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NEAR Foundation is excited to announce a new partnership with Absolute Labs, a company revolutionizing Web3’s marketing stack. Its “Wallet Relationship Management™ platform can be used by Web2 brands and Web3 startups alike to acquire, convert and retain customers on the Open Web. 

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.

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce a new partnership with Nansen, a blockchain analytics firm, on advanced tools for dApp developers and investors. Led by the NEAR Balkans Hub, the partnership with Nansen will give developers and investors new insights and data-driven solutions, like real-time data on transactions, addresses, and network activity.

“We are excited to join forces with Nansen to offer our developer community even more valuable insights,” says Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. “This partnership enables us to enhance our ecosystem and bring advanced analytics tools and data-driven insights to the forefront of the Web3 movement, ultimately accelerating the widespread adoption of decentralized applications.”

Nansen gives users access to billions of on-chain data points

With Nansen’s analytics platform, developers, investors, and other users get a comprehensive view of blockchain activity. This includes transaction flows, wallet holdings, and on-chain activity. 

Nansen enables users to analyze billions of on-chain data points with over 250m+ wallet addresses across multiple blockchains, discover opportunities, perform due diligence, and defend their portfolios with real-time dashboards and alerts. The platform also provides users with a suite of tools for monitoring blockchain projects and tracking their performance.

Alex Svanevik, CEO of Nansen, said that the platform is excited to join NEAR Foundation in giving NEAR in expediting “the next chapter of Web3 and empower[ing] developers to craft even more robust dApps.” 

“We’re proud to have led this partnership — our commitment to enabling future Web3 creators is reflected in everything we do, and we are excited to unlock that potential through the power of decentralization,” adds Ida Pandur, CEO of NEAR Balkans. “At the heart of our mission is a desire to empower individuals to create and innovate in a brand new way, and we are committed to continuing our efforts to make this vision a reality.”

As NEAR evolves into the Blockchain Operating System, a common layer for browsing and discovering open web experiences, compatible with all blockchains, this collaboration will help drive innovation on NEAR and onboard many new developers, investors, and end users into Web3. 

Rove, one of the most user-friendly entertainment ecosystems in Web3, is now in collaboration with NEAR. Their next release, Rove World v2, will act as a one-stop mobile-based ticketing solution and loyalty rewards program for brands. The update will also feature an in-app store that will include major brands, sports leagues, and musical artists.

Rove and Rove World v2 removes many of the key friction points that occur when brands and creators try to engage their audience with Web3 technology. Notable brands are already on board, as Rove has collaborated with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger on the Web2 side, alongside some of Web3’s largest brands such as Claynosaurz and MonkeDAO, with more exciting partnerships and activations to be announced soon.

“A multichain approach was always at the forefront of our long-term growth strategy for Rove,” said Jason Desimone, Founder of Rove. “Having built and launched the initial version of the Rove World mobile app, our goal is to now expand the reach and traction of Rove to other ‘Layer 1’ blockchain communities and ecosystems that align with our vision and will help us achieve our goals with the launch of Rove v2.”

Let’s take a look at how Rove World V2 is a game-changer for branded NFTs on NEAR.

How Rove is helping brands amp up their NFTs

The Rove ecosystem is a solution to many of the core issues facing brand and entertainment NFT campaigns, launches, and projects. That’s because Web3 itself is often difficult or daunting for the end user, who amongst other things might have questions about the value or utility of NFT ownership.

What Rove brings to the table is a user-friendly mobile app where NFTs are minted in mere seconds and with minimal steps. Brands can also easily add utility to the NFTs which are easily accessible by the user. Rove’s vision aligns seamlessly with NEAR’s Web2.5 strategy of making the onboarding of the next billion users into Web3 as easy as possible.   

Brand and entertainment NFT experiences built atop Rove and NEAR lets users log in seamlessly through familiar means like social media log-in, Apple ID, or facial ID. NFTs are easily sent and received on the Rove app via usernames, again with a similar Web2 interface to that of Venmo.

Rove World v2 release lets brands create buzz

The Rove World v2 release will be a major part of Rove’s suite of tools that make it easy for brands to get started with blockchain technology. Their approach is to allow brands to engage with NFTs in a collaborative manner that benefits creators, brands, and end users alike. Rove World v2 on Near is a huge leap in that direction.

