Topic: [ANN] Near Protocol: NEAR Launches Nightshade Sharding, Paving the Way for Mass (Read 664 times)

Hackathon by NEAR UA
We are using the Eventornado platform for our event management
You're just a couple of simple steps away from joining this incredible event

sourse
https://eventornado.com/event/near-hackathon-for-ukraine#participate

Near Protocol continues to develop at a rapid pace.
This new DAO team could join the SailGP starting line-up for Season 4 in 2023. SailGP and NEAR will partner on a number of exciting new projects to inspire Web3 developers building on the blockchain, as well as collaborate on NFT and gaming, events ticketing, mobile app integration, and more.

NEAR in March: Unchain Fund, SailGP, and DAOs
https://near.org/blog/near-in-march-unchain-fund-sailgp-and-daos/

Larry Ellison’s SailGP and Near Protocol to Create a DAO for Sports Team Ownership
Global sailing league SailGP – founded by Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison – and the Near Protocol are creating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to enable fans to be owners of sports teams, according to a statement on Thursday.

Participate in the Reddit AMA with NEAR Foundation CEO mariekeflament about our latest Town Hall for a chance to win one of 3 nearnauts!

What would you like to know about DAO’s on NEAR, or NEAR Foundation's funding efforts?

Ask your questions https://www.reddit.com/r/nearprotocol/comments/tt0pou/march_town_hall_ama_with_near_foundation_ceo/

I heard that Near protocol will be integrating to the Rubic Exchange platform. This is really good news as Rubic is fast becoming the leader in the cross-chain (multichain) space that will provide advantages to Near. Will Near be providing liquidity events once integrated?

How is DePocket’s collaboration with NEAR historical?

Introduction:
The NEAR ecosystem has partnered up with DePocket — the project has received a grant from them. Our app aims to combine as many as dApps on the NEAR system as possible. DePocket is an indispensable bridge to all of the NEAR ecosystem. It is our belief that NEAR and DePocket can grow together, and we’re excited about what this partnership means for both companies in the future.

The goal of this project is simple: To provide easy access capabilities for people who want to use more than one dApp on the network without having to switch between accounts or apps constantly — which would be inconvenient for users, not practical for developers, and make it difficult for the whole community.
How is DePocket’s collaboration with NEAR historical?

NEAR has already established itself as a premier blockchain platform, and their funding validates their commitment to building a world-class ecosystem.

What does this mean for DePocket?
What does growth look like for us?
How exactly will NEAR support DePocket?
https://depocket.medium.com/how-is-depockets-collaboration-with-near-historical-af4d0052ad14

NatWest digital business bank CEO leaves for blockchain group NEAR

LONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Marieke Flament, chief executive of NatWest's digital bank for businesses, is leaving after two and a half years to join Swiss-based blockchain foundation NEAR as CEO, she told Reuters.

The non-profit NEAR oversees the governance and development of its blockchain of the same name, which it says makes it easier for entrepreneurs and developers to build financial products, non fungible tokens (NFTs) and other products.

There is exploding global interest in digital assets, with NFT artworks selling for millions of dollars, but also rising scepticism about the sustainability of the boom and practical use cases for the underlying blockchain technology.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/natwest-digital-business-bank-ceo-leaves-blockchain-group-near-2021-12-16/

Listing of PARAS token on MEXC Global on December 20

MEXC Global will kick off a Kickstarter session, a pre-launch listing campaign initiated by the project team on MEXC, where users can vote with MX tokens to achieve a specific goal.
Once the target is met, the listing process will be launched and free token giveaways will be organized for participating users prior to listing.
Details: https://bit.ly/3GVDZeM

Presenting the new Kickstarter session with PARAS
Vote with MX to get PARAS listed and share 160,000 PARAS
Period: 02:30 - 10:50 Dec 20 (UTC)
Estimated trading: 15:00 Dec 20 (UTC)

Paras announced an airdrop for early adopters of the NFT marketplace

The airdrop depends on the transaction volume of your account in the Paras NFT marketplace within the approved limit.
The airdrop will be credited to you within 3 months thanks to the streaming payment service - http://roke.to

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uLgZDBSgR1KyNonSU8VfZu17zA2lNmiJMSpiksG-G8s/edit#gid=761074378
https://twitter.com/ParasHQ/status/1471850258728890369

NEAR MetaBUILD Hackathon

From December 22 to February 10, the NEAR MetaBUIDL global hackathon will take place with a $ 1 million prize fund in the form of prizes and funding.

