NEAR Protocol launches Top Level Accounts and free Recovery Keys to enable readable onchain identities with built-in recovery and fund control.
Tech & Launches ·
NEAR Protocol has launched Top Level Accounts and free Recovery Keys, features designed to provide users with human-readable onchain identities alongside built-in recovery mechanisms and direct control over funds. The rollout represents a shift toward lowering friction for consumer adoption by addressing a fundamental usability gap in blockchain account management.
The new accounts operate within NEAR's existing architecture, which uses a sharded design called Nightshade to distribute transaction processing across parallel lanes. Recovery Keys function as a safeguard mechanism, allowing users to regain access to their accounts without intermediaries—a critical feature for mainstream users unfamiliar with hardware wallet recovery procedures. By making these tools available at no cost, the protocol reduces barriers to entry for users managing crypto assets directly.
The initiative aligns with NEAR's stated focus on human-scale usability alongside machine-scale throughput. Longer-term, the protocol is preparing dynamic resharding through upgrade 2.13, which aims to automatically expand the network to 70 shards and target 1 million transactions per second, though the actual performance of this upgrade remains to be demonstrated in production.