The main feature is the in-app store that brands can now leverage in combination with Rove’s flagship app for curated NFT launches and blockchain-based ticketing. Not only will attendees be able to claim NFTs instantly at the tap of their phone, but brands can also now leverage Rove World v2 to offer seamless in-app purchases via the mobile store.

NEAR and entertainment continue to shine with Rove

Rove has many brands in the pipeline across the fashion, film, music, and sports verticals that want a seamless NFT experience for their customers. This not only brings more notable and forward-thinking brands into NEAR’s orbit but also showcases how the NEAR ecosystem continues to make major strides in the sports and entertainment verticals. 

Eventually, Rove will serve as a central ticketing and NFT project on NEAR. Users can easily create assets, mint the NFT, and distribute it however they’d like. The entire experience will be on a single mobile app, bridging the technical gap between users and brands while giving a fairer share to creators than mainstream NFT marketplaces.

All assets on Rove and Rove World v2 also have some form of utility. Anyone who owns an NFT on Rove can stake that asset for Rove credits that unlock various perks. It’s a great example of how Rove is making all of Web3 simple, including things like staking. 

Ticketing and NFT distribution for brands and creators are about to get a whole lot easier for everyone thanks to Rove. And with Rove World v2’s in-app store, major brands are lining up to be at the forefront of making web3 truly accessible, user-friendly, and financially fair.

“NEAR’s emphasis on onboarding the next billion users into Web3 with a specialized focus on entertainment, sports, and culture fit identically with our approach,” said Rove’s Desimone. “Not to mention NEAR’s industry-leading technology which enables a seamless migration of the easy-to-use features of the Rove World mobile app onto the NEAR blockchain.”

NEAR Foundation is thrilled to announce that Tekuno, one of the most innovative NEAR Balkans Hub projects, recently teamed up with Mastercard to serve up an incredibly unique real-life NFT experience. Attendees at the recent Money Motion (MoMo) Fintech conference in Zagreb, Croatia got a taste of how Web3 and NEAR can help brands reach new audiences with blockchain gamification.

Mastercard, a leader in global payment systems, enabled the Tekuno team and NEAR Balkans to realize this ground-breaking experience with NFTs. The NFT activation provided MoMo visitors with a gamified experience through which they could gather evidence of their participation at the conference and various NFTs — a concept called Proof of Doings (PODs).

These PODs had time and space restrictions, so participants could only pick them up during a particular period of the conference. PODs demonstrated a novel use case of how NFTs can be used to gamify real life, while strengthening Mastercard’s brand as forward-thinking in the loyalty and payments space.

Behind the Tekuno and Mastercard partnership

The city of Zagreb, Croatia, recently hosted the first edition of an exclusive FinTech conference called Money Motion. With Mastercard as one of the conference organizers and NEAR Balkans as a sponsor, this presented the perfect opportunity for collaboration.

Before the conference, NEAR Balkans Hub’s Product Lab was ready to launch Tekuno,  a blockchain as a service (BaaS) platform for NFT experiences. A user-friendly product for seamless onboarding of mass audiences to Web3, the Tekuno platform makes blockchain knowledge a preference rather than a requirement. 

Tekuno can be used for a variety of campaigns and experiences, including loyalty programs, marketing activations and events, CRM, HR initiatives, and much more. The technology does this through the creation of secure and transparent Proof-of-Doings (PODs) in the form of digital collectibles (NFTs) to attest and reward a wide range of activities. For the “Experience the Motion” campaign, Tekuno was used as proof-of-attendance.

How MoMo attendees claimed NFT PODs

In “Experience the Motion”, MoMo attendees proved their attendance by collecting a total of 5 different NFT PODs. These PODs were exclusive — attendees could only claim them at specific times during the conference.Attendees claimed their PODs by simply scanning QR codes at several predefined locations — the entrance, speakers presentations and panels, and the NEAR Balkans booth.

