NEAR is the native token of the NEAR Protocol blockchain. NEAR Protocol blockchain is a shared, proof-of-stake and layer-one blockchain that is simple to use, secure, scalable and it is built using a novel consensus mechanism called Doomslug. The NEAR Protocol blockchain was created and developed by the NEAR Foundation. Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin are the co-founders of NEAR Foundation.

Alexander Skidanov - Co-Founder

Alexander Skidanov is the co-founder of NEAR Foundation. He is a computer scientist who worked at Microsoft as Software Engineer and also worked at the database company MemSQL as Director of Engineering.

Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder

Illia Polosukhin is the co-founder of NEAR Foundation. He is an artificial intelligence researcher who worked at Google’s Research Center as an Engineering Manager and helped in the development of language technologies for Google Translate.

Erik Trautman - Contributor

Erik Trautman is the former CEO of NEAR Foundation and now the contributor, who will be supporting and advising the NEAR Foundation in creating bridges through product, growth, and community to help NEAR-based applications achieve mass adoption.

Marieke Flament - CEO

NEAR Foundation has appointed former Circle and Mettle executive Marieke Flament as its new CEO, effective 1 January 2022. She is a Computer Engineer. At Circle, Marieke Flament became the company’s first global CMO and at NatWest, Marieke Flament was CEO of SME banking app Mettle.