Cardano vs Near

Cardano uses the Ouroboros Proof‑of‑Stake protocol and an Extended‑UTxO ledger that enables deterministic smart contracts in Plutus and Aiken. Its ‘Basho’ scaling era introduced Hydra Head sidechains capable of 1000 TPS per head, and Mithril light‑client proofs for mobile wallets. Over 1 500 stake pools secure the network and participate in on‑chain treasury governance.

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.