NEAR for Newbies
The Pathway for New Open Web Developers
“Hello, Anon Dev. The Future is NEAR.”
You are a developer. You work with JavaScript, C++, Python, and whatnot. These days, you hear an awful lot about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin… It seems that blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and something called “Web3” (or, the “Open Web”) are all the rage. But, anon, did you know you can build on these chains? And that you are very much wanted here?
Today, I want to tell you a little bit about the future and your place in it.
And that future is NEAR.
What is NEAR Protocol?
To give a high-level definition, NEAR Protocol is a Proof-of-Stake, Layer 1, smart contract blockchain. If we were to roughly map out the history of the crypto-sphere, it would look something like this:
Layer 1 means that like Bitcoin and Ethereum, NEAR is its own independent blockchain network, providing a base layer upon which more specific protocols and applications can be built (i.e. Layer 2).
But unlike Bitcoin, the building block of Ethereum and NEAR is the smart contract. Bitcoin functions like digital gold: you can store value but not much else. With smart contracts, blockchain networks finally became useful: now you write code for marketplaces, games, financial institutions, and voting mechanisms on the blockchain.
Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum (or ETH 1.0, to be exact), NEAR runs on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, which is a way of validating and maintaining the network that is arguably more secure but less energy consuming than Proof-of-Work.
But what really differentiates NEAR is sharding. NEAR’s co-founders, each of whom have worked at Google and MemSQL — two companies known for their sharded database management — have invented a dynamic sharding design called “Nightshade”. Through dynamic sharding, NEAR solves the problem of scalability plaguing Layer 1 blockchains since the very beginning, and offers today what Ethereum is planning to offer in 2022.
What can you build on a blockchain?
You have your traditional web applications, and with Web3 you have dapps: decentralized applications. Dapps can truly be anything from games to banks to crowdsourcing platforms to marketplaces, as long as they are written as smart contracts on a blockchain network. Any web-based application that would benefit from secure, transparent, permissionless, and automated transactions open to anyone in the world, has a home in Web3.
Today, the biggest hype in crypto communities surrounds DeFi, or decentralized finance. At the time of writing (June 9th), the leading lending protocol AAVE has over $20 billion in total value locked, while popular DEX (decentralized exchange) Uniswap records over $1 billion in daily volume. As Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal puts it:
“The main pitch is basically that DeFi platforms” — and by extension all dapps — “are incredibly simple and elegant, with fewer middlemen and paperwork and so forth.”
Blockchain technology induces a paradigm shift in how things can work, from finance to governance: to be more efficient, cost-effective, transparent, autonomous, and free from the threats of data surveillance and censorship. That is to say, Web3 is an exciting space where the most creative and innovative practices are being discovered every day.
Why should you build on NEAR Protocol?
However, all of this potential innovation and growth is not without hindrance. The biggest smart contract blockchain today, Ethereum, suffers from network congestion and high fees due to the fact that it cannot scale. It simply cannot execute the volume of transactions it currently has, not to mention the future volumes it must handle in order for these innovations to be of any use to the global population.
NEAR answers this problem. As a sharded blockchain, NEAR can scale, and because it can scale, it is actually usable in terms of cost and speed. For instance, on Ethereum you could pay between 10–30 dollars on average in fees — up to hundreds at its worst — for a single transaction. On NEAR, the fees are fractions of a penny. Similarly, due to low Transactions Per Second (TPS) threshold on Ethereum, your transaction can be delayed anywhere from several minutes to dozens of hours. On NEAR, 1 second block times and 2 second finality are already in effect. This is why we say NEAR is the future of blockchain: this is the protocol which has the infrastructure to bring about mass adoption.
This is why NEAR also emphasizes user-friendliness and accessibility. And for this reason NEAR is especially keen to onboard traditional web developers. The idea is to bring the UX and UI of Web2 to Web3. If you are a web developer, there is a place on NEAR for you.
And NEAR makes it worth your time. Below are some of the features that make NEAR one of the friendliest protocols for builders by design:
- Familiarity: NEAR nodes run Web Assembly (WASM); supports Rust (the developer’s choice) and AssemblyScript (JavaScript with types) for writing smart contracts
- Robust tooling: tooling provides similar developer experience to traditional web apps; e.g. one-click deploy, integrated unit testing, easy front-end integration, browser-based debugging
- Development Suite: full SDK with standard data structures, examples, and testing tools for Rust and AssemblyScript; customized NEAR IDE (Integrated Development Environment) on Gitpod for zero time onboarding experience; NEAR Explorer for web-based access chain data; command line tools provided by the NEAR team
- Built-in developer incentive (“contract reward”): Developers are rewarded minimum 30% of the fees generated by the contract they write
- Additional developer incentives through the NEAR Bounties and Grants schemes.
- Open, rigorous, and intellectually honest developer culture at NEAR, evidenced by the weekly developer updates, Whiteboard series, as well as Live Contract or App Reviews, and so much more on the official NEAR Youtube channel.
Additionally, now with the launch of the Rainbow Bridge and Aurora, NEAR has the added advantage of cross-chain interoperability with Ethereum. This way, Ethereum projects will benefit from NEAR’s scalability and cheap transactions, while NEAR native projects will benefit from the inflow of Ethereum users and assets onto NEAR. The growth potential of NEAR is vast as it opens itself up as the hub for a multi-chain future.
On top of all this, the NEAR team also offers educational programs such as NEAR Academy: an interactive course designed by NEAR for web developers looking to explore blockchain integration with their apps (that’s you, anon!). It is free of charge and comes with a certificate of completion. Intrigued? Get a taste of Web3 and see for yourself: https://near.academy/.
Welcome to the future, anon.