The PODs functioned as a prize raffle gateway, which attendees entered by following certain rules. MoMo attendees competed for a number of exciting prizes, including: exclusive Mastercard merchandise; a special 1–2–1 session with Christian Rau, Senior Vice President Crypto and Fintech Enablement Mastercard Europe; an invitation to a Web3 NEAR educational workshop, VIP access tickets for conference party; and the grand prize — a Mastercard Priceless.com experience at Chiavalon, Istria, an  olive oil making and tasting experience for two. 

NEAR Balkans and Mastercard campaign results 

The “Experience the Motion” ultimately reached more than 14,000 people on social media, and was available for over 1,000 attendees over two days of the conference. Tekuno’s user-friendly technology made it possible to distribute more than 500 PODs to more than 200 unique collectors.

Feedback from the attendees regarding the NFT experience and rewards was overwhelmingly positive. Participants found the Tekuno platform to be intuitive and easy to navigate. Participants  were able to easily open accounts, allowing them to follow the challenges and collect the PODs for a chance at winning exciting prizes. 

“This is the most seamless experience I have ever had with a Web3 app, and I’ve experimented with many, trust me,” said Vlaho Hrdalo, Lawyer and Chairman of UBIK — Croatian Association for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. 

Nikola Škorić, the CEO of Electrocoin, Gold sponsor of the conference, added: “‘Experience the Motion ’ —  the NFT activation made possible by Mastercard and organized by NEAR Balkans and Tekuno for the Money Motion conference, engaged our audience in an authentic and fun way that brought extra value to the conference while rewarding the luckiest ones.”

“We’re happy that Money Motion is a place of technology adoption and that brands see us as a great partner for such activities,” Škorić added.

Driving engagement with NFTs

As Mastercard and NEAR Balkans noted, many attendees, who ranged from fintech professionals to regional bank representatives, retail marketing leads, and others were particularly interested in Tekuno’s various use-cases. Indeed, it demonstrated the real-world applications and versatility of NFTs, helping traditional industries see the value in Web3 integrations. 

Gea Kariž, Marketing Director at Mastercard Croatia, shared her insights on the successful collaboration between Mastercard, Money Motion, Tekuno, and NEAR Balkans. 

‘’Our collaboration with the Tekuno and NEAR Balkans teams provided Mastercard HR with a seamless and exceptional entrance into the Web3 domain,” said Kariž. “Through this activation, we not only gained significant brand visibility but also reinforced our commitment to embracing blockchain and other cutting-edge technologies.”

“The added value of this campaign was the deep engagement we experienced with our end-users, fostering a strong sense of community around our brand and further solidifying our position as a forward-thinking and innovative company,” Kariž added.

The NEAR Balkans General Manager, Ida Pandur, was similarly inspired by the partnership — especially as it aligns with NEAR Foundation’s Web2.5 strategy of onboarding the masses with real use cases in Web3.

‘’We at NEAR Balkans are committed to help and enable mass adoption of Web3 and decentralization into everyday lives,” said Pandur. “The way we do it is by educating, enabling and  partnering with innovative organizations to bring Web3 to users in simple, value added, use cases. We are happy to have been working with Mastercard and use Tekuno, which is one of the best Web2→Web3 tools UX wise to bring it to life at MoneyMotion and from the interest we see across the region, it’s just getting started.’’

Sally Meouche-Grawi, CEO of Tekuno, noted that the campaign illustrated how Tekuno demonstrated that Web3 products can be user-friendly. 

“We’re trying to make it as user friendly as possible, but it’s still realistically a Web3 product, but it’s a Web3 product that is easy to use,” said Meouche-Grawi. “And this is what a lot of these products are critically lacking, which is the easy onboarding experience.”

“So, we are trying to set the standard… to show how we can create a Web3 product that any average user can actually use,” Meouche-Grawi added. “Because from my experience when it comes to Web3 products they are usually developed by developers for developers, this is the trend and we are trying to break it.’’

Hello, NEAR World! Welcome to NEAR Foundation’s newly reformatted “Transparency Report”. Published quarterly, NEAR Foundation’s Transparency Report explores the NEAR Foundation’s progress towards  its OKRs, as well as the latest technology news and updates from the NEAR ecosystem.

NEAR Foundation is kicking off the new Transparency Report with the Q1 edition. It features a NEAR Foundation Treasury report and a variety of exciting updates on the recently announced Blockchain Operating System (BOS), the NEAR ecosystem’s thriving projects, and NEAR Foundation’s Web2.5 strategy. You’ll get the latest on NEAR Horizon Accelerator, NDC, NEAR’s Web2 → Web3 partnerships, and more. 

