Layer-1 blockchain Near’s forthcoming upgrade will allow the network to scale dynamically without human intervention.
The market is giving it a thumbs-up, sending the native token’s price sharply higher. NEAR has gained more than 27% in the last 24 hours to trade at $2.25.
“Dynamic resharding is coming to NEAR. The upcoming network upgrade will enable the protocol to add shards automatically as demand grows,” the protocol announced on X. “This delivers on NEAR’s founding vision of building the world’s most scalable blockchain protocol at the highest level of performance.”
Shards are smaller, independent partitions of the blockchain network that process transactions and smart contracts in parallel. Imagine a grocery store with multiple checkout lines. This helps Near handle more traffic than typical blockchains with a single checkout line.
The catch? Until now, opening a new partition on Near has been a slow, manual process, requiring weeks of validator coordination, a vote, and a staged rollout.
The upcoming dynamic resharding in June will automate this process. In other words, when the network sees a specific check out line, a shard, getting too full, it doesn’t wait for a human to fix it. It automatically splits, not in half, but by adding more independent parallel validators to the system, just as the grocery store would hire new cashiers and customer staff.
“Adding shards has required a full protocol upgrade: weeks of validator coordination, a vote, a staged rollout. Dynamic resharding makes it automatic: a shard hits a state size threshold, splits deterministically, and is validated by state witnesses with no human intervention,” Near said in an explainer.
The new feature is particularly foundational to an AI-led onchain economy, where bots are doing business with each other, it explained.
Quantum-proof
Scaling isn’t the only thing changing with the impending upgrade. Near is also adding “post-quantum-safe signing.”
Quantum fears have gripped the developer community ever since Google researchers warned that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer might be able to crack today’s blockchains with significantly less firepower than initially expected.
Near, therefore, is installing new locks so that years from now, those super quantum machines won’t be able to touch funds of Near users.
Native token NEAR is the best-performing cryptocurrency among the top 100 coins by market cap over the past 24 hours thanks to the rally. Bitcoin has dropped 0.4% to $77,360.
NEAR’s external performance is supported by strong demand for the Bitwise Near Staking ETF (exchange-traded product) listed in Europe. This week, the ETP has pulled in $7 million in investor money, according to data shared by Bitwise’s CEO Hunter Horsley.