Ethereum is not easy to kill. Many blockchains are coming and going and yet none of them are capable of destroying the Ethereum's place in the crypto market. This also means that any new protocol or the layer 1 chain comes into the market they have to do lot more things that ethereum doesn't.
I recently discovered one more chain that is attempting to do something similar. Like Near protocol, which is attempting to compete with the etheruem. And it has done everything it can to offer features that would be good for the blockchain and the consumers.
Let's talk about the Near protocol and how it works and what we as an consumer do with this chain.
What is NEAR Protocol?
Near is an ethereum compatible, sharded layer 1 proof of stake blockchain. It is secure, highly performant and also secure. Like ethereum it has the support for sharding, smart contracts and also the staking capability. It was designed to replace some of the ethereum features and build upon it's own unique for certain use cases.
It can do dApps and the smart contracts that would make variety of use cases.
NEAR protocol has the NEAR as the token and it has around 1 billion near tokens that would make the chain running since the genesis.
It's not a new blockchain, it's around for more than 4 years and it has processed 800 M blockchain transactions. So it can be pretty difficult to see how the gas fees system also exists here but the developers get the 30 percent of the gas fees and that is how they are sustaining the chain. So it's good to see the ethereum alternative that has all the same features for the development.
You can read more about the near protocol features here.
Chain Signatures from Near and EigenLayer
Apart from the benefits of the Near protocol for developers and also the way they have developed their layer 1 base token. You may noticed that the Near protocol offers variety of features that makes the chain unique. For example they have this feature of the multi signature and it offers you to sign the chain transaction from any chain under single NEAR account. This makes consumer experience really good.
So for example you have been working on a dex or bridge which has multi chain transactions. You can use the smart contracts or the account model from the NEAR for signing the multi chain transactions. And it would follow through and considering this has been implemented and tested by the Eigenlayer it's working model is out now as well. Check out the reference here.
What makes NEAR protocol so much valuable?
There are many reasons for the NEAR being valuable for the people. For example, one of the reason is that the chain offers multi sign option, abstraction and it can interface with multiple EVM compatible chains. Which in short makes the NEAR protocol more useful for the users who need it for their use case.
There is also the stablecoin deployed on the NEAR using the FRAX infrastructure. So the layer 1 capacity of the chain has been used the right way. I kind of loved how the NEAR protocol would make things valuable for the developers and the business use case that can make things a bit more easier.
NEAR protocol is a layer 1 chain with variety of features that are trying to compete with the Ethereum. And considering it's multi chain transaction sign option kind of makes the NEAR more valuable in upcoming CBDC and exchange token signatures.