NEAR Accounts

A unique account model that supports multiple types of addresses, access keys, and smart contracts.

Users participate in the NEAR ecosystem through their NEAR accounts. These accounts are identified by a unique address, can optionally hold a smart contract, and are controlled through Access Keys.

By signing transactions with their account, users can:

1. Send and receive digital assets (such as tokens or collectibles)
2. Create and interact with on-chain applications known as smart contracts
3. Control accounts in other chains (such as Ethereum or Bitcoin) ✨
4. Help onboard new users by covering the costs of their transactions (gas fees)

[!TIP]

Want to create an account?

Check out our tutorial on Creating a NEAR Account to get started!

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Account Model Overview

Let's take a closer look at the different elements that compose the NEAR account model.

Account ID

NEAR natively implements multiple types of addresses, including:

1. Named accounts such as alice.near, which are simple to remember and share
2. Implicit accounts such as fb924c... (64 chars), derived from an ed25519 private key
3. Ethereum-like accounts, controlled by Ethereum wallets
4. Deterministic accounts such as 0s85f17... (42 chars), derived from their initial code and storage
5. Universal accounts such as 0u0000... (54 chars), derived from their initial code, storage, and keys

Multiple Keys

NEAR accounts can have multiple keys, each with their own set of permissions:

• You can easily swap keys if one gets compromised
• You can use keys as authorization tokens for third-party applications

Smart Contracts

NEAR accounts can optionally hold an application - known as a smart contract - which can store data and expose functions to interact with it.

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Comparison With Ethereum

If you're familiar with development on Ethereum, it's worth making a quick note about how accounts are different. The table below summarizes some key differences:

	Ethereum Account	NEAR Account
Account ID	Public Key (0x123...)	- Native named accounts (alice.near) - Implicit accounts (0x123...)
Secret Key	Private Key (0x456...)	Multiple key-pairs with permissions: - FullAccess key - FunctionCall key
Smart Contracts	Synchronous execution	Asynchronous execution
Gas Fees	In the order of dollars	In the order of tenths of a cent
Block Time	~12 seconds	~600 milliseconds