Write, test and deploy scalable decentralized applications in minutes on the most developer-friendly blockchain.

NEAR is here to help reimagine your world and empower users to have full control and responsibility over their data. Use languages you already know to build DeFi, Web3, Gaming, Digital Art/Collectibles, infrastructure app and tools, or migrate an existing EVM app to NEAR.

Join the NEAR MetaBUILD 2 Hackathon and start coding.

Event sponsors (who will present their challenges): 7x Ventures, Damo Labs, Fluence, Akash, Aurora, Brave, Crust, Dodo, Filecoin, Flux, HAPI, Mintbase, Octopus Network, OIN Finance, Paras, Ref Finance, Spin, The Graph.
https://metabuild.devpost.com/

NEAR Launches Nightshade Sharding, Paving the Way for Mass Adoption



Today is a momentous day for the NEAR blockchain and the NEAR ecosystem: The launch of Simple Nightshade, the first step toward a fully sharded and secure blockchain.
Since NEAR released the design for the protocol back in 2019, it was always meant to be a sharded blockchain. However, when preparing for the launch in early 2020, we realized that there was no need to launch a completely sharded network.

Sharding is a very complex piece of technology — which we’ll be explaining in detail over the coming weeks on our Medium blog — and the network was brand new. It didn’t need to be capable of handling hundreds of millions of transactions at launch.

Since then, the average number of daily transactions has risen to more than 300k. With the emergence of more and more projects building on NEAR, the number of transactions is only going to increase in the coming months.

While the network is still currently using only 13% of the total capacity, we wanted to start the transition to sharding now to avoid any unpleasant surprises and ensure we can support all the applications on NEAR. Today is the start of that transition.

more info there - https://medium.com/nearprotocol/near-launches-nightshade-sharding-paving-the-way-for-mass-adoption-b17066fbc330

EMPYREAN has decided to award the airdrop to early Aurora users, especially TriSolaris users.

2.5 thousand $ EMPYR tokens (approximately 2%) of the initial offer will go to those who traded on TriSolaris before December 5 (the question is still being decided about changing the number to 10).

The project aims to create an algorithmic decentralized reserve currency responsible for issuing and managing a fully collateralized, algorithmic, income generating, free floating stable asset - EMPYR.

The project will be powered by Aurora EVM.

https://twitter.com/empyreanfi/status/1469754212401647617?s=20
https://t.me/near_ru/757

New project - Energyfi plans to launch on green blockchains (Energy Web Chain, Avalanche, BSC and NEAR)

The project will be an all-in-one platform: a launchpad, a decentralized exchanger, savings and lending protocols.
They also plan to launch Green Metaverse - their version of the "green metaverse".
https://twitter.com/Energyfi_io/status/1465421998914519044

NEAR Launches 1,000 Teacher Education Program

As part of NEAR Foundation, the NEAR Education team is building a vast and vibrant ecosystem with the mission of making the open web accessible to everyone, regardless of experience, age, background, or native tongue.

From lightweight, minute-long tutorials to the fully-fledged certification programs offered by NEAR University, a diverse range of expanding, community-led educational content illuminates the wonders of decentralization in a way that has never been more accessible.

To help make mass adoption of Web3 a reality, the NEAR Education team is launching a unique and exciting initiative to onboard 1,000 teachers from all backgrounds and disciplines. Through both self-paced and instructor-led online courses, workshops, and fellowships, this army of educators will learn the ins and outs of blockchain technology and will, in turn, pass that knowledge on to others.

If we can train 1,000 teachers—not just teachers, but those who simply enjoy learning and sharing—on all things NEAR, we can reach our moonshot goal of onboarding 1 million developers and, ultimately, 1 billion users.

It’s that simple: 1,000 teachers → 1 million developers → 1 billion users.

Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Let’s roll up our sleeves and find out.

Interested in learning and teaching with us? Be sure to head over to NEAR University for more information.

Why Create an Ecosystem of Teachers?

