NEAR Pushes 'Signatures' on Mainnet, in Growing Trend of Chain Abstraction

NEAR Foundation, the non-profit behind the NEAR blockchain, announced on Thursday that a new feature designed to make it easier to seamlessly transact between networks is live on mainnet – adding to a growing trend of projects working on a design concept known as "chain abstraction."

The feature, Chain Signatures, was introduced in testnet in March, and allows users with a NEAR account to sign transactions on blockchains it supports, without the need for cross-chain bridges. The move is supposed to eliminate some of the steps when it comes to transacting on different chains, making it faster and easier to use.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin has personally touted the project's roadmap towards chain abstraction, which aims to simplify the user experience in crypto that exists due to the growing multi-chain ecosystems. Router Protocol, an unrelated project designed around chain abstraction but built using Cosmos blockchain technology, launched its main network last week.

Chain Signatures are at the center of NEAR's chain abstraction ethos, said Kendall Cole, CEO of Proximity Labs, which supports the NEAR ecosystem, in an interview with CoinDesk.

“It's definitely the core product," Cole said. "It will enable some other really important products.”

NEAR argues that introducing Chain Signatures can facilitate easier DeFi activities like borrowing, lending or trading.

“This capability dramatically expands the liquidity and utility of assets across blockchains, creating a seamless and efficient financial ecosystem,” NEAR wrote in a press release.

NEAR’s Chain Signatures could, for example, enable decentralized finance (DeFi) for blockchains like Bitcoin that do not traditionally support smart contracts.

“We have one application going live that's kind of exploring that, which is a DEX that will let users trade between Bitcoin and any other chain,” Cole said to CoinDesk.

Bitcoin has seen a flurry of activity over the last few months, with projects popping up aiming to bring layer-2 networks and non-fungible tokens to the Bitcoin network.

“What our technology enables is a smart contract on NEAR to custody bitcoin on the Bitcoin network,” Cole told CoinDesk.

Read more: NEAR Launches Multichain Transaction From One Account Feature