The upcoming Near layer 1 blockchain upgrade will allow the network to scale dynamically without human intervention.
The market is giving it the thumbs up, causing the price of the native token to rise considerably. NEAR has gained over 27% in the last 24 hours to trade at $2.25.
“Dynamic sharding is coming to NEAR. The upcoming network upgrade will allow the protocol to automatically add shards as demand grows,” the protocol announced on
Shards are smaller independent partitions of the blockchain network that process transactions and smart contracts in parallel. Imagine a grocery store with several checkout lines. This helps Near handle more traffic than typical blockchains with a single payment line.
The trick? Until now, opening a new partition in Near has been a slow manual process, requiring weeks of validator coordination, a vote, and a staged implementation.
The upcoming dynamic sharding in June will automate this process. In other words, when the network sees that a specific output line, a fragment, becomes too full, it doesn’t wait for a human to fix it. It splits automatically, not in half, but by adding more independent parallel validators to the system, just as the grocery store would hire new cashiers and customer service staff.
“Adding shards has required a complete protocol upgrade: weeks of validator coordination, a vote, a staged implementation. Dynamic sharding makes it automatic: a shard reaches a state size threshold, is split deterministically, and is validated by state witnesses without human intervention,” Near said in an explanation.
The new feature is particularly critical for an AI-led chain economy, where bots do business with each other, he explained.
Quantum proof
Scaling isn’t the only thing that changes with the impending update. Near is also adding “secure post-quantum signature.”
Quantum fears have gripped the developer community since Google researchers warned that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could be able to crack current blockchains with significantly less firepower than initially expected.
Therefore, Near is installing new locks so that in a few years those super quantum machines will not be able to touch the funds of Near users.
The native token NEAR is the best performing cryptocurrency among the top 100 coins by market capitalization in the last 24 hours thanks to the rally. bitcoin has fallen 0.4% to $77,360.
NEAR’s external performance is supported by strong demand for the Bitwise Near Stake ETF (exchange-traded product) listed in Europe. This week, the ETP has raised $7 million in investor money, according to data shared by Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley.
