What Is Near Protocol and How Does It Work?

• Near Protocol is a layer 1 blockchain network. It provides a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications (dapps). The most successful layer 1 blockchain is Ethereum, so protocols like Near are seen as challengers.
• The key yardsticks for layer 1 networks are transaction costs, speed and the ability to maintain those features as transaction volumes grow. These factors are the focus for layer 1s like Near to improve upon Ethereum, which has encountered issues with costs and speed over the last few years.
• Near Protocol is faster and cheaper than Ethereum. More importantly, it promises to be faster than some of the other largest challengers. When fully implemented, Near is expected to be able to process up to around 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). Ethereum’s largest rival, Solana, averages less than 3,000 transactions per second, according to its own blockchain explorer. Ethereum averages double-digit transactions per second. Bitcoin does less than 10.
• Outside the crypto sphere, an important comparison is Visa’s (V) capacity. The global payments giant processes around 7,000-8,000 TPS, based on its claim of 232.5 billion transactions over a 12-month period. Near Protocol could eclipse that, though it has not yet realized its theoretical potential as of July 2022.
• “Near has built technology to enable transactions that are fast (~1 second), quick to finality (~1-2 seconds), cheap (less than a penny), and secure,” crypto research firm Messari noted in March 2022.[1]

Methodology

• Most of the anaylsis is done using near.core.fact_transactions and near.core.fact_actions_events_function_call tables.

  • These tables are used to identify the staking and unstaking transactions and then calculate the total amount by aggregating the transactions.

• near.core.dim_address_labels is used to identify Validator addresses.

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SQL Credits:

Dashboard Credits:

Staking Metrics

• The number of staking transactions have reduced since Jan 2022, however they are consistent.
• We see that the number of stakers are quite consistent over time and a healthy number.
• The amount of NEAR staked is going up.
• This shows that NEAR is in the right direction to be more de-centralized.
• There are however some validators like figment that have just take over and have a lot of Staked NEAR in the past few months which needs to be looked into.

Un-Staking Metrics

• The number of un-staking transactions have reduced since Jan 2022, however they are consistent.
• We see that the number of un-stakers are quite consistent over time and a healthy number and have decreased.
• The amount of NEAR un-staked saw a few spikes very recently, which is not a very good sign.
• There are however some validators like bisontrails that have a lot of NEAR recently un-staked which count shift the de-centralization shares.

Overall Validator Status

• This table tries to look at all the validators and tries to present an overall picture of the validators.
• We look at the number of stakers/unstakers, the number of stake/unstake transactions and the amount of near staked/unstaked.
• We can also look at individual metrics by using the validator name in the parameters above.

Governance Decentralization and Staking Metrics

• Decentralization is very important in any platform or ecosystem.
• We try to see how NEAR is doing in terms of de-centralization by looking at the following metrics:
  • The Share of the Top 10 validators as compared to overall ecosystem.
  • The GINI Index and the Nakamoto coefficient

    • Nakamoto coefficient, GINI Index, dominance by the top validator and new stakers[3]

      For deep dive into these metrics:

• What is seen is that currently Top 10 Validators account for 37% of the share of all the validators, this is down from 53% last year in Jan 2022.
  • This is a very good sign and shows NEAR is on the path to decentralization infact.
• The Top validator has reduced share to 7.9% from 11% in the last year Jan 2022.

Conclusion

• What is seen is that currently Top 10 Validators account for 37% of the share of all the validators, this is down from 53% last year in Jan 2022.
  • This is a very good sign and shows NEAR is on the path to decentralization infact.
• The Top validator has reduced share to 7.9% from 11% in the last year Jan 2022.
• The staking and un-staking are bit concerning in terms of since validators with huge spikes, apart from that everything else looks good.

The dropdown parameter seems broken and doesn’t take so many records as dropdown

For individual Validator metrics, choose a name from here and update the validator_name parameter above.

'01node.poolv1.near'
'08investinwomen_runbybisontrails.poolv1.near'
'abl_pool.poolv1.near'
'alex.poolv1.near'
'anonymous.poolv1.near'
'appload.poolv1.near'
'artemis.poolv1.near'
'ashert.poolv1.near'
'astro-stakers.poolv1.near'
'buildlinks.poolv1.near'
'audit_one.poolv1.near'
'binancestaking.poolv1.near'
'bisontrails.poolv1.near'
'blockdaemon.poolv1.near'
'baziliknear.poolv1.near'
'chorusone.poolv1.near'
'cryptium.poolv1.near'
'd1.poolv1.near'
'dialecticstake.poolv1.near'
'dsrvlabs.poolv1.near'
'continue.poolv1.near'
'electric.poolv1.near'
'epic.poolv1.near'
'erm.poolv1.near'
'figment.poolv1.near'
'fish.poolv1.near'
'foundry.poolv1.near'
'hashquark.poolv1.near'
'hb436_pool.poolv1.near'
'huobipool.poolv1.near'
'ideocolabventures.poolv1.near'
'jubi.poolv1.near'
'kukulastake1.poolv1.near'
'legends.poolv1.near'
'lunanova.poolv1.near'
'magic.poolv1.near'
'masternode24.poolv1.near'
'nearcrowd.poolv1.near'
'sharpdarts.poolv1.near'
'stakefish.poolv1.near'
'staked.poolv1.near'
'finoa.poolv1.near'
'inotel.poolv1.near'
'nc2.poolv1.near'
'nodeasy.poolv1.near'
'fresh.poolv1.near'
'p2p-org.poolv1.near'
'accomplice.poolv1.near'
'aurora.poolv1.near'
'bobby.poolv1.near'
'certusone.poolv1.near'
'dokiacapital.poolv1.near'
'dragonfly.poolv1.near'
'everstake.poolv1.near'
'jazza.poolv1.near'
'lux.poolv1.near'
'moonlet.poolv1.near'
'nearfans.poolv1.near'
'rocknroll.poolv1.near'
'sparkpool.poolv1.near'
'stardust.poolv1.near'
'thepassivetrust.poolv1.near'
'tottenham_hotspur.poolv1.near'
'trillian.poolv1.near'
'zavodil.poolv1.near'
'near8888.poolv1.near'
'openshards.poolv1.near'
'rekt.poolv1.near'
'stakesabai.poolv1.near'
'stakin.poolv1.near'
'zkv_staketosupportprivacy.poolv1.near'
'northernlights.poolv1.near'
'cryptotribe.poolv1.near'
'johnsmith.poolv1.near'
'majlovesreg.poolv1.near'
'okexpool.poolv1.near'
'sweden.poolv1.near'
'smart-stake.poolv1.near'