Infura Brings its Leading ETH Dev Platform to NEAR Protocol

ConsenSys, the Ethereum incubator and enterprise company, has announced a partnership between the NEAR Protocol and Infura, the leading Ethereum development platform. This agreement paves the way for over 430,000 Infura developers to access a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible that is super simple to use, incredibly secure and infinitely scalable for the very first time.

Integrating Infura and bringing Ethereum developers into the NEAR ecosystem is a significant step in fulfilling NEAR’s mission of creating an inclusive, self-sustainable, fully decentralized ecosystem with billions of users. It also illustrates the importance of the role that a multi-chain future will play in fulfilling that vision.

Here’s everything you need to know about Infura’s partnership and integration with NEAR, and why developers expanding beyond non-EVM compatible chains will benefit everyone.

Driving climate neutrality and scalability

The Infura and NEAR integration has been in private beta for two months. Expanding beyond EVM compatible chains also marks a strategic shift by Infura, as it seeks to become a key connector in tomorrow’s multi-chain world. By integrating with NEAR, Infura also makes strides towards better sustainability and scalability for developers.

The integration of Infura with NEAR will provide developers with one of the best options in terms of sustainability. The NEAR network and ecosystem are carbon-neutral with a minimal environmental footprint. Last year, South Pole, a leading climate advocay group,awarded NEAR the Climate Neutral Product Label.

As for scalability, NEAR’s sharded blockchain enables a substantial increase in overall capacity. Infura developers will now have access to a network that can process at a rate of 1,000 transactions per second. And once NEAR’s Nightshade sharding is fully implemented, network scalability will be theoretically limitless, processing millions of transactions per second.

Enhancing the developer experience

Infura developers will now have access to the full development experience on NEAR, as well as the tools and resources at their disposal. This includes the ability to build decentralized applications using common programming languages such as Rust, AssemblyScript, and WebAssembly (WASM), and NEAR’s class-leading education platform. 

NEAR will also provide developers with a superior suite of learning resources including educational video series, as well as guided courses and workshops. While Infura developers are already using and accessing other networks like Ethereum, Polygon, and IPFS, they’ll find all the tools and resources needed to successfully build on NEAR.

The ability to utilize Ethereum assets on NEAR, and vice versa, is another core benefit to developers of the integration. With NEAR’s Rainbow Bridge, assets can be seamlessly moved cross-chain in a fraud-proof manner with optimal security. Rainbow Bridge is a permissionless protocol that removes the necessity of trusting a single party to complete transactions.

Infura developers can access the NEAR network today. The integration will accelerate the global adoption of Infura’s development tool suite, in addition to bringing more development talent and brainpower into the NEAR ecosystem.