Introduction What Is NEAR Protocol? NEAR Protocol is a smart contract capable, public Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that was conceptualized as a community-run cloud computing platform. Built by the NEAR Collective, NEAR was designed to host decentralized applications (dApps), and strives to compete with Ethereum and other leading smart contract-enabled blockchains like EOS and Polkadot. NEAR’s native token is also called NEAR, and is used to pay for transaction fees and storage. NEAR tokens can also be staked by token holders who participate in achieving network consensus as transaction validators.

NEAR Protocol is focused on creating a developer and user friendly platform. To accommodate this mission, NEAR has incorporated features like human-readable account names as opposed to only cryptographic wallet addresses, and the ability for new users to interact with dApps and smart contracts without requiring a wallet at all.

Projects building on NEAR include Mintbase, a non-fungible token (NFT) minting platform, and Flux, a protocol that allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, real-world events, and more.

NEAR Protocol Technology As dApps have grown in popularity, the crypto community has faced a growing scalability problem. Scalability in this context refers to a blockchain’s ability to handle a large number of transactions with reasonable speed and cost. Ethereum has particularly faced scalability challenges due to the high demand for its usage, and while some people advocate for scaling solutions to be built on top of Ethereum (Layer-2 solutions), other projects like NEAR have decided to build entirely new blockchains with different architecture.

NEAR Protocol’s proposed solution to this scalability problem is the implementation of sharding. Before diving into what this means, it’s useful to identify the three main functions of blockchain nodes: they process transactions, communicate validated transactions and completed blocks to other nodes, and store the state and history of the entire network. As network congestion increases, these tasks become more and more demanding for the nodes.

Sharding lessens the computational load by splitting or partitioning the network into shards (or fragments). With this tactic, every node is not required to run all of the network’s code — just the code that’s relevant to its shard — so shards can conduct computation in parallel with one another, thereby scaling the network’s capacity as the number of nodes in the network increases.

To achieve consensus among the nodes in the network, NEAR uses a PoS system. With PoS, nodes who wish to become transaction validators must stake their NEAR tokens to be considered for participation. Token holders who do not want to operate a node can delegate their stake to validators of their choice. NEAR uses an auction system to choose validators every epoch (approximately every 12 hours), and validators who have larger stakes have more influence in the consensus process.

Some validators are responsible for validating “chunks” — an aggregation of transactions from a shard — while others are tasked with producing blocks, which contain chunks from all the shards. Other nodes, called “fishermen,” observe the network and detect and report malicious behavior. If a validator behaves badly, their stake will be slashed. [https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/near-protocol-near-token-near-crypto-blockchain#section-near-token-economics]

Methodology In this dashboard, we will examine the activities of whales in the NEAR network. We will bring 20 of the most balanced whales in the chart. Also, the activities of swap, transfer, etc. of the top 20 whales will be investigated.

Top 5 Whales with the higher balances

1 - 7747991786f445efb658b69857eadc7a57b6b475beec26ed14da8bc35bb2b5b6 = 552179859.612616

2 - 5c33c6218d47e00ef229f60da78d0897e1ee9665312550b8afd5f9c7bc6957d2 = 270579325.575138

3 - 601483a1b22699b636f1df800b9b709466eba4e1d5ce7c2e1e20317af8bbd1f3 = 152956912.724141

4 - d73888a2619c7761735f23c798536145dfa87f9306b5f21275eb4b1a7ba971b9 = 136022955.535877

5 - 7981ae28a8314f939c7b2d0cb4fca0cb0ea70e5c022b219425bc9c4d5723e8ce = 74413806.89978

The volume of total daily transactions is the highest in January 2023. The capital that comes out of the wallet and also the capital that enters the wallet is very large. In the seventh month of 2022, the amount of money entered into the wallets is much more than any other day.

Top 5 Senders

1 - 7747991786f445efb658b69857eadc7a57b6b475beec26ed14da8bc35bb2b5b6 = 552200387.635152

2- 5c33c6218d47e00ef229f60da78d0897e1ee9665312550b8afd5f9c7bc6957d2 = 269043916.124407

3- 601483a1b22699b636f1df800b9b709466eba4e1d5ce7c2e1e20317af8bbd1f3 = 151741984.429078

4- d73888a2619c7761735f23c798536145dfa87f9306b5f21275eb4b1a7ba971b9 = 130994787.321276

5- 7981ae28a8314f939c7b2d0cb4fca0cb0ea70e5c022b219425bc9c4d5723e8ce = 74413803.97885

Top receivers

1- 7747991786f445efb658b69857eadc7a57b6b475beec26ed14da8bc35bb2b5b6 = 552179859.612616

2- 5c33c6218d47e00ef229f60da78d0897e1ee9665312550b8afd5f9c7bc6957d2 = 270578401.357435

3- 601483a1b22699b636f1df800b9b709466eba4e1d5ce7c2e1e20317af8bbd1f3 = 152953647.923495

4- d73888a2619c7761735f23c798536145dfa87f9306b5f21275eb4b1a7ba971b9 = 136012907.543743

5- 7981ae28a8314f939c7b2d0cb4fca0cb0ea70e5c022b219425bc9c4d5723e8ce = 74413806.89978

• Top 5 tx fee payers

1- oracle.sweat = 50188.880127

2- relayer.bridge.near = 11604.601351

3- sweat_welcome.near = 2592.457677

4- relay20201112.bridge.near = 2543.387284

5- operator.meta-pool.near = 1527.713033

Top Swappers to NEAR

1- yuxsccc.near = 39364875.9077919

2- 7c5206b1b75b8787420b09d8697e08180cdf896c5fcf15f6afbf5f33fcc3cf72= 9380996.00584373

3- simpleguy.near = 7912097.45804291

4- grandalex.near = 6569734.0381559

5- chadmoney.near = 6105983.65746468

Top 5 swappers from NEAR

1- yuxsccc.near = 40107367.2414509

2- 7c5206b1b75b8787420b09d8697e08180cdf896c5fcf15f6afbf5f33fcc3cf72 = 9364154.04703143

3- grandalex.near = 6502946.8336776

4- chadmoney.near = 6089011.52495522

5- simpleguy.near = 5477347.64686785

Categorized NEAR Holders

Conclusions

User with highest balance, most sent and recieved volume is 7747991786f445efb658b69857eadc7a57b6b475beec26ed14da8bc35bb2b5b6 and it is equal to 552179859, 552200387 and 552179859 respectively.

User with highest paid fee is oracle.sweat and it is equal to 50188.

User with highest volume of swap to NEAR is yuxsccc.near and it is equal to 39364875.

User with highest volume of swap from NEAR is yuxsccc.near and it is equal to 40107367.