NEAR is a Layer 1 Blockchain Network founded in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. NEAR was founded with a mission to develop a highly scalable network that could build upon previous innovations but take it one step further in terms of performance and overall scalability.
NEAR Foundation
The NEAR Foundation was created in 2019 to help steward and develop the NEAR ecosystem. They describe themselves by saying "Our purpose is to enable community-driven innovation to benefit people around the world.”