47
In this article about Green Cryptocurrencies I talk about NEAR Protocol, that provides the ideal environment for DApps and creates a developer and user-friendly platform, using human-readable account names, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses common to Ethereum.
NEAR also introduces unique solutions to scaling problems and has its own consensus mechanism called Doomslug, a variation of the proof of stake consensus mechanism. Doomslug is based on two rounds of consensus, where a block is considered finalized as soon as it has received the first communication round. This allows for near-instant finality by having validators take turns producing blocks rather than competing directly based on their stake. The total supply is 1,000,000,000 NEAR.
However, this needs to be understood in the light of an overall small footprint due to the advantages of a proof-of-stale protocol instead of proof-of-work, in fact proof-of-stake offers a more climate-friendly alternative to proof-of-work. NEAR’s carbon footprint was evaluated by South Pole, a leading player in global climate solutions based in Zurich, Switzerland, and promising results were published. It concluded that NEAR is 200,000 times more carbon-efficient than Bitcoin. Further insisting on its efforts toward climate neutrality, NEAR promised to compensate for its small carbon footprint by building CO2-offsetting projects. The NEAR protocol is one of the few blockchains in the industry working towards an environmentally-conscious web3, and it has been rewarded with a carbon neutrality certification. Furthermore NEAR supports tree-planting projects: Kariba Forest Protection, Vegachi Forest Restoration, and Afognak Forest Carbon.
Near Protocol was founded in 2017 by software developer Alexander Skidanov and software engineer Illia Polosukhin. Alexander started his career in 2009 at Microsoft and he has several licenses and certifications: Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree, Computational Neuroscience and Digital Signal Processing. He won a gold medal at ACM ICPC 2008. In 2011 Alexander joined MemSQL (now SingleStore) as Engineer #1. Illia is an Artificial Intelligence Researcher and is passionate about Machine Intelligence, understanding natural language. He held the position of Software Engineer at Salford Systems and Engineering Manager at Google, where he was a major TensorFlow contributor and managed the team building question-answering capabilities for the core Google search. He has a license and certification of Introduction to Artificial intelligence. He is also an author of several notable research papers.
NEAR Protocol is developed by NEAR Foundation, a Swiss non-profit foundation that is responsible for contracting protocol maintainers, funding ecosystem development, and shepherding core governance of the NEAR Protocol.
In February 2021 NEAR and The Graph to bring Indexing and Querying to the NEAR blockchain. Now developers building applications on NEAR are able to build subgraphs (open APIs), and index blockchain data more efficiently. In March 2021 NEAR with Mask Network tocooperate between their base layer technologies as well as on the application front. Nowdevelopers from both communities join forces and explore new opportunities at the intersection of these two protocols.
NEAR has a position on Coinmarketcap oscillating between the twentieth and the thirtieth place of the most capitalized coins.
Leave a comment below and tell me what you think about NEAR Protocol, the role of Cryptocurrencies in the environment protection, the aspects that can be improved and if you know other notable green Cryptocurrencies. Consider this space a place to talk without censorship.
A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.
Disclaimer: I am not aware of any third party rights on the images used. I undertake to cite the source if there are any and to adjust the position if requested.
Disclaimer: Trading cryptocurrencies carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Before deciding to trade cryptocurrency you should carefully consider your investment objectives and your level of experience. Do Your Own Research. All opinions expressed here are owned by the respective writer and should never be considered as financial advice in any form.
