A New Stage in NEAR Ecosystem Decentralization

As the NEAR ecosystem continues its journey towards full decentralization, the IC invites experienced infrastructure vendors, whether already within or new to the NEAR ecosystem, to participate in maintaining and enhancing essential services. This initiative not only ensures that critical infrastructure remains operational, but also opens up funding opportunities for providers who can bring innovative solutions and cost-effective strategies to the table.

Available RFPs:

1. NEAR Lake Maintenance and Development: Oversee the continued operation and improvement of NEAR Lake, the data availability layer crucial for developers and applications.
2. Kit Wallet API Support: Manage and enhance the API services that power Kit Wallet, facilitating seamless transactions and user interactions.
3. BigQuery Data Services: Maintain and optimize the BigQuery datasets, enabling efficient data analysis and insights for developers and stakeholders.
4. NEAR.org RPC Services: Ensure the reliability and performance of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services vital for communication between clients and the NEAR blockchain.

Note: The first three RFPs are interconnected, as Kit Wallet API and BigQuery depend on NEAR Lake. Providers are encouraged to consider bidding on these together to ensure seamless integration and service continuity.

Access all RFPs and submission details on the NEAR Infrastructure Committee Portal.

Why This Matters

• For NEAR Ecosystem: Maintaining critical infrastructure is essential for the NEAR network’s reliability and growth. This initiative ensures that these services remain uninterrupted and continue to support the ecosystem effectively.
• For Infrastructure Providers: An open bidding process offers a fair opportunity to secure funding and contribute significantly to NEAR infrastructure, leveraging your expertise to drive innovation.
• For Developers and Users: A robust and decentralized infrastructure means better performance, reliability, and new opportunities for engagement within the NEAR ecosystem.

About the Infrastructure Committee and the Proposal Process

The NEAR Infrastructure Committee is committed to transparency and decentralization in funding. The proposal process is conducted openly through the IC’s on-chain portal, ensuring fair evaluation and selection of candidates. Here’s how it works:

1. Submission: Interested providers submit their proposals via the IC’s on-chain portal. Applications will be open for a two-week period starting September 24 and ending on October 8.
2. Evaluation: The IC reviews proposals based on technical expertise, proposed budgets, and cost-reduction strategies aligned with current usage statistics. Evaluations will be completed within one week after the submission period ends.
3. Selection: Successful candidates will be awarded contracts to manage and develop critical infrastructure components.

Please note: The IC expects vendors to propose reasonable budgets rather than posting expected budgets up front. It is up to the infrastructure partners to calculate funding based on usage and pricing. Accurate pricing will help determine viable candidates. While the committee  may have potential providers in mind, this is an open bidding process that will fairly consider all qualified applicants.

Stay Connected and Informed

For updates and more information about the Infrastructure Committee and the RFP process, explore the following resources:

• Pagoda Wind-Down and Spin-Out: Ecosystem Update
• Future of Pagoda Services: Read More
• About the Infrastructure Committee: NEAR Blog
• NEAR Infrastructure Committee Portal: Proposals and RFPs

Call to Action: Make a Bid

If you are an infrastructure provider with the expertise to manage and enhance critical NEAR services, the IC encourages you to review the RFPs and submit your proposal. This is your opportunity to contribute to the future of decentralized infrastructure on NEAR.

Submit your proposal today via the NEAR Infrastructure Committee Portal.

Help the IC spread the word! Share this announcement with any stakeholders or organizations that might be interested in this opportunity.

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Vistara stands out as a game-changing one-click rollup deployment framework that simplifies creating application-specific rollups across multiple blockchains. Streamlining the intricate rollup deployment process into a straightforward, single-click operation, Vistara will build a front-end on the BOS to make user-friendly, multi-chain rollup deployment a reality.

Simplifying multi-chain roll-ups with Vistara on the BOS 

Existing frameworks such as Cosmos SDK and Substrate have sought to streamline certain software components in decentralized applications but often leave developers tied to one ecosystem that they must completely understand and master. Vistara will now present a unique solution by combining the BOS with backend chains like Ethereum and Celestia.

Vistara’s emphasis on simplifying rollup component creation aligns with NEAR’s vision of user-centric decentralization and a serverless Web3. With this new BOS front-end integration, developers in the NEAR ecosystem and beyond can now build and deploy rollups in one convenient location.

The result will be a user-friendly design that makes the deployment of a rollup as simple as selecting an option from a dropdown menu. The integration will also encourage a wider range of developers to build with rollups on the BOS with any chain, leading to a more diverse pool of innovations and robust growth.

