In just a short period of time, Solana, a developer of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, has become one of the most talked-about networks on the market. This project has captured the attention of investors and traders alike, as it represents a new kind of blockchain that is designed to provide high throughput and scalability.
So far, Solana has been able to live up to these promises, and its native token, SOL, has surged in value as a result, printing over 4,000% in gains within the last year.
While Solana is still relatively new, it has already established itself as a major player in the cryptocurrency space. In fact, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has even predicted that the 7th-largest cryptocurrency by market value could become the “Visa of the digital asset ecosystem.”
As anyone who’s been paying attention to the crypto space knows, Solana has benefited from a perfect storm of strong fundamentals, a growing ecosystem of apps, institutional adoption, cheaper transaction fees and higher transaction speed.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) looks like it could follow in Solana’s footsteps and become the Solana of 2022. The project benefits from many of the same hallmarks that have made Solana so successful, including a strong community of developers and users, a robust ecosystem of apps and strategic partnerships.
Like Solana, NEAR, which was named after a novel called “The Singularity is Near,” enables 100,000 transactions per second. The proof-of-stake (POS) blockchain also boasts almost instant transaction completion. In fact, anyone who has used Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) can tell you that one of the most frustrating things about the experience is waiting for transactions to go through.
With NEAR, users don’t have to worry about that anymore. Through POS and its self-calibrated nightshade sharding technology, NEAR offers almost instant transaction finality, so you can rest assured that your transaction will go through right away. And with fees that are less than $0.01, NEAR is also more affordable than other options out there.
Additionally, NEAR Protocol has the added benefit of being backed by some of the most well-respected VC names in the cryptocurrency space, including Andreesen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, FTX Ventures, and Tiger Global.
It’s worth noting that NEAR’s mainnet was launched in October 2020, and already the layer-1 blockchain has processed more than 110 million transactions. In addition, there are over 5 million accounts on NEAR with 450 apps running or being built on the network.
What’s even more impressive is that the NEAR developer community is the sixth-largest in the blockchain ecosystem with 200,000 members worldwide. As the world’s first truly sharded blockchain, NEAR is designed to gracefully scale to a billion mainstream users.
With four shards live today and a full roadmap planned for this year, there’s no doubt that NEAR will continue to be a major player in the blockchain space.
Given all of these factors, it’s not surprising that NEAR Protocol, which is on a path to creating the decentralized, permission-less “open web,” is one of the most hotly followed projects in the cryptocurrency space right now.
Conclusion
In the world of cryptocurrency, there are always new projects emerging that aim to revolutionize the way we use and interact with blockchain technology. In 2021, one of the most talked-about projects was Solana, which gained a lot of traction due to its smart contract capabilities and advanced scaling solutions built for dApps. Unsurprisingly, Solana quickly became one of the top performing assets of the year.
Now, as we move into 2022, there is another project that is gaining a lot of attention and showing a lot of promise: NEAR. Like Solana, NEAR serves as a foundation where apps can be built and deployed. The network also has significant funding and a thriving development community. For those reasons, NEAR should be well-positioned to become the Solana of 2022.
Price Action
As of press time, NEAR is trading at $10.46, down about 3.18% intraday. The $7 billion market cap altcoin traded in a range of $10.12 – $10.84 over the last 24 hours. SOL was also in the red by more than 3% and changing hands at $79.08.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as investment or financial advice
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