The NEAR protocol was created in 2018 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, and NEAR crypto is the ecosystem's native coin. Prior to co-founding NEAR Inc., the two worked at companies such as Google, Microsoft, and MemSQL. They started with a machine learning project before transitioning to blockchain technology. Thanks to NEAR, the "open web" will be decentralised and permission-free. This means that it cannot be shut down by a corporation, a government, or a single individual. It is instead dependent on people and programming. NEAR does not want to create what it considers to be a closed, biassed environment, citing Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook as an example. NEAR aspires to create a space in which people have control over their own data. NEAR's proposed solution is the "community cloud," where users can store "useful things like money, identity, and digital assets and safely transact them with anyone without needing someone else's permission or platform."
https://near.org

NEAR coin is the native token of the NEAR Protocol, a highly scalable blockchain network that aims to provide a developer-friendly and user-friendly platform for decentralized applications (dApps). NEAR Protocol is built on a sharded architecture, which means that the network is divided into smaller shards or partitions, each of which can process transactions independently. This sharding architecture allows NEAR to achieve a high level of throughput and scalability, making it a promising platform for dApps with a large number of users.

NEAR coin is used for a variety of purposes within the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, including:

Paying transaction fees: When you send or receive NEAR tokens, or interact with dApps on the NEAR Protocol, you will need to pay a small transaction fee in NEAR coins.

Staking: Staking is the process of holding NEAR coins in a validator node to help secure the network. In return for staking their NEAR coins, validators earn rewards in the form of new NEAR coins.

Governance: NEAR coin holders can participate in the governance of the NEAR Protocol by voting on proposed changes to the protocol.

NEAR coin is a promising cryptocurrency with a strong team and a well-designed platform. It has the potential to become a major player in the dApp space.