Vistara’s integration not only simplifies the process but also expands the scope for innovation. It demystifies rollup creation, making it accessible to a broader range of developers. This inclusivity fuels a more diverse pool of applications, fostering growth and vibrancy within the NEAR ecosystem.

Vistara and BOS breaking base layer building barriers

Developing decentralized applications on base layers can be a complex process. Coordination of node operators, high costs, and extended development times are among the major challenges. However, Vistara is designed to confront these issues directly, streamlining the process and fostering efficiency.

Rollups — technologies that bundle or ‘roll up’ side-chain transactions into a single transaction — provide an effective solution. They help developers bypass the difficulties associated with building decentralized networks. Vistara leverages this rollup technology, pushing the NEAR ecosystem towards application-specific rollups. 

The solution effectively untangles the complexities tied to base layer dependencies, forging a development environment on the BOS that stretches beyond traditional base layer confines. With Vistara, multi-chain developers can now bring their applications to life more swiftly and efficiently than ever before.

To sum up, Vistara’s user-friendly, multi-chain rollup deployment capabilities on the BOS will have a huge impact on the NEAR ecosystem and beyond. The integration will take much of the complexity out of rollup deployment for anyone, helping Web3 creators, builders, and developers bring their applications to life faster than ever.

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To help in this endeavor, the company announced an $8M seed round of funding at NFT NYC in the past week. Other funding partners include backers like Samsung Next, Aglae Ventures, Sparkle Ventures (Animoca Brands), The Luxury Fund and MoonPay. 

”We are thrilled to have the NEAR Foundation as a partner in helping us to accelerate how marketing is done in the next Internet,” says Samir Addamine, Absolute Labs’ CEO and co-founder. “Both our organizations share a vision to accelerate the world’s transition to decentralized marketplaces and more open, transparent and valued user engagement, so it’s a great fit for us.”

What is Wallet Relationship Management

Wallet Relationship Management (WRM™) starts with the premise that wallets hold the keys to everything Web3 — from proving identity, providing access to value-rich brand experiences, facilitating payments, creating “ownership” opportunities for customers, and much more. Combining on-chain data from wallets along with assets that Web2 brands can also inject from their Web2 systems, this platform supports all facets of the marketing funnel, from acquisition to conversion and retention of loyalty.

Users of the platform can gain deep insights into their customers and their on-chain preferences and behaviors, identify actionable segments to track and engage, and craft cross-chain and cross-channel (Web2 and Web3) campaigns to develop and nurture relationships

Absolute Labs customers can also use WRM to reactivate dormant wallet customers by using the WRM dashboard to distribute meaningful incentives such as rewards tokens, NFTs, and more. 

To date, Absolute Labs has 40+ companies using their services. With WRM, these customers get an enterprise-grade suite of connectors and APIs to seamlessly integrate with their existing marketing tech stack. 

Absolute Labs has an incredibly strong product and is a fantastic addition to the NEAR ecosystem. Their Wallet Relationship Management platform is a clear market leader in the burgeoning Web3 martech space, and is already an indispensable component of the modern marketing stack. By bringing Absolute Labs into the NEAR ecosystem, it creates a seamless Web3 on-ramp for brands  and will enable them to engage, retain, and reactivate customers like never before.

DISCLOSURE: Any information shared in this announcement regarding our partnership with Absolute Labs should not be considered as a binding agreement or representation, and may be subject to change without notice. The information presented in this communication is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Any decisions made based on this information are solely the responsibility of the individual or entity making them.

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For those not yet in the know, NEP-141 is simply a set of rules that determine how tokens on NEAR can operate. It’s an upgrade from the earlier NEP-21 standard by being simpler for users and developers as well as being cheaper and more efficient. 

Click here to learn more about NEAR’s NEP-141 standard

Storing NEAR and NEP-141 compatible tokens on Binance Custody

What does it mean to be able to store NEAR and NEP-141 compatible tokens on Binance Custody? It means institutional users benefit from an integrated ecosystem built to help them manage their assets with world-class security standards backed by multi-party computation technology. Binance Custody is an independent, compliant, and audited custodial solution that currently supports over 230 digital assets.

Click here to learn the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets 

“We’re very excited to be part of NEAR’s journey as their institutional custody partner,” said Athena Yu, VP of Binance Custody. “With this integration, $NEAR token holders benefit from our secure, integrated security and liquidity solutions. We welcome any project building on the NEAR protocol to reach out to us to learn how our institutional infrastructure can help them scale with peace of mind.”

