NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is a layer-one blockchain that functions as a community-run cloud computing platform. It aims to address challenges such as slow transaction speeds, low throughput, and limited interoperability that have been a hurdle for other blockchains. NEAR Protocol provides a conducive environment for decentralized applications (DApps) and aims to create a platform that is both developer and user-friendly. For instance, NEAR uses human-readable account names, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses common to other platforms. NEAR Protocol also introduces unique solutions to scaling problems and has its own consensus mechanism known as "Doomslug."

NEAR Protocol utilizes its Nightshade technology with the aim of enhancing transaction throughput. Nightshade is a variant of sharding, where individual sets of validators process transactions in parallel across multiple sharded chains, thereby aiming to improve the overall capacity of the blockchain. Unlike traditional sharding, shards in Nightshade produce a fraction of the next block, referred to as "chunks." This allows NEAR Protocol to strive for up to 100,000 transactions per second and near-instant transaction finality with a one-second block cadence, while aiming to keep transaction fees low. NEAR Protocol also simplifies the onboarding process of other blockchains by using human-readable addresses and building decentralized applications with a similar registration flow to what users are already familiar with.

NEAR Protocol is designed with the aim of managing high-value assets and making them accessible for everyday people. It provides a platform for the development of various projects. For instance, Flux, a protocol that enables developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, and real-world events, and Mintbase, a platform for minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are examples of projects being built on NEAR Protocol. The NEAR token is intended to be used for processing transactions and storing data, running validator nodes on the network via staking NEAR tokens, and for governance votes to determine how network resources are allocated.

NEAR Protocol was founded by Erik Trautman, Illia Polosukhin, and Alexander Skidanov. Trautman is an entrepreneur with Wall Street experience and the founder of Viking Education. Polosukhin has over a decade of industry experience, including three years at Google. Skidanov is a computer scientist who worked at Microsoft and later joined memSQL, where he became the director of engineering. The NEAR Protocol team includes several International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) gold medalists and winners. The protocol was launched on April 22, 2020. The NEAR Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit, is dedicated to protocol maintenance, ecosystem funding, and guiding the protocol's governance.