$NEAR Protocol, a blockchain, has launched its 2.13 network upgrade, adding quantum-safe transaction signing and dynamic resharding to the mainnet. The update brings the network a new signing scheme approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and allows the blockchain to scale its capacity automatically as demand grows.
The upgrade introduces ML-DSA, a post-quantum cryptographic standard designed to protect digital signatures from future quantum attacks.
$NEAR’s account model makes the transition simpler. Unlike networks where addresses are closely tied to a single cryptographic keypair, $NEAR accounts use human-readable IDs with rotatable access keys. This allows users to change their signing method without moving to a new account. Developers can already rotate account keys to ML-DSA using the $NEAR CLI.
The update also adds dynamic resharding. Previously, adding new shards required a protocol upgrade and coordination between validators. With the new system, a shard can automatically split when it reaches a defined state-size threshold. The process is handled deterministically and takes roughly 1.5 epochs.
The change is expected to support applications such as $NEAR Intents, a cross-chain infrastructure platform, and near.com, a consumer application built on the network. Both can now increase capacity automatically as usage grows.
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