Near Protocol (Near) NEAR Protocol makes use of Nightshade technology to significantly enhance the transaction processing capabilities. Nightshade is an advanced form of sharding where transactions are handled concurrently by different validator groups across several shard chains. Unlike other traditional sharding methods, Nightshade's shards contribute portions of a block, known as "chunks," which allows the assembly of a complete block.
This innovative approach enables NEAR to process up to 100,000 transactions every second, allowing transactions almost instantly due to the rapid one-second block intervals. Moreover, this efficiency is achieved while maintaining transaction fees at an almost negligible level, making it a cost-effective solution.
At the time of writing, Near protocol price was exchanging hands close to $5.57. The price is the culmination of over 133% in the last two quarters and 52.57% on a year to date basis. Although, it's still whopping 72.11% below its record high attained on January 17th 2022.
Out of a total 1.19 Billion tokens 1.088 Billion NEAR tokens are currently in the circulation. It has a live market capitalization of 6.06 Billion USD ranking at 18th in the cryptoverse