Security on Binance Custody

Platform security is paramount, and Binance Custody makes it easy for institutional users to safely store their digital assets. With this integration, Binance Custody allows investors to not only store their $NEAR tokens securely, but also benefit from liquidity opportunities thanks to the custodian’s integration with the vast Binance ecosystem, which includes the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume.

“A core mission for NEAR is building an ecosystem of diverse communities,” says NEAR Foundation CEO Marieke Flament. “With this partnership, NEAR can welcome to the NEAR ecosystem the many financial institutions that have turned to Binance Custody as their trusted provider for digital assets custody and settlement solutions.”

Binance Custody offers a growing suite of solutions currently including:

• Qualified Wallet: institutional-grade cold vault storage
• Prime Wallet: warm wallet infrastructure offering instantaneous transactions between Binance Custody and the Binance exchange, with sub-accounts.
• Binance Mirror: matches an institution’s cold storage custody funds with 1:1 availability on their Binance exchange account to access deep liquidity venues.
• Cold Convert: trade tokens from cold storage with zero counterparty risk and customized slippage tolerance without compromising on security.

Legal Disclaimer: The information contained in this press release is not directed at nor intended for use by any users, investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any NEAR tokens. Information in this release is not financial/investment advice, please seek independent financial advice. 

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If you’re developing on NEAR, this is great news—the partnership will supercharge blockchain innovations. Developers will even more easily create without limits as they build dApps and help onboard the masses into Web3. 

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with those who pioneered the Internet as we know it,” says Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. “This partnership marks a new chapter for us as we continue to offer the best support possible for the next generation of visionaries choosing to build on the NEAR protocol.”

Powering NEAR developers with Google Cloud

In the last year, NEAR has grown exponentially thanks to its super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable protocol. There are now over 20 million accounts, 200 million transactions to date, and 300,000 to 400,000 transactions per day on the NEAR network. Building upon the momentum of NEARCON 2022, which showcased the NEAR ecosystem’s vibrancy, 800 projects are now building on the protocol. 

How will the hundreds of projects currently building on NEAR benefit from the Google Cloud partnership? 

Google Cloud provides the infrastructure for NEAR’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC) node provider to Pagoda, NEAR’s Web3 startup platform. This allows developers to deploy code quickly, securely, and seamlessly. Pagoda helps developers easily and rapidly launch dApps on NEAR through a library of pre-audited templates and auto-generated contract user interfaces.

 “We will be supporting NEAR and giving Web3 developers the most secure, reliable, and sustainable cloud infrastructure on which they can build and scale,” Carlos Arena, Director of Digital Assets at Google Cloud. “We continue to support tomorrow’s leaders in creating new products and services on blockchain-based platforms.”

For more information on how Google Cloud is working to support Web3 innovation, check out Google Cloud’s Digital Assets blog. 

The post NEAR Teams With Google Cloud to Accelerate Web3 Startups appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

Having USDC on NEAR is definitely a reason to celebrate. Circle will also make USDC available on other platforms to support a multi-chain ecosystem.  

Powering NEAR developers 

Bringing USDC to NEAR will help empower developers to integrate stablecoin payments flows into their Javascript and  Rust-based decentralized applications. This will unlock a new wave of accessibility for Web2 builders moving into Web3. It will also serve a vital role in NEAR’s mission of Web3 mass adoption, while helping developers build without limits.

“The multi-chain expansion increases USDC’s native availability from eight ecosystems to thirteen, and enables blockchain developers building on USDC and their users to experience greater liquidity and interoperability within the crypto economy,” said Joao Reginatto, VP of Product at Circle. “Extending multi-chain support for USDC opens the door for institutions, exchanges, developers and more to build their innovations and have easier access to a trusted and stable asset.” 

Bringing USDC to NEAR is a big win for developers, who will now be able to integrate stablecoin payment flows into Javascript or Rust-based dApps. This will help usher in a new wave of accessibility for Web 2 builders making the shift to Web3.

What to know about stablecoins

A stablecoin is simply a cryptocurrency that is “pegged” to a more traditional currency like USD or EURO. Through various treasury and/or collateral models, they are designed to keep a 1:1 value, or parity, with their pegged counterparts. Stablecoins can also be pegged to credit and/or debt or have no collateral at all, as seen in algorithmic stablecoins. 

Their presence in the Web3 ecosystem brings a sense of familiarity for natives and newcomers alike. A stablecoin is also a sort of on-ramp to understanding token economics—the gas that powers Web3 and beyond. 

While designed to reduce cryptocurrency volatility, stablecoins present their own set of risks. When centralized, stablecoins can be victims of hacks, theft, or even over-printing which can lead to hyperinflation. If an algorithmic stablecoin experiences algorithmic failure, as happened with Terra and its sister currency, Luna, the stablecoin can fail. If a stablecoin is fractionally reserved instead of fully backed, there can be a bank run that triggers a dramatic stablecoin price drop. 

