Near Protocol raises $350M in new funding led by Tiger Global

Near Protocol, a relatively new layer 1 blockchain, announced on Wednesday that it secured a substantial $350 million in funding from top venture capitalists and investors. Combining the capital raised from its January funding round, Near Protocol has already raised half a billion dollars in just 2022 alone.

Led by popular VC firm Tiger Global, the round also included participation from Republic Capital, FTX Ventures, Hashed, Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, Blockchange Ventures, and MetaWeb.vc. The platform seeks to “accelerate the decentralization of the NEAR ecosystem,” per the press release issued today.

Similar to the Ethereum blockchain, Near Protocol offers smart contracts functionality with its own consensus mechanism called “Doomslug.” However, unlike Ethereum, the protocol has centered its operability around sharding, which distributes the network’s infrastructure to various nodes. The nodes, in turn, handle only a fraction of transactions occurring on the blockchain, thereby improving transaction throughput and cost-efficiency.

John Curtius, a partner at Tiger Global, said in the announcement post:

“NEAR is poised to be a leading smart contract blockchain platform, combining first-rate technology with a fast-growing developer ecosystem. We’re excited to support NEAR as we ramp up our investments in the digital asset space.”

With the current market cap of $10.46 billion, the NEAR token ranks 19th in CoinMarketCap’s ranking of top cryptocurrencies. The token was trading at $15.78 with a 24-hour price shift of -5.24%.

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