50 Year Milestones of the NEAR Protocol: Highlights

NEAR protocol marks five years since its mainnet launch on October 13, 2020, with a series of developments expanding its technical capabilities and ecosystem. Founded by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, the protocol started as an AI-focused startup in 2017 and moved to blockchain in 2018 to address issues such as scalability and usability.

Since the mainnet launch five years ago, layer 1 The blockchain platform is powered by 9 shards, 600ms block time, 1.2s finality, over $2 billion in intent volume, support for over 120 cross-chain assets, over 50 million active addresses, over 50 startups built on the platform, 500 validator seats, over 550 million NEAR tokens staking, over 2,000 NEAR users Members of the Legion community have been reported. 100% availability.

These numbers reflect the protocol’s focus on sharding technology, account abstraction, and intent-based transactions, positioning the protocol for applications in decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, and AI-integrated systems.

Founding and conversion to blockchain

The origins of the NEAR protocol date back to 2017, when Polosukhin, a former Google machine learning researcher, and Skidanov, formerly of MemSQL, founded NEAR AI. The original goal was to explore program synthesis and AI-driven code generation. However, as global payments to donors became difficult, interest in blockchain solutions increased.

By 2018, the team pivoted to developing the NEAR protocol, a blockchain designed for linear scalability through sharding, increased ease of use through account abstraction, and developer accessibility through support for programming languages ​​such as JavaScript and Rust. The goal was to ease the onboarding of up to 1 billion users.

Polosukhin’s background includes co-authoring the 2017 paper “Attending Is All You Need,” which laid the foundation for the transformer model in AI. This AI expertise influenced the design of NEAR, with a focus on autonomous agents and user-owned data systems infrastructure. The protocol’s sharding mechanism, known as Nightshade, distributes computational workloads across multiple shards to handle increased transaction volumes without slowing down the network.

Mainnet launch phase

NEAR’s mainnet rollout occurred in stages. April 2020, Phase 0, or genesis launchcreated 1 billion NEAR tokens and launched the network. During this phase, the network was operational, but with limitations, allowing staking and governance activities. By September 2020, Phase I moved the network to community-run status and expanded validator participation.

The complete mainnet, Phase II, was launched on October 13, 2020, enabling token transfers, decentralized applications, smart contracts, and governance with threshold proof of stake. This handover to community governance marked complete decentralization. the next day, NEAR token I started trading on exchanges such as Binance. Since then, the network has maintained uninterrupted operations, making it a key element of reliability for developers and users.

Major technology upgrades and sharding advances

After launch, NEAR implemented several upgrades to improve performance. The detailed breakdown by year is as follows.

2021 Milestones: In 2021, Simple Nightshade introduces phase 0 shardingis the first step in distributing data and computation across shards. This enabled the network to more efficiently handle increased loads through parallelism, laying the foundation for the NEAR protocol’s scalability efforts.

Developments in September 2022: This was followed by Phase 1 sharding in September 2022, further increasing throughput. This update builds on the initial sharding implementation and optimizes how transactions and data are managed across the network, improving overall performance.

Announcement for March 2023: NEAR by March 2023. blockchain operating systema layer for creating open web experiences that are compatible with multiple blockchains. The system aimed to provide a unified framework for developers to build decentralized applications that can seamlessly interact across different blockchain environments.

Updates October to December 2023: Later that year, from October to December 2023, protocol updates included the release of Nearcore version 1.36.0. We have partnered with Polygon Labs for zero-knowledge WebAssembly provers, Nym for enhanced privacy, and Eigen Labs for fast finality of Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. NEAR also launched data availability services for Ethereum Rollup, expanding its usefulness in supporting the scaling needs of other networks.

Changes for January 2024: In January 2024, NEAR Wallet has evolved into a wallet hubMeanwhile, Stake Wars IV tested Phase 2 sharding through stateless validation. These efforts focused on improving the user interface and validating advanced sharding techniques to reduce resource requirements for node operators.

March 2025 enhancements: Resharding V3 was introduced in March 2025 in protocol versions 74 to 76, enabling cross-shard bandwidth scheduler and state synchronization improvements. These features address inter-shard communication bottlenecks and ensure more consistent data processing across the network.

Speed ​​improvements in May 2025: Significant speed enhancements arrived in May 2025. 600ms block time Version 77 had a finality of 1.2 seconds, outperforming Solana in block speed and 600x outperforming Ethereum in finality time. This update includes global contracts based on NEP-591 and optimistic block execution to reduce latency, enabling faster transaction confirmations and broader application support.

