What are NEAR Smart Contracts?
Software developers today prefer NEAR due to its convenient user interface, security and scalability.
NEAR protocol is based on a community administrated and shared platform that overcomes certain drawbacks existing in several blockchain predecessors like network scalability, limitations of high cost, low transaction speed and environmental sustainability. Due to these benefits, it provides the most suitable ecosystem for developing dApps and Smart Contracts.
NEAR is also a decentralized application platform that offers a high-functioning and reliable infrastructure to assist the development of scalable dApps by providing benefits like high speed, high throughput, and good cross-chain compatibility. It is one of the fastest networks to manage up to 100,000 transactions per second, apart from instant block creation in 1.2 seconds.
NEAR protocol consists of an ever-expanding network of thousands of community members worldwide. It incentivizes a blockchain network to create and launch decentralized apps on the DeFi platform and generates profit by staking and sharding on the network’s platform. It is a secure and permissionless blockchain platform that uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
Sharding is the core concept of the NEAR protocol’s design. It is a database partitioning technique used for scalability where the network infrastructure is split into smaller portions known as shards to handle a fraction of the network’s transactions. Near protocol’s approach to sharding is called Nightshade, which differs slightly from traditional sharding. In Nightshade, each shard produces its batch of data called a chunk added to other chunks to create a block. A single validator produces each block by assembling the created chunks into a block. Thanks to Nightshade sharding, NEAR protocol facilitates the demand for more transactions even during a user surge. It permits the NEAR platform to scale linearly with the total number of shards.
Two parts of NEAR apps
Web applications of the NEAR protocol have two different parts, a front-end and a back-end:
Smart contracts
Smart contracts handle the storage and remodeling of data on-chain, and it requires disclosing the methods through which clients can “see” and “change” the state of the contract.
Interactions with Smart Contract(s)
Like the Cloud API, we have the right to interact with our contracts or contracts offered by others. To do this, use the near-api-js QuickStart and Code Snippets available in your application.
Features of near-api-js
JSON-RPC interface is the basis of the NEAR ecosystem. Near-api-js wraps the RPC interface with useful functions and exposes NEAR primitives in the form of JavaScript objects. It is used as the primary interface for the NEAR protocol when creating JavaScript (client-side or server-side). It has the following features:
- Transaction creation
- Generation of key pairs
- Transaction signing
- Sending the transactions via network
Languages and tools to compile a Smart Contract on NEAR
Any languages supported by Web Assembly(Wasm) can be used to compile a smart contract on the NEAR platform, but developers usually use one of the following:
Rust(near-sdk-rs)
Rust is a wrapper that enhances the safety of the Rust programming language, which is used to create high-value smart contracts.
AssemblyScript(near-sdk-as)
AssemblyScript is a set of helpers that make smart contracts seem like TypeScript while compiling them in Wasm so that they can be executed specifically. Because of the newness of the programming language and the compilation tools linked with it, it is presently not employed in the development of financially decentralized apps.
You can use whichever language you prefer to build your Smart Contracts; remember that, once compiled to Wasm, both are ultimately deployed and executed on the NEAR protocol precisely in the same manner.
Let us go through the basics of calling and deploying a smart contract now that we have a glimpse of the languages and tools used to develop smart contracts on the NEAR platform.
Calling Smart contracts on NEAR Protocol
Use the near-api-js Quickstarts and Code Snippets to wrap up the JSON-RPC calls.
Deploying Smart Contracts
There is a testnet where we can run our local network and a mainnet, similar to the NEAR Platform. The status of the smart contract is determined by the type of network on which it is placed and if we want to call it from the same network, we must double-check our setup while deploying, testing, and calling it.
Why build Smart Contracts on NEAR Protocol?
NEAR has a robust and progressive User Experience (UX) for dApp users on the DeFi platform. It is environmentally friendly, emerging as one of the best digital market ecosystems. The sharding mechanism used by the NEAR ecosystem enables smooth data retrieval and also facilitates dApp scaling on the DeFi platforms.
Let us understand why startups and businesses prefer building Smart Contracts on the NEAR protocol.
Sustainability
NEAR platform provides a streamlined Proof-of-Stake mechanism drafted to guarantee the network’s sustainability, making it highly efficient to run various blockchain solutions.
Cost-effective
The network levies 1000 times lower transaction fees for users, comparatively less than average third-generation blockchains. Moreover, the developers earn 30% of the transaction fees for contributing to the ecosystem’s growth.
User-friendly
User-friendly, human-readable account names are generated using a scoped DNS pattern in the NEAR protocol. People with low technical knowledge about blockchain and the NEAR protocol can easily use the ecosystem.
Secure
The flourishing network of active validators maintains integrity and ensures high security across the protocol.
Pragmatic
Basic community-supported programming languages like Rust and Assembly are used to write smart contracts on the NEAR ecosystem, thus avoiding the complexity of the whole process.
It’s about Developing & Deploying Smart Contracts
The NEAR platform is one of the most futuristic and progressive protocols available in the blockchain industry today and it is technically advanced and innovative in many terms. It focuses on creating decentralized applications using sharding technology to attain scalability. Offering benefits like human-readable account names instead of cryptographic wallet addresses, NEAR assists dApp users in interacting with the blockchain network and smart contracts. Its benefits make the NEAR network one of the best platforms for developing and deploying smart contracts, dApps and other blockchain-related services.
Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for his valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