It’s great that Web3 developers and other crypto-natives can grasp blockchain’s technology and potential—that’s what brought crypto to the edge of this major paradigm-shifting moment.

https://near.org/blog/near-education-1000-teachers-program/

Flux, World’s First Fully Decentralized Oracle and Oracle Aggregator Launches on NEAR



About Flux
Flux is a cross-chain oracle and oracle aggregator that provides smart contracts with access to economically secure data feeds on anything. Flux brings this data on-chain using a sophisticated validation and dispute mechanism that relies on economic principles to keep validators honest. FLX is the native Utility Token used for staking within Flux Protocol by Validators. It is also used for governance of the protocol via the Flux DAO. Flux is live on NEAR Protocol and is deploying on major EVM chains in the following weeks.

NEAR is thrilled to announce that Flux, the first cross-chain oracle for economically secured data feeds, is now live on the NEAR mainnet!

With its cross-chain oracle platform, which features support for other networks like Aurora, Flux brings secured data feeds to any and all high-throughput data apps — like trading platforms that need access to lots of reliable data — on the NEAR blockchain. To facilitate their mainnet launch, the Flux team is also releasing the $FLX token, which will be vital in helping to power its oracles.

“We were one of the first teams from Ethereum to make the jump to a new layer-one, NEAR, back in January 2019,” said Peter Mitchell, co-founder of Flux. “Jasper De Gooijer, co-founder of Flux, and I started building on NEAR before testnet was live and have worked closely with the team to design a best in class oracle to make NEAR the go-to layer one for economically secured DeFi.”

Earlier this year, Flux raised $10.3m in seed round funding from leading investors like Distributed Global, Coinbase Ventures, Coinfund, Figment Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures.

https://medium.com/nearprotocol/flux-worlds-first-fully-decentralized-oracle-and-oracle-aggregator-launches-on-near-68a9003ac241

NEAR Partners With Wharton School’s Cypher Accelerator for Blockchain Growth

NEAR Foundation is pleased to announce an exciting new partnership with Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s Cypher Accelerator. Through this newly launched blockchain accelerator, decentralized app founders and developers will have access to world-class mentors, leading investors, premiere education and workshops, networking opportunities, as well as Penn’s vast talent pool, and more.

Cypher Accelerator’s mission aligns with NEAR’s own. It’s committed to blockchain growth by supporting decentralized app companies from launch to branding and beyond.

About Wharton
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Cypher Accelerator Details
The first cohort of Wharton’s Cypher Accelerator runs from February to May 2022. The accelerator will be virtual and open to international applications. Some of the world’s leading investors are supporting Cypher, including Mark Cuban, Tim Draper, a16z, Pantera Capital, and others.

https://medium.com/nearprotocol/near-partners-with-wharton-schools-cypher-accelerator-for-blockchain-growth-9f49ccb80023

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NEAR Foundation and WOO Network Complete $5 Million Token Swap To Create a Strategic Partnership Between Ecosystems

NEAR Foundation and WOO Network are announcing the completion of a $5 million swap of native NEAR and WOO tokens. This comes as part of an agreement for WOO Network to become a key builder in the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, leveraging its strengths as a leading liquidity network. The tokens have a five year vesting period in which the two platforms will collaborate and create shared value for their respective token economies.

NEAR is a development platform built on a sharded, proof-of-stake, layer-one blockchain that offers drastically lower transaction fees while maintaining high throughputs. NEAR made headlines earlier this year when it announced a $800 million fund to accelerate building on their ecosystem.

WOO Network has a proven track record of delivering value in DeFi, both as a liquidity source for dYdX’s top designated market maker Kronos Research, and as a recipient of Binance Smart Chain’s (BSC) Most Valuable Builder program. Last month, WOO Network deployed WOOFi Swap on BSC, a decentralized exchange that simulates WOO Network’s CeFi liquidity on chain. WOO Network also provides liquidity used in ParaSwap’s private pools, supporting market-maker Kronos Research.

https://medium.com/nearprotocol/near-foundation-and-woo-network-complete-5-million-token-swap-to-create-a-strategic-partnership-439c041bc987

