NEWSLETTER Edition #152

NEAR TOWNHALL : CHAIN SIGNATURES DEMO
The townhall agenda included a groundbreaking chain signatures demo, project deep dives from the NEAR Horizon HZN 2, NEARWEEK highlights of recent news from around the ecosystem, and an introduction from Illia Polosukhin detailing NEAR's focus for 2024. WATCH


NEAR PROTOCOL NOW HAS FIVE SHARDS ON MAINNET!
The Protocol One team has successfully implemented re-sharding to increase the number of shards on NEAR's mainnet. A second re-sharding process is scheduled, which will further increase the number of mainnet shards to six, ensuring NEAR continues to maintain its high performance and speed with zero downtime. READ


NEAR PROTOCOL SPACES : THE IMPLICATIONS OF FIVE SHARDS ON MAINNET
Pagoda's Director of Protocol, Bowen Wang, was joined by Jim Berry (Director of Engineering Experience), as they introduced NEAR's fifth shard on mainnet and talked about the implications, and an imminent sixth shard. LISTEN


NEAR HORIZON FOUNDERHUB
Near Horizon just launched FounderHub - it's an amazing, perpetually evolving resource to guide founders & builders in building their project on NEAR. It contains valuable information across all the very common pain points/need areas from legal entity set up, brand awareness to launching & deploying. READ


$NEAR PRICE SPIKES AHEAD OF NVIDIA AI CONFERENCE
NEAR's value nearly doubled since March 5 amid Nvidia conference hype, with co-founder Illia Polosukhin set to reunite with his fellow co-authors of the AI paper "Attention Is All You Need", to discuss the evolution of AI. This, alongside AI token gains and Bitcoin's surge, have fueled positive speculation on NEAR's future collaboration with Nvidia. READ


FRAX STABLECOIN LAUNCHES ON NEAR PROTOCOL
The second-largest issuer of decentralized dollar-pegged stablecoins, expands to NEAR, launching $FRAX stablecoin and introducing yield-bearing assets (sFRAX), marking its first entry into a non-EVM ecosystem. This collaboration aims to integrate DeFi infrastructure and explore new opportunities in treasury yields and decentralized finance on NEAR. READ


NEAR x GRAPH PROTOCOL
The Graph Foundation expands subgraph support to include NEAR, enhancing data querying and interoperability for developers across over 40 blockchains. This partnership advances the Chain Abstraction vision, marking NEAR's growth in the multichain ecosystem. READ


NEARWEEK : ZKWASM, THE VM TO RULE THEM ALL
This latest publication from NEAR_intern, explores why and how NEAR and Polygon are co-developing zkWASM to advance blockchain technology, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs for enhanced security and scalability. The initiative aims to unify the blockchain ecosystem, moving beyond tribalism towards collaboration, and enabling a much larger pool of developers to contribute to Web3 using familiar languages through WASM. READ


NEARWEEK : FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES ON NEAR
This comprehensive thread details the different funding opportunities available on NEAR, for incoming founders, builders and community members just onboarding the ecosystem. READ

DEVHUB ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF ETHDENVER BOUNTIES
NearEventHub won the first prize of $5K delivering a Web3-native event platform on NEAR for blockchain-based event management. EventAppCreate, an app creator for building highly customizable events apps, came in second. NEAR Smart Contract Playground won the Boost Your Startup category, while Agents With Benefits (AWB) won the Chain Abstraction on NEAR bounty, showcasing the capabilities of a DAO-based AI agents. READ


DEVHUB : NEAR TO SPONSOR ETHSAMBA (BRAZIL) 2024
Stewarded by NEAR DevHub, NEAR will among the official sponsors of this year's ETH event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event kicks off on March 22. READ


DEVHUB ANNOUNCES DOCUMENTATION GROUP COMMUNITY CALL #7
Documentation enthusiasts are invited to join the call on March 20, for the latest updates, changes and discussions around NEAR's documentation. READ


NEAR PROTOCOL STATELESS VALIDATION EXPLAINED
A validator team on NEAR, Prophet One deep dived into NEAR's recently implemented Stateless Validation, how it works, benefits, and what it holds for the future. READ

