NEWSLETTER ISSUE #75

NEARWEEK is aggregating and curating information across the NEAR Protocol ecosystem. This weekly recap edition was made possible via 57 news contributions from our community to the NEWS DAO.

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Highlights

A huge shout out to everyone who attended NEARCON and the official NEARWEEK ecosystem party! If you like us are having the NEARCON blues we got a playlist that will cheer you up. ICYMI we made a recap of every NEARCON day for you:

NEARCON Day 1 Recap - NEARCON Day 2 Recap - NEARCON Day 3 Recap

If you didn't attend NEARCON or want to revisit some of the many great talks you can find the recordings for all stages on NEAR's YouTube channel.

NEAR Foundation also published highlights from NEARCON.

Much love from the NW team, we're looking forward to seeing you all again next year NEAR fam, let's keep BUIDLING!
Nightshade Sharding Phase 1 is live
On NEARCON Day 1, there was some major Nightshade sharding news. Pagoda, the Web3 startup platform and contributor to NEAR Protocol, announced the launch of Sharding Phase 1—a major technical milestone that increases the number of validators, improves decentralization, and bolsters the network’s resilience.
@cryptomanran from Crypto Banter made an extensive video of NEARCON.
CryptoBanter covers NEARCON! Checkout interview with Illia Polosukhin, Co Founder of NEAR & Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Aurora. Get alphas from USN, Orderly Network, NearPay, Banyan Collective, Few and Far & SweatCoin! And a Rapid Fire with OFP, Brave, Octopus Network, Calimero Network, SeatLab NFT, Apollo42, Satori, Mintbase and learn what they are building on NEAR.
NEARCON's IRL hackathon winners.
Big shout out to everyone who participated in this year's hackathon.
Daily active users of the NEAR blockchain have gone brrrr!
NEARCON saw host to NEAR's biggest mainnet stress-test to date. The resilience of the NEAR blockchain during incredibly high load has been displayed during the recent surge with the SWEAT TGE. Block times were unaffected, gas fees did not skyrocket, and all users were still able to leverage the NEAR blockchain as normal. Do note this is without the full implementation of the novel sharding mechanism, Nightshade, which is set to go live throughout 2023. LFG!
Congrats to Sweatcoin!
With 120m installs and 13m accounts already on-chain, SWEAT is well on its way to become the biggest app in web3 right now. $SWEAT got listed on Bybit, NEXO, OKX, KUCOIN, Huobi, FTX, Gate.io, MEXC Global, Uniswap and Ref Finance. The Sweat Foundation will use 50% of its profits to buy $SWEAT from the secondary market - This $SWEAT will be burned or distributed as staking yield. Furthermore SWEAT has developed a sophisticated fraud detection system to ensure that only verified movement mints $SWEAT.
Bitstamp lists $NEAR.
Tether $USDT launches on the NEAR network.
NEAR Foundation unveils $100M VC Fund targeting Web3 culture and entertainment.
The NEAR Foundation is introducing a $100 million venture capital fund and venture lab in partnership with Caerus Ventures. NEAR Foundation will anchor the fund, which has an initial closing of $50 million and a target of $100 million for seed series A investments. The first investment will be in the venture lab, which will work with creators, talent and franchise owners to conceive, validate, test and build the next generation of platforms, according to the press release. Caerus Ventures is a newly launched investment firm led by IMG executive Nathan Pillai, who said Caerus aims to catalyze innovation in Web3, focusing on sport, music, film, fashion and art.
Let’s have a look at Aurora’s 4 major technical updates announced at NEARCON.
Learn about Rainbow Bridge NEAR-native token connector, Aurora Cross-Contract calls, Solidity cross-compilation into WASM allowing you to build with Solidity directly on NEAR and Aurora MEV.
Fireblocks integrates NEAR.
Enabling 1500+ institutions to access NEAR DeFi. Starting with Meta Pool then Ref Finance, Burrow and many more.
Crypto Rogue Games (Crystals of Naramunz) partners with Worldline Merchant Services.
Gaming is leading the way in creating new value around digital assets. The challenge now is building trust in the underlying crypto technology. Regulators and other stakeholders around the globe are developing frameworks and mechanisms for digital assets to improve transparency and compliance, and reduce risks for participants. A recent example of this is Worldline’s partnership with Crypto Rogue Games to develop a compliant NFT gaming ecosystem. Using Worldline’s PaymentIQ payment orchestration solution, gamers will be able to deposit fiat currencies, and in-game mechanics will support a play-to-earn model in which players can earn NFTs. Worldline will provide the transaction ‘on-ramp’ for a gaming experience based on the NEAR protocol.
Sender Wallet raises $4.5m in private funding round led by Pantera Capital.
MyNearWallet partners with Transak.
The integration of Transak’s Fiat On-Ramp with MyNearWallet will allow users to buy $NEAR from more than 125+ countries and use cards, ApplePay, GooglePay, bank transfer, or even local methods to pay.
NEAR HACKS NYC is happening from September 22-25.
The hackathon for the NEAR Ecosystem in NYC during Messari Mainnet. Join, build the future of Web3 and catch workshops from the industry’s leading builders, teachers, and funders. Developers from varying backgrounds & skill sets are encouraged, especially those with the knowledge of Rust, Solidity, JavaScript, and ReactJS.

If you want to know more listen to the Twitter Space on the event.

DeFI

AURORA

Aurora Weekly updates filled with alpha. Watch it here or read here.
Uniswap has posted a proposal to deploy Uniswap v3 on Aurora.
Hot Cross Bridge now supports Aurora.
ONTO Wallet integrated Aurora.
Users can now easily add Aurora Wallet and manage their assets on Aurora in ONTO.
Bastion Protocol Oracle TWAP Anchoring Upgrade
Bastion announced an Oracle Infrastructure Upgrade with an Anchoring mechanism factoring in the Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) of Trisolaris prices to increases the security of their oracles while maintaining decentralisation.
Hypersign partners with Router Protocol.
The partnership will help to Create Cross-Chain DID Resolver for Decentralized Identifiers and create a decentralized multi-chain identity infrastructure.
Wannaswap announce their roadmap until Q2 2023.
Swidge Beta is now live on Aurora enabling to Swidge (swap + bridge) across multiple chains with one transaction.
Arctic and NEX Market announced stragetic partnership.
NEX will become a launch partner and core member of Arctic DAO governance
BlueBit Weekly Report [13-Sep-2022]