Qortal: The Future of Blockchain Platforms

Press Release - December 1st, 2021

   Qortal (QORT) is infrastructure for a censorship-free Internet, alternative ISP, suite of P2P
solutions, and alternative to Ethereum. It is a self-empowering operating system that is free of
any regulation other than the 100% open source codebase itself. This is only possible with true
decentralization and that is exactly what Qortal can accomplish. Literally no man has the power
to censor or sanction others within Qortal’s infrastructure, other than group admins of their
subcommunities. Individuals are in complete control over their accounts, wallets, trades, and
messaging with no middle man.
   Qortal launched on June 29th 2020 in the most ethical fashion with no pre-mine, no ICO/IEO,
and no airdrop. Realizing the unfairness with existing PoW and PoS systems, and with a desire
to create an egalitarian system for all, Qortal implemented ‘minting’ where every minting account
that participates in processing blocks earns a portion of the block reward. In other words, there
is no competition to sign blocks and there is no way to buy power over the network as seen with
PoW and PoS systems. QORT coin is more than another cryptocurrency to mine as it powers
on-chain functionality with transactions and is the base pair for trading within Qortal’s true
peer-to-peer Trade Portal. QORT can also be a form of digital payment within the Qortal
Network where free web hosting allows e-commerce and job markets to thrive!

   As you can see, there is a lot to Qortal. Below are key highlights:

● Stand-alone infrastructure with a focus on individual sovereignty
● 100% open source codebase that is built from scratch (no clones)
● Egalitarian minting where everyone earns QORT for supporting the network
● Local wallets that the individual has complete and sole control over
● True peer-to-peer (P2P) cross-chain trading
● Free web hosting and public data storage where freedom speech and trade of
information can thrive unhindered
● Social media safe haven where only admins of their self-created groups can censor and
have control over
● Encrypted peer-to-peer text, voice, and video communications
● Infrastructure for ethical third-party projects to build securely
● Auto-updates that require 60% approval by DevTeam (decentralized solution)

   What Qortal has now:

● Network stability with over 3,000 nodes
● Secure accounts and local wallets for QORT, BTC, LTC, and DOGE
● Sponsorship and minting system where anyone can join to help support the network
● Working P2P Trade Portal with QORT, LTC, and DOGE (BTC is not live now)
● ‘Sleeping’ trade ATs to improve Trade Portal performance and scalability
● Database trimming to prevent chain bloating and improve scalability
● Auto-bootstrapping to sync nodes faster (Top-Only nodes are also an option now)
● Encrypted P2P messaging on Q-Chat
● Q-Chat Groups (public and private)
● Name Registration (can be used instead of address; can also be used as a domain)
● 100% open source custom kernels for Raspberry Pi boards built specifically for Qortal
What to expect next:
● Core version 3.0 to go live later this month with web hosting and public data storage
● App Store for add-on applications (everyone can create applications for users to opt into)
● Voting system so we all can help influence the project’s direction
● More coins added to the Trade Portal and wallets (BTC, ARRR, etc.)
● Sponsorship and minting system modification to improve integrity
● Encrypted private group messaging
● Mesh networking when the node base is large enough (end of year 2022 possibly)

   Qortal is also being built to provide ethical projects with a viable alternative to platforms like
Ethereum. So many projects claim to be decentralized and are not. They often fall short of
ethical standards or are outright scams. Qortal will not be a place for such things.
With the launch of version 3.0, Qortal will begin to rebuild the Internet as well as blockchain
space in an unhackable and ethical fashion. It’s time for change without hindrance! This is a
moment a lot of Qortians have been waiting for in the virtual land of Qortia! With this emerging
technology, mankind can unify, educate, and grow together while regaining control over our
digital lives. Qortal’s community believes in restoring balance to the people of the world. This is
not about anarch per se, but are certainly building an anarchistic platform free from any
regulation. Qortians are building infrastructure for a new system. One that cannot be hacked or
compromised, as it is truly decentralized and self-empowering! Join Qortal in this revolutionary
venture! You can find all of the official links and more information about the Qortal Project at
wiki.qortal.org  https://qortal.org/

Aurora partners with ConsenSys, Bringing MetaMask, Infura and more Ethereum Tools to NEAR

Aurora, the Ethereum scaling solution that allows projects built on Ethereum to utilize the cutting-edge technology of the NEAR Protocol, is partnering with ConsenSys, the enterprise blockchain company to provide access to its suite of developer tools.

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.

https://aurora.dev/blog/aurora-partners-with-consensys

Aurora is Now Live On Autofarm!

