Okcoin is the first US licensed crypto exchange to offer NEAR against US dollars (USD) – and you can buy, sell, and trade it with some of the lowest fees in the industry. To celebrate, we’re teaming up with NEAR to give you 20 NEAR after you buy $50 in NEAR on Okcoin
TL;DR
- What? You can now buy, sell, and trade NEAR crypto against USD.
- Who? All Okcoin customers outside of Europe, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Brunei.
- When? Now!
What is NEAR?
NEAR Protocol is a Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain platform. What is NEAR’s main value proposition, compared to other blockchains? Well, Bitcoin and Ethereum notoriously have scaling issues: The more people who join their networks, the slower and more expensive it can be to transact on them. In addition, most existing blockchain platforms are difficult to use, creating high barriers of entry to those outside crypto.
In order to bypass the scalability problem, NEAR is built around the concept of “sharding”, using a novel mechanism called “Nightshade”. While other blockchain protocols require each node in the network to settle every transaction, the idea of Nightshade is to have transactions executed by groups of “shards” – different servers each storing only parts of the blockchain. The result is a net gain in transaction speed and capacity.
When it comes to user experience, NEAR relies on account addresses that are easy to read for humans – as opposed to the usual long strings of numbers. It’s also possible to use NEAR without having to deal immediately with the challenges crypto beginners dread, such as gas fees, storage costs and seed phrases. These aspects of the decentralized application experience only show up when users feel ready to claim their wallet and hold their own tokens.
As a smart contract platform, the protocol also supports interoperability with Ethereum and other decentralized application platforms. NEAR is also used as a base-layer to build NFT platforms. A recent example is NEAR’s partnership with the Universal Hip Hop Museum to launch a series of NFTs around 47 hip-hop legends. This is why NEAR is sometimes seen as an up-and-coming competitor to Ethereum and other blockchain projects built around smart contracts, like EOS and Polkadot.
NEAR is the native token of the NEAR Protocol. It is used to:
- Pay transactions and data storage fees.
- Run validator nodes on the network – this is done by staking NEAR tokens.
- Take part in governance votes to determine how network resources are allocated.
How to unlock your 20 NEAR coins
We’re celebrating our latest listing by giving you $40 worth of NEAR when you create a NEAR wallet or log in to your existing account. Be one of the first 5,000 customers to complete these steps and watch it drop into your account.
1. Sign up
It’s really simple to participate:
- To sign-up, click here
- To confirm you want to take part, buy $50 in NEAR on Okcoin.
2. Activate your offer
When you sign up, we’ll send you an email containing a link to unlock your NEAR rewards. You’ll have 10 calendar days to open the link after you receive it. The link will take you to a page similar to the screenshot below. If you don’t already have a .near address, click on Claim with New Account.
Already have a NEAR web wallet? Great! Click Claim with Existing Account.
3. Create a NEAR account if you don’t have one
If you’re new to NEAR, enter the account name you’d like – if it’s available, click Create Account to create a .near address unique to you. Here’s an example:
4. Secure your NEAR account
When you log in, you’ll get a seed phrase containing 10 words. Please write them down and keep them in a safe place – this is the only way to access your NEAR wallet. When you have your seed phrase somewhere safe, click Continue.
5. Unlock your reward
That’s it! When you log in or set-up your wallet, you’ll see a confirmation like the one below. (Don’t worry if it takes a few extra seconds — NEAR transactions are fast but not instant). You’ll have $40 in NEAR to hold onto. Learn more about the terms and conditions