Proposals and amendments for June and July 2025: In June and July 2025, in parallel with policy amendments, a proposal was made to reduce the maximum inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%. Nearcore version 2.6.5 As for the block generation issue. These adjustments were aimed at stabilizing the supply of tokens and resolving technical issues that could impact network reliability.

Added in August 2025: Version 79 introduced a 9th shard in August 2025, increasing throughput by 12.5%. moreover, NEP-536 Adjusted refund mechanism. NEAR tokens staked exceeded 600 million tokens, reflecting increased community participation and network security.

September 2025 expansion: Version 80 in September 2025 extends cross-chain integration with Aptos, Tron, and Cardano to Intents, introduces Zashi CrossPay for shielded payments, increases validator seats to 500 (minimum 105 per shard), and releases Nearcore 2.8.0. These updates enhance interoperability and privacy features while expanding our validation infrastructure.

Ecosystem growth and partnerships

Transaction and wallet metrics for 2022:Throughout 2022, NEAR processed over 164 million transactions and created millions of wallets, reaching 10 million by May. This period has highlighted the growing adoption of this protocol in terms of user activity and on-chain interactions.

Partnerships and Community Engagement in 2022: The partnership included collaboration with SailGP alongside community initiatives such as Hacker House events and workshops. These efforts focused on developer engagement and promoting real-world applications.

July 2025 Intention Performance: By July 2025, NEAR Intents had processed over $570 million in trade volume, over 1.2 million swaps, and supported 100 assets. This demonstrated the system’s capability for cross-chain transactions.

Integration and launch in July 2025: Integration with Sui and BitGo coincided with the following releases:

• NEAR House of Stake AI Co-Pilot
• surge swap
• Other markets
• hot craft

Growth intention in August 2025: With the addition of Stellar integration, intent volume increased to $900 million by August. This represents a continued upward trend in transaction processing and asset support.

October 2025 target milestone:Intention as of October 2025 Trading volume exceeded $2 billionwith 1.8 million swaps and 120 assets, with monthly numbers almost doubling. These indicators reflect the rapid expansion of multi-chain operations.

Blockchain Volume in October 2025: Daily blockchain trading volume exceeds $80 million, surpassing Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon in multi-chain activity with projects such as HOT DAO. This has established NEAR as a competitive player in decentralized finance.

Ecosystem Overview for October 2025: The ecosystem includes more than 50 startups, and Chain Signatures allows control of networks such as NEAR’s Solana and TON. This feature supports integrated management across blockchains.

Network performance in October 2025: Using 8-9 shards, the network achieves 300x throughput and 50% lower latency. Sharding directly contributes to these efficiency improvements.

Governance shift by stakehouse: Governance is transitioning through the Stake Assembly Roadmap, released on October 9, 2025, which outlines four steps:

• assembly
• alignment
• activation
• autonomy

Governance initiatives Now live on mainnet October 13th.

5th anniversary event: The 5th Anniversary on October 13, 2025 featured:

• statistical highlight video
• Discussion on the interim constitution
• 280,000 NEAR Budget veNEAR Rewards
• Validator support
• AI-powered governance tools

Future roadmap elements

NEAR’s documented roadmap includes a goal of 1 million transactions per second, OmniChain features such as OmniToken and OmniBridge, sharded smart contracts, and expanded AI integrations such as trusted execution environment support for Chain Signatures and AI agents in the Shade Agent sandbox.

Our partnership with Bitwise, which manages over $12 billion in assets for staking exchange-traded products, and Everclear, which has over $1 billion in trading volume, supports these efforts. While the history of the protocol shows sustained performance, balancing decentralization and scaling is a challenge.

conclusion

Over five years, the NEAR Protocol has evolved from an AI startup to a layer 1 blockchain with operational sharding, fast block times, and cross-chain intent to handle billions of volumes. Its milestones, including consistent upgrades and partnerships, demonstrate its scalability and AI integration capabilities to address specific blockchain constraints.

This track record reflects the protocol’s role in supporting decentralized applications and multi-chain operations, and provides a foundation for developers focused on high-throughput systems. A continued focus on technical reliability will remain central to our continued contributions to this field.

source:

• NEAR Protocol Official X Account – https://x.com/NEARProtocol
• CoinMarketCap NEAR analysis – https://coinmarketcap.com/currency/near-protocol/
• Blockchain.com Explorer for NEAR – https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/assets/near
• NEAR Protocol launches 600ms blocks, 1.2s finality to unlock DeFi use cases: https://thedefiant.io/news/blockchains/near-protocol-launches-600ms-blocks-1-2-second-finality-unlocking-defi-use-cases-490247d4
• NEAR documentation and guides: https://docs.near.org/
• Near history: https://www.near.org/roadmap-history