NEWSLETTER ISSUE #76

• The number of unique addresses on NEAR Protocol officially reached 20M on Sep 19th, 2022.
  
• NEAR is now home to one of the most used dApps in the world.
  SWEAT has onboarded more than 14m individuals to the world of Web3. They created the largest airdrop to date. All the while, the NEAR blockchain ran without a hitch. Not one dropped transaction or block. Not an increase in transaction fees. Not a slowdown of the chain’s processing time.
  
• The 'nearweek.pool.near' is deployed.
  Its purpose is to fund NEARWEEK's compliant DAO payments which powers the weekly newsletter and in time all content production. Come stake with us if you like what we do!
  
• NEAR TEAM NEARCON 2022: Highlights, talks and videos.
  
• Hacking beyond the hype: NEARCON's IRL hackathon recap.
  
• freeCodeCamp.org receives a grant from NEAR Foundation
  The grant will be used to develop interactive Web3 courses around NEAR protocol and our ecosystem. The curriculum will also contain 10+ interactive practice projects to help you learn: how to build and deploy smart contracts with JavaScript, client side dApps and a range of real-world applications. The first of these are now in open beta. Go give it a try!
  
• Phase 1 of sharding is now released to mainnet.
  Upgrade is expected to be done by Sep 28 once enough validators adopt the new version. LFG!!
  
• Banyan Collective launches.
  Spearheaded by the infamous Cameron Dennis (former NEAR Foundation), Banyan Collective is a grassroots org dedicated to accelerating NEAR Protocol education, development, projects and adoption in the US. Check out their programmes and get onboard the NEAR US train. LFG BANYAN!
  
• Proximity Labs: Orderbooks on $NEAR featuring Orderly Network, Spin & Tonic DEX.
  Learn all about why NEAR is positioned to become the leading orderbook chain in this deep dive.
  
• $AURORA is now available for instant swaps on ChangeNOW.
  
• $AURORA is now available on Transak.
  
• Fiat to crypto directly on Ref Finance with Transak integration.
  
• Arcnes integrates NEAR Protocol as its first.
  Arcnes, a multi-chain launchpad and marketplace for Web3 games and NFTs, announced that NEAR will be the first chain Arcnes integrates with. Arcnes, which used to be Luart, a Terra-based NFT marketplace, before rebranding, aims to offer a complete suite of products and services for blockchain-gaming projects.
  
• Coinbase learning rewards for NEAR are now available in 13 languages.
  
• SwapBitssa has partnered with Decentral Bank to integrate $USN to local fiat swap in all of supported countries.

• The Aurora Weekly Update is here. Filled with Alpha as always! Watch it here or Read here
  
• Airdropme is now live on Aurora.
  Airdropme is a cost-effective tool for airdrops, token distributions in bulk & DAO rewards.
  
• Near India Hub makes its first investment in Binocs.
  Binocs, a crypto taxation and portfolio tracking platform, recently raised $4 Million in their seed round.
  
• $USN v3.0 introduces two cores for minting $USN.
  Stableswap and collateralized debt position, more TBA.
  
• The $SWEAT lending pool and $SWEAT - $wNEAR farm is live on PembRock Finance.
  
• The Spin team has increased spot trading limits to 50,000 USDC on all markets.
  
• Ref Finance becomes a strategic partner of Arctic.
  
• Multifarm.Fi x Bastion Protocol partnership announcement.
  Multifarm builds custom dashboards for DAOs and DeFi Protocols.

• NearlendDAO public Testnet is going live in October.
  
• Far Away Swap joins the NEAR Protocol x Encode Club accelerator.

ReFi

• OFP Film Premiere: Greening the Future in Kajiado, Kenya.
  Revealing the power of ReFi in real life.

• Paras 30-day marketplace stats.
  
• NEAR NFT Club's weekly recap
  
• Freaky Elves by Spin are partnering with Pawn Protocol, the first P2P NFT lending platform on NEAR Protocol.
  
• Pawn NFT has been selected by Encode Club as a project to participate in their NEAR Protocol Accelerator program.
  
• TradePort integrates AstroMarket by NEARNauts.
  
• NFT AR app Cosmos69 by Apollo42 is officially live for all IOS users!
  
• Tamago has partnered with BluePlanetAlliance & Hard Rock Hotels for a Climate Week event in NYC (September 23)
  
• Aurora NFT Club announce their partnership with Nifty Row
  
• Lacrove NFT has entered in a partnership with NEAR Korea DAO.
  
• Lacrove NFT has a partnership with Superlative Secret Society
  
• Finally (L)Earner NFTs are available at Mintbase.

1. NEAR event calendar.
   
2. Q&A ~ Open Web Contributors. Every week on Wednesday GMT+1.
   
3. Join Aurora Update for weekly alpha leaks and news every Fri. 2pm UTC.
   
4. NEAR MetaBUILD III Hackathon, Sep 23 – Nov 21, 2022.
   
5. Get ready for an exclusive Twitter Space AMA with Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, and Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Aurora, on September 27th at 9:30 am PST (6:30 pm CET)
   
6. Blockchain Education Experience Mint: The BEE mint will be on September 29th. Keep an eye on their discord for WL and OG spots.

• NEAR Bytes - Episode 7 is here.
  Bytes are back after NEARCON with Dorian from the DevRel team, who brings a ton of developer updates on NEAR. This week Includes NEARCON & Hackathon recap, Devcon and upcoming events, NEAR x freeCodeCamp and many more.
  
• Cardstack Fireside Chat with Illia.
  This conversation is aimed at developers in Web3 and explores why NEAR community thinks usability and DevEx are the keys to mainstream adoption.
  
• Private Sharding for business explained.
  
• An anonymous whitehat submitted a critical vulnerability to Aurora via Immunefi.
  Aurora patched the vuln, no funds lost, and the whitehat got a $1m payout. Read all about it in the writeup by Halborn Security.

• Developer Community Feedback.
  Please share your feedback on what is working or not working well and help grow a healthy developer community.
  
• Watch the latest
  Protocol Community meeting - DevConsole & Explorer Community Meeting - DevTool Community Meeting
  
• The next big event in line? DevCon 🇨🇴
  Meet Pagoda in Colombia for one of the biggest blockchain events of the year. Pagoda and NEAR Protocol will be hosting a NEAR ecosystem side-event October 11-14th.

• Kolibrio partners with Aurora.
  Kolibrio (Broadcaster Extractable Value Relay) partnered with Aurora. The integration concept was presented by Alex Shevchenko at NEARCON. Bringing MEV back to the ecosystem and reducing post-block production spam.

Bounty programs

• NEAR Protocol Gitcoin bounties
  
• Aurora Bug Bounty program on Immunefi. Find those bugs and get up to $6,000,000 in rewards.
  
• Ref Finance's Bug Bounty program on Immunefi.
  
• Bastion launched their bug bounty on Immunefi $250k in rewards.
  
• BlueBit Bug Bounty program is live on Immunefi.

• NEAR Foundation Job Board: Ecosystem job opportunities.
  
• Job openings at NEAR
  
• Job openings at Aurora
  
• BEExperience - The HUB of blockchain education and recruitment.