NEAR Mainnet Boosts Security and Scalability with New Tech Stack
NEAR Protocol has made significant strides in its blockchain infrastructure development by implementing stateless validation, self-splitting shards, and post-quantum NIST-approved signatures on its mainnet.
The inclusion of these technologies represents ongoing efforts to enhance NEAR's underlying architecture, covering network validation, shard architecture, and cryptographic security.
Stateless validation, in particular, changes the way validators handle blockchain state, allowing for validation without requiring every validator to maintain the full state locally. This approach is closely tied to how network resources are managed as transaction activity and application requirements change.
The implementation of self-splitting shards divides blockchain activity across multiple segments, or shards, rather than processing all activity through a single execution environment. NEAR's mainnet now includes this architectural mechanism for shards to divide as required by the network's design.
Post-quantum cryptography is also live on NEAR mainnet, specifically NIST-approved signatures designed to address security threats associated with sufficiently powerful quantum computers.