NEARNEAR Protocol: history, founders and key events
From Apr 22, 2020 to today, every major rally, crash and upgrade, each with a dated, sourced price.
Open the interactive timelineLatest close in our data: $5.01 (Bitstamp NEAR/USD daily close, 2026-10-14).
Origin story
NEAR Protocol was founded in 2018 by Illia Polosukhin, a former Google AI researcher and co author of the Transformer paper, and Alexander Skidanov. It aims to be an easy to use, sharded smart contract platform.
The mainnet launched in phases starting April 22, 2020, and token transfers were enabled by a validator vote in October 2020.
Founders: Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov.
Source: Binance NEAR/USDT daily closes 2020-10-14 to 2022-08-31; Bitstamp NEAR/USD daily closes 2022-09-01 to 2026-10-14. Fetched Oct 14, 2026 from free public APIs. Click a dot for the event and its price on that day.
Browse by year
Key events
- Apr 22, 2020launch
NEAR mainnet launch
NEAR's restricted mainnet goes live. - Oct 13, 2020milestone
Token transfers enabled
Validators vote to unlock NEAR transfers. - Oct 14, 2020milestone
First daily close in our data $1.17 (Binance NEAR/USDT daily close, 2020-10-14)
Our sourced NEAR price history begins on this day. - Jan 14, 2022rally
Highest close in our data $20.18 (Binance NEAR/USDT daily close, 2022-01-14)
The highest daily close for NEAR in our price history. - Feb 11, 2026crash
Lowest close after the peak $0.957 (Bitstamp NEAR/USD daily close, 2026-02-11)
The lowest NEAR close in our data after its highest close.
Updated
Sources
Facts written in our own words. Last checked Oct 14, 2026.