Can the launch of the algorithmic stablecoin USN help Near win the turnaround?
Original source: Chain Tea House
Original source: Chain Tea House
Since April, there have been more and more news about Near Protocol, including the recent completion of a $350 million financing round, and the upcoming launch of the stablecoin USN.
Chain Tea House also released an article the day before yesterday to introduce USN in advance (an algorithmic stablecoin USN with an annualized rate of 20% is about to be launched, "the future belongs to NEAR"?), USN will be the algorithmic stablecoin of the Near ecology, and will be released after release. Provide 20% annualized rate of return, benchmarking against Terra's UST.
All kinds of good news have driven the market value of NEAR to continue to rise, but it is worth noting that Near Protocol has been in a low-key state for most of its existence, although technically, he has always been a potential competitor of Ethereum, and Ethereum The sharding expansion that can only be achieved after the Fang 2.0 upgrade, Near has already done it or even done it better.
Then I have to think about why Near, which was launched in October 2020, has only now begun to be discovered by the market. Is the launch of USN a clarion call for progress or a cry of despair?
The horn of progress?
NEAR began in 2017 as a machine learning project called NEAR.ai, initiated by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin. At the beginning, they didn't want to study a public chain directly, but wanted to deploy their projects on a suitable chain, but found that no chain could meet their needs.
So they started research in August 2018, and on October 13, 2020, Near Protocol was officially launched.
Near belongs to the Layer 1 blockchain, and the consensus mechanism is the same as other public chains issued later, using POS proof of rights. But unlike other chains, Near introduces a unique solution to the scaling problem. "Nightshade" can make Near's transaction processing capacity scale linearly with the number of shards. As a result, Near will always be able to meet transaction demand as adoption grows.
Near is technically excellent. As far as the public chain performance parameter TPS is concerned, as of January 2022, Near’s transaction processing capacity per second will reach 100,000 transactions, while Solana’s 65,000 transactions and Polkadot’s 1,000 transactions in the same period. Ethereum can only achieve the same transaction volume after completing the 2.0 upgrade in 23 years.
In addition, Terra has not yet started. Cosmos' Evmos and Solana's Neon are working hard to implement EVM, and Near has already been implemented through Aurora. This allows developers to easily deploy smart contracts from Ethereum to NEAR. Thanks to NEAR's sharding expansion technology, users no longer need to spend high transaction fees, and do not have to bear the long waiting time for confirmation.
In terms of developer activism, both developers and the NEAR Foundation are very active in the NEAR community. According to data from Electric Capital, Near is the public chain with the most full-time monthly active developers in any Layer1 blockchain, and the number of developers has quadrupled in the past two years. This number guarantees the construction of Near's future ecology .
Near is very popular with capital. In addition to completing the financing of 350 million US dollars not long ago, Near often appears in the top three positions of many top crypto capitals. NEAR is Alamedas' largest holding outside of Bitcoin; in DCG's latest holding, Near also ranks third.
A cry of despair?
From the perspectives of technology, development, ecology, capital, etc., Near Protocol seems to be better than the unrealized Ethereum 2.0, but this is not the case. There are very serious problems behind Near Protocol's excellent technical aspects.
Inflation Token Model People often choose cryptocurrencies to avoid inflation, but Near Protocol's NEAR is an inflation token. NEAR circulation has more than tripled since 2020. In addition to the 5% annual inflation used to incentivize validators, early contributor tokens are unlocked much faster than other projects.
Although NEAR also has a burning mechanism, 70% of transaction fees will be burned. But in order for inflation to be 0%, the network must process over 1 billion transactions per day, and 1.5 billion transactions for deflation. Otherwise, the supply line will only get higher and higher.
Miserable Fundamentals 1 Billion Trades? This is an astronomical figure for the current Near. In the past two months, the number of daily transactions in Near has been basically below 820,000. The highest number of transactions occurred on January 16 this year, reaching 1.7 million.
There may still be a lack of stablecoins as a medium. In addition to the low transaction volume on the chain, the fundamental data of other public chains, including TVL, number of contracts, user volume, etc., are not as good as other public chains. Especially in the ranking of public chains, Near is placed in Others in almost all data.
Serious centralization Solana is often labeled as the most centralized public chain, but Near is even more centralized. As of today, there are only 100 verification nodes in Near, compared with 73 in January and 54 last year, while Solana There are even 1462 of them.
Summarize
Summarize
When the various advantages and disadvantages are listed, it seems that it is difficult to decide whether NEAR is a good project or not, and even began to doubt the motivation of major crypto capitals to hold NEAR heavily.
That's right, Near has extremely strong performance, and can easily beat ETH1.0 by a few blocks; that's right, Near will launch USN, which will greatly help the NEAR ecosystem to build corresponding DeFi projects; yes, many capitals are optimistic about Near.
But for a public chain project, the most important thing is how it compares with other public chains. Judging from the current data, the fundamentals of Near are still hidden in "Others", and most people can't even name any well-known projects in the Near ecosystem. Only the eighteenth market value can appear in the public in view.
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