Functional features of Aurora currently include a bridge, block explorer and AMM exchange — TriSolaris, whose TVL doubled to $100 million in just a span of 3 days after its $TRI token launch.
7 new vaults from Aurora’s leading AMM DEX, TriSolaris, have been added to Autofarm. And more will be added along the way as the Aurora ecosystem continues to bloom!

https://medium.com/autofarm-network/aurora-is-now-deployed-on-autofarm-99e0aad1e419

Reality Chain in collaboration with Unique One Network, an epchain candidate from Octopus Network, launched the first metaverse on testnet

https://demo.uniqueone.world/

At the moment, you can add your NEAR and ETH wallets to the whitelist to buy land on testnet: realitychain.io/whitelist

The next step in the development of the Reality Chain is the Paras metaverse.
The upcoming Paras metauniverse will be built entirely on NEAR Protocol (like the realitychain) and will be an option for Paras NFT artists to create art, furniture and clothing.
Everyone can also create their own gallery!

Project website: realitychain.io
https://t.me/near_ru/689

Metaverse AI is developing an "Open Metaverse" on Web 3.0. on high speed and affordable NEAR Protocol

The Metaverse is Coming. It should be Open & Polymorphic...

- Privacy-preserving Decentralized Avatar & Identity Management.
- Zero-Knowledge proofs (ZKP) safeguards privacy in virtual worlds.
- Complete ownership of 3D avatars, identity & metaverse credentials.

https://www.metaverseai.org/

There is nothing yet but this definitely needs to be monitored.

This is very good news sir. It turns out that a new project called PFP generative will be born.
Hopefully I can also get this randomly given PFP
Best wishes for the PFP project.

Nearnauts is launching 1st December!
NEARNauts, the generative PFP project, aims to pioneer the NFT space on NEARProtocol.
Get your hands on one of these 10K randomly generated PFPs, which will be available to mint Dec 1st.
Strap in! https://twitter.com/NEARProtocol/status/1465341387872911362

Near protocol has awarded a $50,000 USD grant to Wannaswap.
WannaSwap is one of the first projects on Aurora EVM. They have built a DEX to enable seamless asset swaps and liquidity provision for the Aurora ecosystem. WannaSwap is directly supported by NEAR protocol and AURORA.

Dante Network partnership with NEAR

Dante is a data storage network with flexible cross-chain service, secured privacy and high scalability. They'll receive a grant from NEAR to build better privacy storage.
The Dante Network team is well-versed, the CEO of the company holds a Master's degree from Xiamen University, and the CTO is one of the internet development practitioners.

https://twitter.com/DanteNetwork/status/1463523630013288448

Simple Nightshade
Today, the code for phase 0 was successfully deployed to the mainnet – it can take several hours or days for the code to be integrated by all network participants.

This phase, nicknamed Simple Nightshade, will kickstart a year of changes and additions to the NEAR blockchain that when complete, will make it super-fast, incredibly secure, and capable of onboarding millions of users into the world of Web3 without skipping a beat.

In this initial phase, we will shard the state, but not processing – meaning the blockchain will still be validated by all the network’s validators. The state will be split into four shards, significantly increasing the throughput of the network. 

Before sharding, blockchains would become congested as the project became more popular.
In this step, we have built a mechanism to split a shard into multiple parts through live upgrades, which will serve as the foundation for dynamic resharding in the future – more on that later. Meanwhile, because every shard is still validated by all validators, the safety guarantees remain the same.



It means they get the same simple, easy-to-use experience, but with increased speed and performance. One of blockchain’s biggest challenges has been scalability: how does a network grow to handle increased activity without compromising on security? Our solution to that question is Nightshade Sharding. 

While there are many new blockchains claiming to have thousands of transactions per second (TPS) and many layer 2 scaling solutions, due to their non-sharded designs, they would all hit an upper limit of what the network could handle eventually.

NEAR’s Nightshade Sharding, on the other hand, allows NEAR Protocol to scale linearly with the number of shards, thereby having the ability to satisfy the demand for transactions as more and more users start to use NEAR. Ultimately it prepares NEAR for mass consumer adoption of billions of users.


Similar to users, developers will not have to change existing processes in order to take advantage of the increase in speed and scalability.

