Summary
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Shard Increase | From 8 to 9 shards |
| Performance Gain | Approx. 12.5% throughput improvement |
| Upgrade Type | Seamless live resharding upgrade |
| Why It Happened | One shard’s state was growing too large for typical chunk producers |
| Future Path | Clear roadmap to continue increasing shards and capacity |
NEAR Protocol Hits 9 Shards
On August 19 2025, NEAR Protocol completed a successful upgrade from 8 to 9 shards on mainnet, delivering a 12.5% throughput improvement. This was achieved through a live upgrade, with no network downtime or user disruption.
This marks another step forward in NEAR’s long-term vision for sustainable, scalable blockchain infrastructure.
Why This Matters
Addresses State Growth
One shard’s state was getting too large, which could eventually require chunk producers to run higher-memory machines. Rather than increase hardware demands, NEAR splits shard state via resharding, keeping node requirements low.
Elegant Resharding
NEAR’s architecture allows shards to be split without requiring full validator rebooting or state duplication. Resharding enables the network to scale horizontally, instead of vertically scaling each node.
No Downtime
The upgrade was executed live, showing the maturity of NEAR’s protocol engineering. Most blockchains require planned halts or downtime for state reconfiguration. NEAR does it live.
Highlights from NEAR Core v2.7.0
From the official release notes:
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Shard Increase: Upgrade from 8 to 9 shards using stateless resharding
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Protocol Upgrade: Introduces a new protocol version to support the new sharding layout
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Performance Gains: Optimizations in chunk processing, chunk-only producer logic, and state handling
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Network Stability: Enhancements to chunk verification and data propagation to ensure continued liveness
What’s Next for NEAR?
Linear Scaling
Every new shard adds ~12.5% capacity. The roadmap to 10, 12, or even 16 shards is now straightforward and modular.
dApp Benefits
More shards mean reduced state contention, which leads to faster transaction finality, lower latency, and better user experience for dApps and wallets.
Competitive Advantage
While many chains (like Ethereum) are still planning full sharding or modular execution layers, NEAR is already running scalable, production-grade sharding. This means it can support real-world app growth today.
NEAR vs. the Competition
| Chain | Scaling Model | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| NEAR | Live dynamic sharding | 9 shards live, scalable |
| Ethereum | Proto-danksharding in dev | Partial rollup scaling |
| Solana | Monolithic high throughput | Vertical scale, no sharding |
| Celestia | Modular data availability | Early mainnet |
Conclusion
NEAR’s live upgrade to 9 shards shows it’s possible to scale without breaking things. Unlike theoretical solutions still in development, NEAR has working sharding in production, with live resharding, stateless validation, and chunk-only producers all running today.
If you’re building a dApp or platform and need reliable scaling, NEAR is proving to be the most technically mature and developer-friendly option out there.
Further Reading
Updated: August 20, 2025
