NEAR Protocol is a decentralized application platform designed to generate practical applications on the web. The network uses a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism called Nightshade, aimed at providing scalability and stable transaction fees.
NEAR Protocol launched its mainnet on April 22, 2020, with an initial supply of 1 billion tokens. Each year, 5% more tokens are minted as support for the network's starting rewards (epoch rewards). Of these, 90% (or 4.5% of the total) goes to validators, and 10% (or 0.5% of the total) is allocated to the protocol's reserve fund. 30% of the transaction fees are used as contract discounts for transactions, while the remaining 70% is burned.
NEAR Protocol was created by developers Alex Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, both with extensive experience in programming. The two met while Skidanov was working at the Y Combinator accelerator in the United States, and they began collaborating on the project in 2018, with the main goal of reducing friction for developers in building and launching software.
Reference: CoinMarketCap