What is NEAR Protocol and Should You Invest in it This Year?

3 min readJan 12, 2022

The NEAR Protocol project is being built by the NEAR Collective and was founded in 2018. It is a layer-one blockchain and was originally constructed as a community-run cloud computing platform.

The project aims to tackle some of the problems that the blockchain community has been facing, which include:

Low transaction speed
Low throughput
Poor interoperability

Let’s take an in-depth look at the cryptocurrency so that you can make an informed decision, by the end of the article.

The Top Benefits of NEAR Protocol

Here are the benefits of the NEAR Protocol cryptocurrency:

Sharding technology allows higher transaction capacity and security than other cryptocurrency platforms.
Developers can use its platform to build efficient decentralised applications (dApps).
Helps provide users with an intuitive experience even if they haven’t used any cryptocurrency artifacts before.
Has a ceiling of around 100,000 TPS.
Progressive security is made available through NEAR Protocol and users don’t need any browser extensions to register or access applications.
In theory, it provides unlimited scalability and is actively used for making apps that deal with high traffic.
Users have readable names instead of having an opaque wallet address. This helps improve the user experience.

Important Points to Note

Before you decide to invest in NEAR Protocol, you must be aware of the complete landscape of the cryptocurrency. Here are a couple of important points you should know.

It is in direct competition with Ethereum

Although it has been called the ‘Ethereum Killer’, due to the technologies used. Competing with a crypto giant like Ethereum will bank on how much NEAR can work on its infinite scalability theory. If they are unable to achieve it in the years to come, they risk being second to Ethereum throughout their lifespan.

Massive growth over the last year & volatility

According to CoinGecko, the value of NEAR Protocol has risen 900% over the last year. Despite having an instant surge after it was announced, NEAR is not immune to volatility in the market. It suffered a brief drop in value over the last year but regained it in a very short amount of time.

Coin Analysis for Near and Long-Term

According to WalletInvestor, NEAR Protocol’s value is expected to increase to $22.34 in one year’s time. DigitalCoinPrice predicts a similar price, with units costing $24.15 according to them by 2023.

Based on the amount of growth that the cryptocurrency has achieved in the last year alone, the short-term forecasts are all optimistic about steady growth. But, the long-term analysis isn’t as good.

WalletInvestor predicts the value to be $55.162 by 2026. DigitalCoinPrice, conversely, predicts that the value will only rise to $30.88 by 2025.

The long-term price will depend on how low the transaction speed is for the coin compared to its peers. Adoption will fuel further growth.

The token was introduced in 2020 and has seen an all-time increase of 2500%. The maximum supply of NEAR tokens is 1 billion, and the current volume is 607 million. The investments in the project in 2021 hugely increased its value, and it is unlikely that the same bump will appear again.

User Comments

NEAR Protocol has risen in value massively over the last year, due to investments from Coinbase ventures. They also have a specific project that is set out for them in the future, and it gives the token a sense of reliability. Direct competition with Ethereum gives the project something to chase as well.

The gains for investors over the past years have been exponential. And although it isn’t expected to be as steep a rise this year, there is reason to believe that NEAR will experience a net growth in value.