KEY TAKEAWAYS
- NEAR Protocol achieved 1 million transactions per second using real core code and cost-effective hardware.
- The benchmark validates NEAR’s sharding architecture, crucial for blockchain scalability without compromising decentralization.
- NEAR’s Nightshade 2.0 upgrade enhances efficiency, positioning it as a leader in high-volume DeFi and onchain commerce.
- Future plans include dynamic resharding and optimizations to support the growing multi-chain and AI economy.
NEAR Protocol has reached a significant milestone by achieving 1 million transactions per second (TPS) in a publicly verifiable benchmark. This achievement was accomplished using real NEAR core code, realistic workloads, and cost-effective Google Compute Engine C4D machines across 70 shards. The results were announced here.
This benchmark validates NEAR’s architectural thesis that sharding is essential for blockchain scalability. With the implementation of Nightshade 2.0, stateless validation, and sharded contract execution via Deterministic Accounts, NEAR is poised to scale as application demand increases, without compromising decentralization or cost.
The Road to 1M TPS: NEAR’s Sharding Vision
Most blockchains rely on monolithic architectures that struggle under real user load. NEAR, however, was designed as a sharded Layer 1 blockchain, distributing execution, storage, and state across parallel shards. This architecture allows for horizontal scaling, where TPS increases linearly with the addition of shards, maintaining low and predictable costs even as usage rises.
Last year, NEAR launched the Nightshade 2.0 sharding upgrade on its mainnet, introducing stateless validation and significantly enhancing the protocol’s efficiency and scalability. These innovations have positioned NEAR as a leading blockchain for high-volume cross-chain DeFi and onchain agentic commerce.
Methodology: Designing a Realistic, Verifiable Benchmark
The engineering team established strict requirements to ensure the benchmark’s credibility and reproducibility. The benchmark used real NEAR core code, affordable hardware, and a reasonable shard count of up to 80, demonstrating horizontal scaling. The results are publicly verifiable, allowing anyone to reproduce them using the same commit and scripts.
The benchmark setup involved 70 shards and consumer-grade hardware, modeling realistic Layer 1 user behavior at scale. Key parameters included 1 million total accounts per shard and native token transfers, with transactions injected directly into the mempool.
Results and Implications for the NEAR Ecosystem
The system peaked at over 1,000,000 TPS across 70 shards during the benchmark window, with stable block production and predictable throughput. This performance is publicly viewable on a shared Grafana dashboard and can be reproduced by anyone following the provided scripts.
This milestone demonstrates NEAR’s capability to support high-load decentralized applications and the emerging onchain AI economy. The achievement was made possible on accessible hardware, ensuring decentralization and diversity within NEAR’s validator network.
Looking ahead, NEAR plans to continue its scalability efforts, focusing on dynamic resharding, sharded smart contracts, and further optimizations to support the growing demand of the multi-chain ecosystem and the fast-emerging AI economy.
Why This Matters: Impact, Industry Trends & Expert Insights
NEAR Protocol has achieved a milestone by reaching 1 million transactions per second (TPS) in a benchmark test, showcasing its scalability through sharding technology. This development highlights NEAR’s potential to handle high-load decentralized applications and support the emerging onchain AI economy.
Recent industry reports indicate that blockchain scalability trends in December 2025 strongly emphasize modular architectures and sharding as key solutions to the scalability trilemma. This is evident in NEAR’s benchmark achievement, which utilizes sharding to significantly boost transaction throughput and maintain low costs across multiple shards. This aligns with NEAR’s architectural thesis and its strategic focus on scalability without compromising decentralization.
As per insights from a CryptoAdventure review, NEAR Protocol’s scalability is anchored in its Nightshade sharding technology, enabling parallel processing across multiple shards and sustaining high throughput with low transaction fees. This reinforces NEAR’s position as a leading scalable Layer-1 blockchain, supporting its vision for a high-performance infrastructure capable of handling the demands of modern decentralized applications.
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