; and a sharded blockchain architecture that delivers the scalability, speed, and low-cost execution needed for real-world AI and Web3 use. This integrated stack makes NEAR the foundation for building secure, user-owned, AI-native applications at internet scale.

NEAR combines sharding for parallel transaction processing with chain abstraction that unifies various blockchains under one protocol. Through NEAR Intents, AI agents and users can define outcomes and let the network manage the detailed execution steps. Meanwhile, user-owned AI ensures that individuals maintain control over their data and digital agents. These components work together to streamline development, protect user interests, and allow cross-chain operations without extensive manual input.

NEAR AI: Tools and infrastructure for launching agents that can handle digital assets, run smart contracts, and tap into data or services. These agents run privately using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), and can operate across chains without manual steps.

Intents & Chain Abstraction: Users or agents describe what they want to happen—NEAR handles the rest. With Chain Signatures and Omnibridge, actions can jump between chains like Ethereum or Bitcoin without dealing with keys or bridges.

Sharded Infrastructure: NEAR uses dynamic sharding (Nightshade) to handle lots of activity at once, keeping things fast and responsive. Great for agents that need to react in real time or coordinate across many tasks.

Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov founded NEAR Protocol in 2018 with the goal to build a scalable, usable blockchain. They had previously founded NEAR AI as a startup in 2017 with the goal to teach machines to code, then discovered Web3 as users and decided to apply their distributed systems expertise to architect a new protocol. Before NEAR, Polosukhin was a machine learning researcher at Google and co-authored "Attention Is All You Need," the paper that launched the transformer architecture powering today's popular LLMs. Skidanov was previously engineer #1 and director of engineering at Microsoft's SingleStore and an OpenAI contributor.

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The current circulating supply of NEAR Protocol is 1.3 billion.

NEAR Protocol ranks 12 among tradable assets on Coinbase. Popularity is currently based on relative market cap.

Currently, 95% of Coinbase users are buying NEAR Protocol. In other words, 95% of Coinbase customers have increased their net position in NEAR Protocol over the past 24 hours through trading.

Yes, NEAR Protocol is currently available on Coinbase’s centralized exchange. For more detailed instructions, check out our helpful how to buy NEAR Protocol guide.