NEAR Foundation Treasury Update

At the end of Q1 2023, NEAR Foundation’s treasury totalled $1.1b, including $365m fiat reserves and 316m NEAR ($630m at a closing price of $1.99). 

The NEAR Foundation has continued to adopt a highly responsible approach to treasury management in order to minimize the risk of loss in a turbulent market. Exposure to non-NEAR assets therefore has been limited, with fiat reserves held in AAA-rated Swiss bank accounts. 



Q1 has been a turbulent quarter for the US banking sector. However, the NEAR Foundation treasury’s proactive risk management policies — including limited exposure to Silicon Valley Bank (under FDIC insurance levels) and no exposure to Credit Suisse — have prevented any loss of funds. NEAR Foundation’s risk management strategy helps ensure that the NEAR Foundation maintains sufficient resources and runway even if the market downturn lasts for multiple years. 

As a result, the NEAR Foundation is in an extremely strong position to continue to support the ongoing growth and development of the NEAR protocol and ecosystem .

A recap of NEAR’s go-forward strategy 

Despite well-known issues with Web2 platforms and legacy institutions, and the significant progress made in the blockchain industry, Web3 has yet to fully deliver on its promise to open the web. The Web3 of today is held back by inaccessible user experiences, siloed apps that are difficult to discover and explore, few real-world use cases, and technology tribalism. While there is a lot of hype in Web3, there just isn’t enough value for users. 

This is why the NEAR Foundation is focusing on making the most of NEAR protocol’s fundamentals and convictions. The NEAR protocol has the best tech in Web3, world-class talent, and an ample runway. The NEAR protocol also has the ability to achieve mainstream adoption through a focus on users, rather than cultish maximalism or hype, and the understanding that converting strong Web2 projects to Web3 will get the NEAR ecosystem there. 

With NEAR’s recent launch of the Blockchain Operating System, this next phase of adoption is already underway. The BOS makes it easier than ever for Web2 apps and communities to take advantage of Web3’s opportunities while giving developers and end users a richer, more sustainable experience. 

In 2023, NEAR Foundation is focused on two different approaches to bringing more users to the NEAR protocol and the BOS. It begins with the NEAR Foundation’s top-down approach to partnerships, led by a world-class business development team. By working with major applications and brands with substantial, established communities, the NEAR Foundation is partnering on real use cases that drive engagement on the NEAR protocol, like ticketing and earning. High-traction focus verticals for these partnerships include sports, entertainment, and loyalty. Major partnerships in recent months include Grupo Nutresa, Google Cloud, and Sweat Economy. 

Q1 has also seen NEAR Foundation’s bottom-up, grassroots approach. This is designed to empower the NEAR ecosystem to invest in its own expansion through grants, primarily through 3 major community DAOs: Developer DAO, Marketing DAO, and Creatives DAO (visit the DAO websites to get involved). These grassroots DAOs will be supported by the NDC, which has launched several working groups in Q1. This quarter has also seen the launch of NEAR Horizon, an early-stage accelerator that will provide support across education, tech, hiring, legal, UX, and GTM guidance, to promising projects and founders on NEAR.

With the launch of the NDC, the DAOs, and the accelerator, NEAR Foundation will focus less on the allocation of capital directly to projects. Instead, the NEAR Foundation will support the community in making these decisions and further decentralizing key elements of the ecosystem. Also, Proximity supports projects building DeFi applications on the NEAR protocol through grants, advisory services, and developer support.

Q1 Ecosystem OKR performance

Throughout Q1, NEAR Foundation experienced several areas of growth toward our OKRs. While the NEAR Foundation met many of its goals, there is always work to be done. 

There is a lot of green. However, as an ecosystem we missed our North Star. NEAR Foundation’s goal was 2M MAAs but we came in short, just under 1M. There are a couple of key reasons for this, as well as a path forward to improve performance next quarter.