BANYAN : A RECAP GUIDE ON FAST NEAR & LAVA NETWORK, ALT INFRASTRUCTURE PLATFORMS ON NEAR READ

USEFUL DEVELOPER RESOURCES

• NEAR DEVS TG GROUP. LINK
  
• NEAR PROTOCOL DOCS. LINK
  
• NEAR PROTOCOL GITHUB. LINK
  
• DATA AVAILABILITY ON NEAR. LINK
  
• WEEKLY PROGRESS & TECH UPDATES. LINK
  
• JUTSU: FULL-STACK AI WEB 3.0 COPILOT. LINK
  

REF FINANCE ANNOUNCES BOOSTED INCENTIVES PROGRAM
Aiming to enhance ecosystem activity and attract traders, this strategy includes gradual liquidity injections to Ref Finance and Burrow, and expanding beyond NEAR, with the inclusion of FRAX to strengthen the ecosystem's DeFi offerings. Strategic liquidity incentives are planned to boost engagement and market presence, marking a significant step towards ecosystem growth. READ


MINTBASE WALLET SUPPORT FOR NEW TOKENS
$ETH, $SOL, $LINEAR, $pNEAR, $NVIDIA, $BRRR, $SHITZU, $NDC, $BENDOG, $JUMBO, and more, are now recognized and manageable via the wallet. READ


SENDER LABS PUBLISHES INTEGRATED ROADMAP SUPPORTING NEAR'S CHAIN ABSTRACTION VISION
In support of NEAR's Chain Abstraction vision, Sender is planning upgrades into their wallet app, including instant Ethereum account generation from within user's NEAR account, cross-chain swaps, alternative gas fee payments, multi-chain asset management with account abstraction, and more. READ


NEAR MOBILE WALLET INTEGRATES REF FINANCE
Users of the non-custodial wallet app can now access Ref Finance directly from within the app and perform transactions. READ


REF FINANCE WHITELISTS NEARVIDIA'S $NVIDIA
The memecoin was launched on NEAR in honour of the upcoming NVIDIA AI conference, in which NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin will be a speaker. READ


NEARVIDIA NFT STAKING IS LIVE ON PARAS
- STAKE NFT


BITFINEX HIGHLIGHTS $NEAR AS TOKEN OF THE WEEK
The highlight follows a recent interview with NEAR co-founder, Illia Polosukhin. Catch the full episode here. READ


REF FINANCE : WEEKLY ANALYTICS RECAP READ

THE ECOSYSTEM CALENDAR


PARAS $EAST AIRDROP ELIGIBILITY CHECK
You can now check your eligibility to ensure you haven't missed the $EAST airdrop. READ


NEAR HORIZON DEMO DAYS
The most recent cohort pitching their projects. WATCH


MARKETING DAO ANNOUNCES WEB3 PR WORKSHOP
The workshop is designed for teams, founders and enthusiasts who want to get started or further in-depth with the intricacies of Web3 marketing and PR processes, from workflows, to building relationships with journalists, and much more. The workshops commences on March 21. READ


AURORA WEEKLY UPDATES 2024-03-15 WATCH

NEKO : $125K FUND FOR NEAR CONTENT CREATORS
Empowering NEAR-native content creators and their vital role in ecosystem growth: Explore, apply, contribute. APPLY

Dive into the Open Web! 'In Other News' proudly collates a carefully selected assortment of headlines from external Web3 platforms, curated just for you.

ETHEREUM MAINNET SUCCESSFULLY UPGRADED TO DENCUN, INTRODUCES BLOBS READ


ARBITRUM DAO CONSIDERING $400M CRYPTO GAMING FUND PROPOSAL READ


GRASS, FIRST-EVER LAYER 2 DATA ROLLUP, LAUNCHES READ


HONG KONG MARKET REGULATOR ISSUES WARNING AGAINST BYBIT READ

• (L)EARN TODAY CAMPAIGN BY LEARN.NEAR.CLUB
  
  
  AI & NEAR THREAD CONTEST

UPCOMING NEAR EVENTS

• MAR 20: NVIDIA GTC
  
• MAR 27: BUIDL ASIA
  
• MAR 29-31: ETH SEOUL
  
• APR 13-14: FUNDING THE COMMONS