Thanks to Nightshade’s homogeneous design, developers are not exposed to the details of sharding from the very beginning and they will remain unaffected by this upgrade. More specifically, internally we treat cross-contract calls the same regardless of whether two contracts are on the same shard. Therefore, developers should expect no changes to their experience of developing on NEAR.


While transactions per second are often used as a measure of a network’s speed, there are many other factors that go into how quickly a blockchain can verify a transaction.

At NEAR, network congestion, transaction finality and cost are all parts of the puzzle when it comes to assessing how ‘quick’ a network is. For reference, for token transfers, on one shard we can do 800-1000 TPS and with the upcoming sharding with four shards, we will be able to do a minimum of 2500-3000 TPS.

Ultimately, NEAR’s Nightshade is theoretically limitless (by increasing the number of shards) and can handle millions of transactions per second.


In addition to the work on the protocol by NEAR Inc, NEAR Foundation is creating an ecosystem for developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises to thrive with ambitious funding programs including $800 million worth of global ecosystem funding (now valued at $1.2 billion).

We’re also seeing a thriving gaming, metaverse, and NFT ecosystem emerging, not to mention a DeFi ecosystem that has gone from strength to strength since mainnet launch one year ago.

For consumers, we’re making strides forward to make the crypto experience even easier to use. From simple, language-based wallet names, to two-factor authentication, and staking baked right into the wallet.

This is just the beginning of a period of explosive growth at every level. We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

The v1 release serves as the beta where we introduce the DEX to the community using a familiar Uniswap/Sushi based interface. The team is already currently working on v2 which will showcase a fully custom UI that is more information-rich, and adhering to NearPad’s emphasis on design and user experience.

With the DEX launch, we’re now paving the way for liquidity and yield farming flow from Ethereum to Aurora. However, to make the reward distribution fair and equitable to all participants, reward distribution for liquidity pool token stakers will be delayed by 12 hours. This is to allow everyone to stake their liquidity pool within a reasonable time and start earning rewards without being handicapped by their time zone.

“The launch of the DEX marks the real launch of NearPad, as its mission to become the DeFi hub on Aurora becomes more tangible. We’re excited to work with Aurora, Near, and the budding ecosystem projects to make a more enticing and comprehensive offering to all community members.” — Aiden Knox, core contributor

To start farming, go to: https://dex.nearpad.io/
https://nearpad.medium.com/announcing-auroras-first-dex-and-liquidity-farming-platform-92f888d757e4

Due to the delay of the SmartPad team, only yesterday the ido of AURORA started.
Having gone deeper into the project i decided to skip this ido. I don't like the token distribution method that the team made.
The project estimate is too high and it seems to me that in half a year i'll be able to buy a token at a cheaper price and the project itself will be more developed after this time.

Aurora DAO Approves AURORA IDO

Basic information
- Total amount of sale: 1,000,000 $AURORA
Platforms for sale:
- SmartPad (Aurora);
- BocaChica (NEAR);
- Skyward (NEAR).

SmartPad Sale
Date: November 4, 2021
Amount: 50,000 $AURORA
Price: $1
Accepted tokens: ETH

BocaChica Sale
Date: November 11, 2021
Amount: 300,000 $AURORA
Price: $1
Accepted tokens: NEAR

Skyward Sale
Date: November 17, 2021
Amount: 650,000 $fAURORA
Price: non-fixed
Accepted tokens: NEAR

More information there https://aurora.dev/blog/aurora-dao-approves-usdaurora-ido

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DIA Oracles Now Available Natively on NEAR

Due to its crowd-sourcing approach, the DIA oracle enables dApps to have access to a broad library of digital and traditional assets off the shelf, sourced from multiple on-chain and off-chain sources. Additionally, DIA can generate price feeds of any asset listed on centralised and decentralised exchanges. Moreover, DIA’s oracle platform will offer its granular layer of customizability to build decentralised applications on NEAR, with multiple methodologies for data sanitisation and computation.

