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by Unity Nodes
docs.near.orgintegrations › exchange integration

Exchange Integration

Updated 01-11-2026

Learn how to integrate NEAR Protocol.

NEAR is an open-source, sharded proof-of-stake blockchain with support for smart contracts.

Property Value / behavior Reference
Native token precision 24 decimals; 1 NEAR = 10²⁴ yoctoNEAR. RPC balances and transfer amounts use integer strings in yoctoNEAR. Balances
Account addresses Implicit IDs: 64 lowercase hexadecimal characters; named IDs such as alice.near; Ethereum-like IDs starting with 0x; deterministic IDs starting with 0s; from protocol version 88 (nearcore 2.14.0), universal IDs starting with 0u (54 characters). See the note below the table. Account IDs
Block time Produced in ~600 ms, final in ~1.2 s. Blocks & Finality Execution milestones
Transaction validity transaction_validity_period is measured in blocks; 86400 blocks is ~14.4 hours at a 600 ms cadence. Transaction Lifecycle
Transaction fees The gas price has a floor of 0.0001 NEAR/Tgas and rises with network load. Gas for execution is bought up front at no less than 0.001 NEAR/Tgas. Unused gas and the price difference are refunded. See Fees and required balances. Gas fees

[!NOTE]

A transfer to a 0u ID that does not exist yet creates an uninitialized account that holds the deposit. Before protocol version 88, a transfer to a 0u ID fails.

Fees and required balances

Gas usage is determined by the actions and their parameters. For function calls, it also depends on contract execution. A transaction pays for gas in three steps:

Step Gas Price
Send the transaction Fees for sending the transaction The current gas price
Buy gas for executing it Fees for executing the transaction, plus any gas attached to function calls The current gas price or 0.001 NEAR/Tgas, whichever is higher
Execute it The gas that is burned The current gas price, but never above the price at which the gas was bought

The first two steps are paid up front. With a regular access key, the account balance must cover this up-front cost plus any deposit. With a gas key, the gas key balance covers the gas and the account balance covers the deposit.

Unused gas and the price difference are refunded. When a transaction creates an account, part of that refund is kept so that the account creation charge comes to about 0.007 NEAR.


Integration Reference


Additional Resources


Frequently Asked Questions

These guides provide answers to frequently asked questions about integrating with the NEAR Protocol. It covers topics such as account management, validator operations, transaction processing, and more.

[accordion] What is a good project summary for NEAR?

NEAR is a sharded, public, proof-of-stake blockchain and supports smart contracts written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly (WASM).

[accordion] What's special about NEAR?

NEAR is the blockchain for builders.

If you understand the basics of web development, you can write, test and deploy scalable decentralized applications in minutes on the most developer-friendly blockchain without having to learn new tools or languages.

[accordion] Is NEAR open source?

Yes. Have a look at our GitHub organization.

[accordion] Do you have any on-chain governance mechanisms?

NEAR has House of Stake governance. Governance proposals and consensus protocol activation are separate processes; follow the implementation and activation requirements for each change.

[accordion] Do you have a bug-bounty program?

Follow the current nearcore security policy for disclosure instructions and links to any applicable program.

[accordion] What contracts should we be aware of right now?

The core-contracts repository contains reference implementations. Review the deployed version and authority of each contract you integrate with:

  • Staking Pool / Delegation contract
  • Lockup / Vesting contract
  • Whitelist Contract
  • Staking Pool Factory
  • Multisig contract