  1. SWEAT (which still represents the majority of MAA) is revisiting their MAA ramp up. Current expectations are that MAA growth will occur mostly in the second half of the year, with the US app launching in September.
  2. NEAR Foundation’s BD team has been closing great deals (23 in Q1 alone) — most announcements haven’t been made (6 only) and most launches will be towards the end of the year.

NEAR Foundation has built a new model to better forecast and set MAA expectations. With this new model, the NEAR Foundation is expecting just over 1.5M MAAs in Q2 of this year with a path to 10M by the end of 2023.

Outside of MAAs, the NEAR ecosystem  had a successful quarter with several areas of strength.

NEAR Foundation is currently working on a suite of real-time dashboards so the ecosystem can have visibility into the progress against our OKRs. You can find this at NEARAtlas.com. 

OKR1: NEAR is the BOS 

At ETHDenver, it was announced that the NEAR protocol announced that it is becoming the Blockchain Operating System — a common layer for discovering and creating Open Web experiences, across all blockchains. As part of that announcement, NEAR protocol launched Alpha.nearpages.wpengine.com, a composable frontend for Web3 allowing end users to easily and frictionlessly discover all of Web3’s possibilities in one seamless experience. It also enables developers to create and code interfaces in a single environment with the ability to fork a host of components to build apps faster, and more efficiently than ever before.

The BOS announcement generated a lot of excitement, inspiring Pantera Capital’s Franklin Bi to tweet, “Decentralized frontends are the future.”

Quoting Illia’s announcement tweet, Redpoint’s Managing Director Jason Warner said: “Something I actually think is interesting is what Illia and crew are doing with NEAR and what they are calling the open web. It’s an experiment worth running for sure starting with Near.Social.”

“We need innovation at every level of the stack, not just the core protocol and smart contract layers,” tweeted Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z crypto. “NEAR is leading the way.”

Since launching alpha.nearpages.wpengine.com, there has been strong usage and curiosity from the NEAR ecosystem community, with 6,000 accounts created and over 2,500 individual components published. The Pagoda team has been working closely with the active community of builders to help enhance the BOS experience.

Illia Polosukhin, CEO of Pagoda and co-founder of the NEAR protocol, also hosted a technical workshop where he zoomed in on each layer of the BOS stack and showed some examples of features, components to build from, and how gateways can become super apps by integrating with the BOS. 

The next big update on the Blockchain Operating System will be at Consensus. You can find out more about NEAR’s presence at Consensus here.

OKR2: NEAR is a thriving decentralized Ecosystem

One of the NEAR Foundation’s core mandates is to support the continued decentralization of the NEAR ecosystem, and great progress has been made on this front since the previous transparency report. 

A roundup of the ongoing decentralization efforts across the NEAR ecosystem follows. 

NEAR Digital Collective (NDC)

The NDC initiative was announced towards the end of last year, and has grown to become a grassroots movement with hundreds of participants, including users, projects, and other stakeholders. The NDC is focused on self-governance, aiming to empower the ecosystem to collectively make decisions in a robust and decentralized way on everything from funding to elected representatives and more. 

There are now several working groups that have been launched as part of the NDC’s work, covering various ecosystem needs including governance (Governance WG), marketing (Distribution Network WG), project incubation (Startup DAO), and legal work (Legal WG). 

To learn more about the NDC, please see here.

NEAR Community Treasury Launch

One of the NDC’s biggest achievements is the recent launch of the NEAR Community Treasury. Championed by the NDC’s Governance Working Group with support from the NEAR Foundation and other stakeholders, the NEAR Community Treasury leverages an innovative legal framework to provide the ecosystem with a robust, sustainable, and decentralized treasury. 

At the outset, the NEAR Community Treasury will hold 5,662,061 NEAR, which was donated to the NEAR Digital Collective by the NEAR ecosystem community (along with a nominal amount of USDT that was donated by the NEAR Foundation as part of the administrative setup process). 

The NEAR Community Treasury wallet is viewable here.

Grassroots DAO funding activity

The three core grassroots DAOs — Developer DAO, Marketing DAO, and Creatives DAO — have been making great strides recently in updating their internal governance and processes to ensure they are as transparent, sustainable, and effective as possible. 

NEAR Foundation has been supporting each of the grassroots DAOs through that update process. Both the Developer DAO and Marketing DAO have already begun allocating funding again, and the Creatives DAO intends to follow suit shortly.