DIA (Decentralised Information Asset) is an open-source, financial information platform that utilises crypto-economic incentives to source and validate data. Market actors can supply, share and use financial and digital asset data.
https://medium.com/dia-insights/hello-near-protocol-dia-oracles-now-available-natively-on-near-3bbef5b3f13

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QSTN: Redefining data, NFTs and DeFi on Near Protocol

What is QSTN?
QSTN is a web application where users participate in surveys, quizzes and short questionnaires to earn cryptocurrency.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology, which all cryptocurrencies use as an immutable “news feed” for activity on-chain.
By integrating NEAR and their respective blockchain, users on QSTN can verify their answers were recorded on the blockchain.
Now, users will not need to “trust” because the time stamp is immutably on-chain.

QSTN goal is to create a ecosystem where users can monetize their data and learn about cryptocurrency at the same time.
If you don't already, follow us on Twitter, because we will be hosting weekly “QSTNs of the Day” for qsties to earn the first official “QSTN” NFT.
https://medium.com/@qstnus/qstn-redefining-data-nfts-and-defi-on-near-protocol-d7cd8fb050f4

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Aurora IDO on SmartPad Nov 5 at 13:00 UTC
https://twitter.com/auroraisnear/status/1456246263230255115
Although i'll take part in the sale it seems to me that the estimate of $ 1 is too high. What do you think?

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

• Textile
• Liquality
• CronCat
• Kurtosis
• The Grain Programming Language

The vehicle, a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, aims to distribute the money in NEAR tokens over about four years in amounts ranging from about $5,000 to several million dollars, Proximity’s announcement said. The grants DAO is open to all DeFi projects, it said.

DeFi projects such as Curve, Sushi, Dodo and Kyber have launched or are in the process of doing so on NEAR’s blockchain, which is designed to be fast, secure and infinitely scalable. It’s backed by venture-capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz’s A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com and Baidu Ventures.

There are now more than 1.3 million active accounts on the network, according to the statement. In addition, total value locked has exceeded $150 million, and includes NEAR native assets -- alongside Ethereum network assets such as Ether, USDC and Tether via its Rainbow Bridge connection.

AuroraDAO approved the creation of the official project token. $AURORA token has a total supply of 1 billion. The network of deployment is Ethereum, bridged to NEAR and Aurora using the Rainbow Bridge.




Some of the following initiatives may or may not be implemented, as per AuroraDAO decisions:

$AURORA token staking;
Incentives for token holders to take part in voting with the allocation of $AURORA from the Community Treasury;
Rainbow Bridge transfers fees;
Rainbow bridge fast transfers fees;
Aurora contract additional execution fees;
Aurora validator private transaction pool service;
Farming of locked funds in the Rainbow Bridge connectors;
Tokenomics
A portion of the tokens will be locked and to be subject to an unlocking scheme which will be determined by the DAO. The rest of the tokens will be used in various initiatives to develop NEAR and Ethereum ecosystems with the help of Aurora solutions.

• 2 Solid Days
  Two days of deep dives into the NEAR Community and Ecosystem
• Content Rich
  Come watch 20+ Presentations from thought leaders delivering the latest insights

• Something for Everyone
  Opportunities for Developers, Creators, Investors, Founders, and Community Members to connect and learn more about NEAR
• Range of Discussions
  Talks on DeFi, NFTs, Gaming, Protocol Updates, Developer Tools, and more
  NFT and VR Gallery from NEAR Creators
• Community-First
  Community Choice Awards spotlighting our Community Members
• Lasting Connections
  Networking opportunities to connect and build relationships with NEAR

Main features of the Near blockchain:

• Proof-of-Stake (PoS)
• Rainbow Bridge
• Transaction processing speed (100,000 Per second)
• Open source and the entry threshold for new developers
• Supports Dapps
• Developed community

NEAR Protocol was created by Ilya Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. The progromists began developing the project as early as 2018. After a stunning launch, the development team had a staff of over 50 people from such eminent companies as: Facebook, Google and MemSQL, Microsoft. Also, the developers have many victories in the championships in programming, which ultimately gives a huge plus to the trust in the work of the entire ecosystem of the project.





This is a rather complex system of protocol interaction, but very simple for users to implement. In simple terms, this second lyers application will help Ethereum developers and users combine 2 blockchains at once. Aurora will combine a fully functional Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and a powerful cross-chain bridge between Eth and Near, thereby allowing the implementation of ETH smart contracts in the NEAR protocol, giving developers the choice.
Neo said in the Matrix .“Choice. The problem is choice.”

After all, when the choice of two technologies through 1 way, the choice becomes obvious, right?