https://x.com/openchat/status/2113666662331199874?s=46

$NEAR

accuses

$ICP

of spreading FUD and lies, but the factual reality says otherwise.

Everything

u/dominic_w

says checks out against public receipts online.

NEAR's own records show where their "unique" tech came from.

I have posted all 16 posts below along with an AI summary here for people that want a quick glance.

The 16-tweet thread argues that NEAR’s Chain Signatures (announced March 2024 as “the first of its kind”) draws from DFINITY’s earlier threshold ECDSA and chain-key work. Public records support the timeline: Groth & Shoup (DFINITY) published the key papers in 2021–2022; ICP had production threshold ECDSA and Bitcoin signing capability by late 2022; and NEAR’s founder had publicly engaged with the research years earlier.

NEAR’s March 2024 launch post and August 2024 mainnet materials called Chain Signatures “the first of its kind” and “the only MPC solution where smart contracts can sign transactions on any chain.” Those public announcements did not credit DFINITY or the prior ICP implementation. NEAR’s internal technical docs and code comments did reference the Groth-Shoup papers, but those citations were not part of the public novelty claims.

Dominic Williams has since stated that the specific algorithm NEAR ran for roughly two and a half years is patented, pointing to US 12,695,626 B2 (“Digital signatures with re-randomized presignatures,” inventors Groth & Shoup, assignee DFINITY Stiftung, priority September 2021, granted July 2026). A related key-derivation patent also exists. This moves the dispute beyond credit into potential IP territory, though the claims are narrower than “all threshold ECDSA,” and NEAR’s architecture (external MPC network) differs from ICP’s.

Caveats: Open papers are public by design; the systems are not identical; and infringement is a claim-chart and legal question that has not been resolved in court. NEAR has mostly treated related criticism as FUD so far.