NEAR's purpose is to enable community-driven innovation to benefit people around the world.
To achieve this purpose, NEAR provides a developer platform where developers and entrepreneurs can create apps that put users back in control of their data and assets, which is the foundation of "Open Web" movement.
One of the components of NEAR is the NEAR Protocol, an infrastructure for server-less applications and smart contracts powered by a blockchain. NEAR Protocol is built to deliver usability and scalability of modern PaaS like Firebase at fraction of the prices that blockchains like Ethereum charge.
Overall, NEAR provides a wide range of tools for developers to easily build applications:
- JS Client library to connect to NEAR Protocol from your applications.
- Rust and JavaScript/TypeScript SDKs to write smart contracts and stateful server-less functions.
- Several essential repositories to guide you in building across Near's Open Web Platform.
- Numerous examples with links to hack on them right inside your browser.
- Lots of documentation, with Tutorials and API docs.
The easiest way to join the network, is by using the nearup command, which you can install as follows:
pip3 install --user nearupYou can join all the active networks:
- mainnet:
nearup run mainnet - testnet:
nearup run testnet - betanet:
nearup run betanet
Check the nearup repository for more details on how to run with or without docker.
To learn how to become a validator, checkout documentation.
The workflow and details of setup to contribute are described in CONTRIBUTING.md, and security policy is described in SECURITY.md. To propose new protocol changes or standards use Specification & Standards repository.
We use Zulip for semi-synchronous technical discussion, feel free to chime in:
For non-technical discussion and overall direction of the project, see our Discourse forum: