Thread by @ekuzyakov

NEAR Protocol Usability Summary:
- Account Names instead of hashes of public keys.
- There can be multiple Access Keys per account.
- Function call limited access key.
Thread 👇

NEAR uses readable account IDs instead of a hash of a public key. It’s similar to twitter handles. Also Account IDs work like domains. E.g. only account “alice” can create a sub-account like “app.alice”, and now only “app.alice” can create a “beta.app.alice”.

Account ID has a minimum length of 2 characters. NEAR charges recurrent tax from the account balance for short account IDs with exponentially decreasing rate based on the length. IDs with length more than 10 chars don’t pay it. It’s needed to avoid squatting short account names.

Because we use Account ID instead of a hash, we can have multiple public keys per account. We call them Access Keys. Access Key grants permissions to act on behalf of the account. There are 2 types of permissions: full-permission and function-call limited permission.

Function call permission of access keys is the most powerful usability feature of NEAR. It allows to send non-monetary function-call transactions from the owner’s account to the receiver. The receiver ID is restricted by the access key. This enables multiple use-cases.

#1. Authorize front-end web applications without trusting the contract code or the web-app itself. It’s done by creating a new access key on your account and pointing it towards the contract of the web-app. Can be done through the web wallet.

#2. Allow a new user WITHOUT an account to use your dApp and your contract on-chain. The back-end creates a new access-key for the user on the contract’s account, points it towards the contract itself. Now the user can immediately use the web-app without going through any wallet

#3. Limited access for the account. An account has a contract and only function-call access keys (no full-permission keys). Only the contract can initiate transactions from this account. It can be a multi-sig, a lockup contract, a delayed withdrawals or @argentHQ guardians.

#4. Proxy based blockchain access. It’s like @ATT for a blockchain. A user may be paying a monthly service fee instead of paying per transaction. Multiple options are possible.

Learn more by watching Lunch and Learn series: youtube.com/playlist?list=…
Or reading docs to start building now docs.nearprotocol.com

Try it out in action. The first use-case is app.near.ai/app/pvc6pvo52/

Deployed in 15 seconds using the first template from NEAR's web-based dev studio near.dev