The NEAR Foundation, the non-profit behind the layer-1 NEAR Protocol, announced that the protocol now supports chain signatures, offering users multichain access from their NEAR account.

The chain signatures network is secured in part by Eigenlayer, which joins NEAR as a launch partner, according to a press release. Eigenlayer is a restaking project built on Ethereum.

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“Since day one, the NEAR ecosystem has focused on simplifying access to Web3 for developers and mainstream users,” said Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR. “Chain Signatures is the next step in that journey, making it significantly easier to transact on any blockchain while also defragmenting liquidity across the ecosystem.”

Developers can now build decentralized finance (DeFi) products that use assets from other chains without bridging these assets, added the press release.

The offering is the latest step towards NEAR’s initiative of “chain abstraction,” which aims to tackle the user experience in crypto by simplifying the hurdles that exist in a multichain environment.

NEAR’s native token (NEAR) has been rising over the past few months, up roughly seven-fold since the start of October, including a doubling in one week earlier this month.

Edited by Stephen Alpher.