Decentralized application blockchain NEAR Protocol is live following a 6-month release road-map begun in May, according to the developer team.
The Andreessen Horowitz-backed blockchain project successfully transitioned to Phase 2 of Mainnet on October 13 following an unexpected vote from the network’s validators, NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin told CoinDesk in a phone interview.
“It is now possible for anyone to send or receive tokens, to create accounts, to participate in validation, to launch applications or to otherwise use the network,” the team said in a release shared with CoinDesk.
Polosukhin said the project’s “liquid democracy” function that allows token holders to delegate governance to validator pools unexpectedly led NEAR Foundation members to launch the network earlier than expected .
The network was previously operating under a limited Proof-of-Authority (PoA) model. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchain is now operating under its own “Threshold” Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
NEAR Foundation CEO Erik Trautman told CoinDesk the project took longer to vet over the summer months than originally intended as “edge case” performance issues were being addressed. He said some 1,000 delegations occured ahead of the vote that launched NEAR on Tuesday.
The IMF, G20 and BIS Gear Up for the Central Bank Digital Currency Era
New reports on digital currency design principles and regulatory standards show just how quickly the world’s bankers are moving.
Today on the Brief:
- Is the “blue wave” Democrat victory narrative in the presidential election starting to shake up Wall Street?
- Johnson & Johnson pause COVID-19 vaccine trial
- 1000 Satoshi-era bitcoins are on the move
Our main discussion: The world’s central banks are moving quickly on digital currencies. NLW looks at a slew of recent news showing how much of a priority CBDCs are becoming:
- A report from the Bank for International Settlements and seven other central banks setting design principles for CBDCs
- A G20 regulatory standards framework
- A forthcoming OECD tax reporting framework
One need only look at the increasingly speedy rollout of China’s DCEP to understand why this has become a major priority for central banks everywhere.