Bitcoin vs Near

Bitcoin is the first decentralized blockchain, secured by proof‑of‑work where miners expend SHA‑256 hash power to find valid blocks every ~10 minutes. The supply is capped at 21 million coins, with inflation halving roughly every four years—the most recent halving occurred on 20 April 2024. Upgrades like SegWit and Taproot have enabled second‑layer protocols such as the Lightning Network and emerging covenants via OP_CTV debates.

NEAR Protocol employs Nightshade sharding where each block contains chunks from multiple shards, and Doomslug consensus gives 1‑second near‑finality. The JavaScript SDK and Contract Aurora EVM make onboarding Web2 developers easier. In 2024 NEAR launched a chain‑signature wallet standard that leverages passkeys for seedless login.