Quick TakeNEAR is a sharded blockchain project, which recently raised $21.6 million in a token sale led by a16z crypto and sold nearly $30 million in NEAR tokens to investors on CoinlistIn May 2020, NEAR protocol launched its mainnet’s Phase 0 — during which the chain is run by a permissioned set of validatorsThe ETH-NEAR Rainbow bridge will initially enable ERC20 token transfers between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchain