*NEAR Protocol (NEAR) - 350+ Words Paragraph*

NEAR Protocol is a Layer-1 blockchain designed to be fast, scalable, and developer-friendly. It was founded in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, both former engineers at Google and Microsoft. The main goal of NEAR is to solve the problems of older blockchains like Ethereum, such as high gas fees, slow transactions, and difficult user experience.

NEAR uses a unique technology called Nightshade sharding. This technology splits the blockchain into multiple pieces or shards, allowing the network to process thousands of transactions per second. Unlike many blockchains that become congested, NEAR can scale linearly as more validators join. It also uses Proof-of-Stake consensus, which is more energy-efficient than Proof-of-Work. Another special feature of NEAR is its focus on usability. It offers human-readable account names like "yourname.near" instead of long addresses, and developers can build dApps using popular languages like Rust and JavaScript.

The native token is NEAR. NEAR is used to pay transaction fees, to stake for securing the network, and for governance. The token has a total supply of over 1 billion, with inflation built-in to reward validators. The ecosystem around NEAR has grown rapidly, especially in areas like DeFi, Gaming, NFTs, and AI. Projects like Aurora, which is an EVM compatible layer on NEAR, allow Ethereum dApps to run on NEAR with much lower fees.

*When was NEAR listed on Binance?*

Binance officially announced the listing of NEAR Protocol on *October 14, 2020*. Binance opened deposits for NEAR before trading. Trading started at 5:00 AM UTC on October 14, 2020 for the pairs NEAR/BTC, NEAR/BNB, NEAR/BUSD, and NEAR/USDT. The listing fee was 0 BNB. This was a major event because Binance listing gave NEAR global liquidity from day one.

*Price History:*

After listing, NEAR traded at around $1 to $2 in 2020. During the 2021 bull market, NEAR had a massive run and reached its all-time high of around *$20.42 in January 2022*. After the bear market in 2022-2023, it dropped to as low as $1.2. In 2024, due to its focus on AI and Chain Abstraction narrative, NEAR recovered and traded between $2.5 and $7.5. Today in 2026, it is trading around $2.5 - $3.5 range with a market cap of over $2.5 billion.

If you are looking for a Layer-1 that combines scalability with a strong focus on AI and user experience, NEAR is considered one of the top Ethereum competitors alongside Solana and Avalanche.