NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Price | Market | Project Info | LBank

While primarily a Layer-1 blockchain, NEAR has indeed pivoted to become a leading protocol for AI, often referred to as an 'AI coin' by the community. This aligns with its co-founder, Illia Polosukhin, a co-creator of the Transformer architecture fundamental to modern AI. NEAR is actively developing infrastructure and tools to support autonomous AI agents and integrate AI functionalities directly into the blockchain ecosystem, aiming to be the foundational layer for future AI-driven applications.

NEAR Protocol currently maintains an annual inflation rate of approximately 5%. Of this, 90% is allocated to validators as rewards for securing the network, while the remaining 10% contributes to the protocol's treasury for ecosystem development. Looking ahead, the community anticipates a significant 'Halving Upgrade' around late 2025. This planned upgrade aims to reduce the annual inflation rate to 2.5%, enhancing the token's scarcity and long-term economic model.

Chain Signatures enable a NEAR account to directly sign and execute transactions on other blockchain networks, such as those with EVM compatibility or Bitcoin, without requiring traditional bridges. This significantly streamlines cross-chain interactions. Intents, on the other hand, allow users to articulate a desired outcome in natural language—for example, 'Swap asset X for asset Y across different chains.' AI agents then interpret these intents and autonomously execute the complex, multi-step transactions required to fulfill the user's goal, abstracting away the underlying blockchain complexities and providing a seamless user experience.

Nightshade Sharding is NEAR Protocol's core scaling solution, designed to process a massive number of transactions in parallel. It works by splitting the blockchain into multiple smaller, independent segments called 'shards.' Each shard can process transactions simultaneously, dramatically increasing the network's overall capacity. While currently operating with 6-8 shards, the architecture is designed to scale to hundreds, allowing NEAR to handle a significantly higher volume of activity and more users as the network grows.

The original `wallet.near.org` was not deleted but transitioned in 2023-2024 to become a 'Wallet Selector,' guiding users to a broader ecosystem of wallet options. This change aimed to foster decentralization and offer more choices. Users are now encouraged to utilize various popular community-developed wallets that integrate with the NEAR ecosystem. Examples of widely used wallets include HERE Wallet, Meteor, or Sender, which provide secure and feature-rich ways to manage NEAR tokens and interact with decentralized applications.