The grassroots DAOs remain the key source of funding for anyone looking to build in the NEAR ecosystem.

NEAR Horizon (Accelerator) 

The mission of NEAR Horizon is to attract the highest quality founders to build on NEAR protocol and support them in taking off. To that end, NEAR Horizon’s strategy consists of three components. 

Product

The NEAR Horizon team is building a dApp on NEAR’s Blockchain Operating System that is a double-sided marketplace, which allows founders to find people and organizations who can help them. The team launched an MVP of the product for beta testers in early March 2023. 

Partnerships

The team is launching a series of RFPs (the first RFP was released in Feb 2023) to create partnerships with people and organizations who are well positioned to help Founders. In early Q2, the NEAR Horizon team will be releasing additional open calls for:

Content & Tooling

The NEAR Horizon team will provide asynchronous content and access to tooling within the dApp. Think go-to-market examples, legal how-to guides and tools like back office accounting software specifically made for Web3 businesses. 

OKR3: Web2 → Web3 

Starting in Q2 last year, the Business Development team’s  plan was to revamp and hire a full BD team, restructure past historic deals, solve for key infrastructure gaps, and bring the highest quality builders to the NEAR ecosystem. The team is now fully hired, ramped up, has met most key infrastructure gaps, and is in process of renegotiating past deals. Q1 marked the first full quarter that BD has focused on bringing builders to the NEAR ecosystem.

The goal of BD is to help enterprises and startups realize that the NEAR protocol should be the default chain of choice to start building any blockchain application. Fundamentally, BD is attempting to kickstart a flywheel effect to drive network effects to attract builders to the NEAR protocol in order to make it that default choice. 

The flywheel starts with enterprises, marquee use cases, or household brands building on NEAR that provide brand awareness and legitimacy. This in turn attracts startups to NEAR. Collectively, these support real world use cases and increase adoption to attract more users to the chain, which in turn draw more enterprises and startups to build on NEAR. 

For core use cases, BD is focused on a few key categories, including gaming, loyalty and rewards, and emerging verticals such as sustainability and decentralized science. In Q1 we focused on improving the number of partnership opportunities we were seeing, and our pipeline has increased dramatically. We found high quality sources of leads to be from backer referrals and agencies / dev shops so have strengthened those ties. BD has also seen a rise in projects looking for more support and a number of builders came over from other chains to make NEAR as their primary, or sole, chain (e.g. Passion, Dropt, Solaire). Geographically, the team now has expanded its focus to India and Korea, and expects to drive meaningful opportunities from entrepreneurs in those countries. 

SWEAT continues to be a  category leader in the move-to-earn space becoming one of the most popular Web3 apps in the world. SWEAT is being consistently used by a million monthly active users engaging voluntarily with NEAR protocol and using SWEAT tokens for staking or transactions. NEAR Foundation’s BD team will continue working with the talented SWEAT team on launching new features such as Learn & Earn, token swaps, and games that will create deeper bonds between the NEAR blockchain and SWEAT users. 

For NEAR Foundation’s Q1 goals, the BD team set out to close three Tier 1 partnerships and seven Tier 2 partnerships for a total of 10 lighthouse partnerships — a goal which the NEAR Foundation surpassed. Although several of those deals are yet to be announced, NEAR Foundation is excited to highlight and welcome the following partners to the NEAR ecosystem:

NEAR Foundation is also excited to partner with Flow Carbon (tokenized carbon credits market), Starchain Gazer (play and own gaming), Vizta Digital (fashion metaverse), and Popp (customer engagement for SMBs) to continue expanding the NEAR ecosystem. The NEAR Foundation’s BD team remains committed to bringing the best Web2 and Web3 builders to NEAR, and look forward to sharing next quarter’s list of partnerships.

Building stronger connections with the NEAR ecosystem

As part of NEAR Foundation’s ongoing commitment to transparency and building stronger connections with the NEAR ecosystem, a number of new initiatives are in progress. 

First, the NEAR Foundation is restarting NEAR Town Halls. Similar to their previous incarnation, the Town Halls will be open to the entire NEAR ecosystem. Hosted by Marcus Ribeiro, a member of NEAR Foundation’s Community Team, they will be held bi-weekly — giving everyone a chance to get a firsthand look at the latest updates and exciting developments in the NEAR ecosystem. You can watch our March Town Hall here.

