NEAR Protocol explained: how sharding and 2.5 percent staking work

NEAR Protocol is a standalone first-layer blockchain that splits its work across several sections running in parallel and is secured by stakes of its own coin. The matching currency is also called NEAR, and it pays for transactions, storage and the operators of the network. How the price behaves alongside that is tracked continuously in our NEAR forecast. This text explains the architecture, the purpose of the coin and the points where a holder has to decide something themselves. Every figure carries a date, because on a living network they change.