what is NEAR Horizon ?

NEAR Horizon is an exciting opportunity for founder teams looking to build their startups on the BOS. Startups can interact with NEAR Horizon through a double sided marketplace application that connects founders to each other, and to the people and organizations who are best able to accelerate their growth .

What Is Near Protocol ?

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.

How does Near Protocol achieve those numbers?

Near Protocol’s defining feature is a technique called "sharding," designed to improve transaction speed and capacity. It involves breaking up the blockchain into sub-chains with different validators working on them, which regularly get connected to one another. Effectively, the network dodges the problem of becoming too big by cutting itself up into smaller parts.

Near Protocol is starting to implement a new version of sharding, which will turn it into what it describes as a "fully sharded" network. The innovation is "state sharding," as opposed to simply "processing sharding." Instead of simply dividing up the responsibilities of the validators, it actually divides the blockchain itself up into smaller parts. Near calls its technology "Nightshade" and began introducing it in phases in late 2021, as the transaction volume on the network increased.

Near Protocol is by no means the first network to use sharding. It has been talked about as a possible fix for Ethereum since 2013 and Ethereum-competitor Zilliqa put one version of it into practice back in 2018. But a "fully sharded" chain would break new ground.

This is why Near Protocol claims to offer “infinite scalability,” which means that the volume of transactions happening on the network can grow indefinitely without hurting its performance.

Near uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, in contrast with Ethereum’s current proof-of-work model (though it is working on transitioning to PoS through the Merge).

In proof-of-stake, bad actors are deterred from corrupting the system by a requirement to "stake" a certain volume of tokens to validate blocks. Near currently sets the number of nodes at 100 and requires a minimum threshold of 67,000 NEAR tokens in order to participate in the validation of new blocks of legitimate transactions and get rewarded with more tokens. Currently, the node with the lowest amount has over 162,000 NEAR tokens staked.

Despite its promising ideas, Near Protocol is still a long way from the biggest challenger to Ethereum. Others have been around and gathering momentum for longer: Solana, whose native token is SOL, and Polkadot, whose token is DOT, are two of the best known. The native tokens had market capitalizations of around $17.5 billion and $7.5 billion, respectively, in July 2022. Near Protocol’s native token NEAR had a little under $2.4 billion, to put it in perspective.

The NEAR token is used for the staking that underpins the validation of blocks on the network. Stakers get rewarded in the form of that token, too. The token’s all-time highest price was $20.44 in January 2022.

In addition to its speed and scalability, Near Protocol taps into the conversation around the environmental impact of the crypto sector by touting its "carbon neutrality." It partners with carbon-offsetting companies to cancel out its energy use. Additionally, proof-of-stake mechanisms tend to be less emission-heavy than their proof-of-work counterparts.

Source : https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-is-near-protocol-and-how-does-it-work/

method

• In the first part of this dashboard, there is information from the past two years until today, but in the second part of the dashboard, there is information from March 6, 2023 until today.
• Tables near.core.fact_transactions and near.core.dim_address_labels have been used to create the first part of this dashboard, which can be used to obtain the general and project information of the NEAR network.
• Tables near.horizon.fact_decoded_actions and near.core.dim_address_labels have been used to make the second part of this dashboard, which can be used to obtain information about NEAR Horizon.