Visit ref.finance for more information including the risks associated with  investments.

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The partnership aims to empower both the NEAR and Ethereum ecosystems by improving developer facilities – through the availability of the product suite – with the goal of increasing cross-chain interoperability. 

The product suite features projects including MetaMask, Infura, ConsenSys Quorum, Truffle, Codefi, and Diligence. MetaMask is the primary way a global user base of over 21 million monthly active users interact with applications on Web3. Over 350,000 developers use Infura to access Ethereum, IPFS and Layer 2 networks. In addition, 4.7 million developers create and deploy smart contracts using Truffle and ConsenSys Diligence has secured more than $25 billion in smart contracts with its hands-on dapp audits and testing tools. 

“We are thrilled to join forces with ConsenSys on our shared mission of empowering the Ethereum ecosystem and extending its economy,” said Alex Shevchenko, the CEO of Aurora Labs.

The partnership means ConsenSys will now have official participation in the ongoing development of the AuroraDAO. 

“We are excited to be partnering with the talented Aurora and NEAR protocol teams. Developer interest in EVM-compatible scaling solutions continues to grow at the same pace as the rapid expansion of the Web3 ecosystem, says E.G. Galano, Co-Founder and Head of Engineering at Infura.

“We believe developers will benefit from the addition of Aurora to the Infura product suite by enabling them to utilize the NEAR network with the EVM tooling they are already familiar with.”

Infura is directly involved in the AuroraDAO, which hands over key decision making to its community as a part of its vision to create a scaling solution that is as decentralized as possible.

About Aurora

Aurora is an EVM built on the NEAR Protocol, delivering a turn-key solution for developers to operate their apps on an Ethereum-compatible, high-throughput, scalable and future-safe platform, with low transaction costs for their users.

Join Aurora’s community

• Telegram
• Discord 
• Twitter 
• Website

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Historically, businesses approached the ground-breaking technology by adopting the consortium model. Company A would invite its partners or companies in the same ecosystem to build a blockchain. But almost as soon as these consortiums started, they ran into issues. 

Privacy is baked into blockchain’s DNA, but businesses have struggled to harness its potential.

Concerns around control and access merged with the headache of trying to move data from one company’s IT systems – often built on legacy software – to the blockchain in a way that could be interpreted by another company’s proprietary software. Then you have the thorny issue of throughput, fees and other associated costs with writing and storing data on the blockchain. 

This is an issue we at NEAR have been thinking about deeply, and we believe we have the perfect solution to help enterprises embrace blockchain and the Open Web. We call it Private Shards. 

Private Shards: Blending the public and private seamlessly and securely 

Since the inception of NEAR, it was always designed to be a sharded network: an interconnected global system of users, businesses, and infrastructure providers. As part of NEAR’s design is the ability to partition shards to suit different use cases. 

For example, a hospital’s medical data, information on students at a university, or sensitive manufacturing data. All of these datasets have different requirements and needs. On NEAR, a private shard can be created to suit all of these needs, without the need for each of those businesses to build a blockchain from scratch. 

In the consortium model, each of those use cases would need a separate system that catered for the different requirements. Not on NEAR. 

The NEAR blockchain gives enterprises the ability to build private shards that can still be connected to the public blockchain. Why would a business want such a feature? Let’s look at the use cases above. 

Let’s say a hospital housed its records on a private shard, but a patient gets sick overseas and a doctor needs access to his or her records. On NEAR, a doctor – whose identity could be publicly verifiable – could make a request to the private shard for access to those files simply, and securely. 

In the factory example, there are aspects of manufacturing that need to be private, but then there are other aspects that need to be public. Let’s say a customer wants to know when a product has been built and shipped. A private shard could publish that data to the public blockchain seamlessly.  

In order for mass adoption to occur, blockchain needs to be able to blend the public and the private seamlessly, but safely. Private Shards are NEAR’s solution to that challenge, and it’s as simple as starting a node on AWS or AliCloud. Let’s explore how. 

How do Private Shards work? 

Given private shards operate as a shard on the NEAR network, it means that public chain contracts can call into private shard contracts and vice versa. 

This is done via the same mechanism that handles cross-shard routing, which is completely transparent to the users and developers and doesn’t require any additional work (public contracts don’t even need to know they are interacting with private ones). Let’s look at a use case: Two private shards want to interact with each other without routing through public shards, how is this achieved? The shared identity space. 

