$1.86−1.62% 24hThe NEAR Protocol price in context
The NEAR price in USD in the top bar runs live from the Binance exchange; the chart and market statistics (cap, volume, supply) come from the CoinGecko aggregator. Chart ranges span from the last 24 hours to the full trading history — the period change is measured from the first point of the selected range.
The complete ranking lives on the crypto prices page.
About NEAR Protocol
NEAR Protocol is a proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2020, founded by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin — the latter a co-author of "Attention Is All You Need", the paper today's language models rest on. The network solves scaling through sharding: state is divided across several parallel parts that process transactions simultaneously.
Its practical differentiator is usability. Addresses are human-readable (`name.near` instead of a string of characters), accounts can pay fees on a user's behalf, and applications open without installing a wallet. Since 2024 NEAR has positioned itself as infrastructure for AI agents and cross-chain "chain abstraction" — the effort to hide from the user which chain a transaction actually happens on.
The NEAR token pays fees, is staked and used for voting. Most fees are burned and the rest goes to the contract's developer — an unusual model that pays development directly out of usage.