Each private shard gets its own name, similar to domains on the web. For example, if University of Berkeley and Tencent are using this system, they will have “berkeley.edu” and “tencent.com” accounts. 

Inside their private shards, specific applications will then have a sub-account, for example, if both of them are using some application to track ownership of real estate: “properties.berkeley.edu” and “properties.tencent.edu”. Selling a property between these two entities then would require a cross private shard transaction with potential public chain settlement later if later this information needs to be proven to the public parties.

Applications that these companies use will be built exactly the same as other applications on NEAR: smart contracts are built in Rust or Typescript. This allows creators to build frontends that can interact with these smart contracts, including sending cross-private and public shard transactions.

NEAR’s mission has been to bridge the gap between the internet of today and the blockchains that will power the future. There is already a company actively working on this solution – Calimero’s Private Shards.

Private Shards is a core part of that mission. It helps create an ecosystem where businesses, users, and partners can interact, and we invite anyone to join us in that mission to create a more open, and inclusive web. 

The post NEAR’s Private Shard: Infrastructure for Enterprise, Built on the Open Web appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

Developers building on NEAR Protocol now have a powerful way to manage user identities and dynamic off-chain data in their applications. Ceramic, the decentralized network for data stream processing, now supports NEAR wallets.

NEAR is currently hosting an Open Web Community Hackathon with a prize for integrating IDX profiles on Ceramic with a NEAR Sputnik DAO. To participate, check out the hackathon prize!

Blockchain, Data, & Identity: a full stack for Web3 developers

NEAR offers developers the most dev-friendly and end-user accessible infrastructure for building decentralized apps and services. Great Web3 and DeFi apps require more than a smart contract platform. They also need sophisticated, scalable, and dependable data management infrastructure for app builders using smart contracts. Ceramic provides advanced database-like features such as mutability, version control, access control, and programmable logic. It is also the foundation for IDX, Web3’s first cross-chain identity model.

With the integration of Ceramic on NEAR Protocol, developers on NEAR can: 

• Build data-rich user experiences and social features on fully decentralized tech
• Give users cloud-like backup, sync, and recovery without running a centralized server
• Publish content on the open web without the need to anchor IPFS hashes on-chain
• Leverage interoperable profiles, social graphs and reputations across the Web3 ecosystem

Ceramic now supports NEAR wallets

Starting today, developers building applications on NEAR can easily add support for Ceramic and IDX in their application with a seamless user experience. NEAR key pairs have been added as a supported signing and authentication method for Ceramic’s data streams, so users can now perform transactions on Ceramic with their existing NEAR wallets. 

Developers have already started combining NEAR and Ceramic to create new applications such as NEAR Personas, which links a NEAR wallet to a DID.

About Ceramic: Decentralized data streams

Ceramic provides developers with database-like functionality for storing all kinds of dynamic, mutable content. This finally gives developers a Web3 native way to add critical features like rich identities (profiles, reputation, social graphs), user-generated content (posts, interactions), dynamic application-data, and much more.

Ceramic’s unique stream-based architecture is designed to handle any type of data model at web-scale volume and latency. Built on top of open standards including IPFS, libp2p, and DIDs and compatible with any raw storage protocol like Filecoin or Arweave, all information stored on Ceramic exists within a permissionless cross-chain network that lets developers tap into an ever growing library of identities and data while using their preferred stack.

IDX: Cross-chain identity and user-centric data

Identity is the first use case enabled by Ceramic’s building blocks for open source information. IDX (identity index) is a cross-chain identity protocol that inherits Ceramic’s properties to provide developers with a user-centric replacement for server-siloed user tables. By making it easy to structure and associate data to a user’s personal index, IDX lets applications save, discover, and route to users’ data.

The IDX SDK makes it simple to manage users and deliver great data-driven experiences using the same NEAR keys and wallets as developers and users are already relying on. Users can also link multiple keys, from any wallet and multiple blockchains, to the same identity. This is essential to developers who want to serve users over time, as it enables key rotation, data interoperability across accounts, and rich cross-chain profiles, reputations and experiences.

Getting started with Ceramic on NEAR

• NEAR is currently hosting an Open Web Community hackathon! There is a prize for integrating IDX profiles on Ceramic with theSputnik DAO platform, built on NEAR. For more information, head to the NEAR Forum.
• To install NEAR, start with our documentation.
• To add IDX to your project, follow this installation guide.
• To use Ceramic for streams without IDX, follow this installation guide.
• Regardless of which option you choose, you should also select 3ID Connect as your DID wallet during the authentication process which handles the integration with NEAR wallets.
• For questions or support, join the Ceramic Discord and the NEAR Discord.

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