Earlier this year, NEAR Foundation kickstarted the Ecosystem Roundtable. Meeting weekly, the Ecosystem Influencer Roundtable is designed to enhance communication and increase accountability between major ecosystem projects, Pagoda, and NEAR Foundation. The roundtable’s regular meetings help with aligning on updates, sharing insights from the ecosystem, and discussing high-level ecosystem goals. These meetings, however, are not for decision-making purposes. 

Most recently, the Ecosystem Influencer Roundtable met at an offsite at ETHDenver. Over time, the goal is for the Ecosystem Influencer Roundtable to become more autonomous, and for the participants to work independently to collaborate, set goals and initiatives for the NEAR ecosystem, and develop their own governance structure. You can read more about the roundtable here. 

The Community Team also put out a NEAR Foundation Community Survey. The goal of this survey was to measure the ecosystem sentiment around NEAR Foundation and gather feedback on where to focus and improve efforts.The common areas for improvement that were identified were around funding, improving communications and transparency, and improving the support and engagement with the NEAR ecosystem.

Lastly, NEAR Foundation has been working on an overhaul of NEAR’s Twitter Spaces/AMAs, which showcase and highlight projects building on the NEAR ecosystem. The NEAR Foundation’s Community Team is finalizing a structured process for projects to leverage NEAR Foundation’s platforms to conduct Twitter Spaces/AMAs with the NEAR Foundation team. The team encourages feedback by following up to the Spaces/AMAs with a feedback form, which is reviewed to ensure community voices are heard and the valuable feedback is put into action. NEAR Foundation has run a few of these in a test flight to refine the project, and the new process should be live by May 2023. Stay tuned on NEAR Twitter, Telegram, and Discord accounts for an announcement on this new process. 

NEAR in the press

Q1 saw a number of top news stories from the NEAR Foundation and NEAR protocol’s thriving ecosystem. The NEAR ecosystem was covered in over 400 articles across the globe in Q1, including over 15 tier 1 stories in outlets including  CoinDesk, Forbes and  Bloomberg, and 34 tier 2 stories in outlets including  Block and Cointelegraph.  

Headlines included the announcement of the Blockchain Operating System at ETHDenver, as well as coverage from many of our partnership announcements, ecosystem hubs, and progress from many of NEAR protocol’s ecosystem projects. These include Kakao Games, SlickImages (led by ex-NBA all-star Baron Davis), Recur, LedgerLive, Calimero, Few&Far and the NDC, amongst others (more details on these below).

To find out more about NEAR Foundation’s and the NEAR ecosystem’s press coverage you can check out the  monthly roundups below:

NEAR Foundation PR Roundup for January 

NEAR Foundation PR Roundup for February


NEAR Foundation PR Roundup for March

Ecosystem Highlights

Completed Raises

Q1 2023 saw several projects complete a fundraising round.

Ecosystem News & Community 

DeFi

Gaming

NFTs

Infra & Devs 

A Look Ahead

to Q2, the NEAR Foundation is continuing its strategic focus on similar  OKRs to Q1, including more work on the Blockchain Operating System, the continuing efforts toward a thriving decentralized ecosystem, and our Web2.5 strategy.

This NEAR Foundation Transparency Report (the “Report“) is provided for informational purposes only. The information contained herein is provided on an “as is” basis, and the NEAR Foundation makes no representations or warranties, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information contained in this Report.

The NEAR Foundation, its affiliates, directors, employees, and agents, shall not be held liable for any errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in the information provided herein. NEAR Foundation reserves the right to update, modify, or amend any information contained in this Report without prior notice. This Report is not intended to provide financial, investment, legal, tax, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their own professional advisors before making any decisions based on the information contained in this Report.

The NEAR blockchain is an open-source, decentralized blockchain protocol that is designed to be scalable, developer-friendly, and able to support a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. NEAR has built the Blockchain Operating System (BOS), a Web3 stack to integrate experiences from across the Open Web and streamline the discovery and onboarding experience for users and developers alike.

NEAR Foundation has committed over $90M in capital to ecosystem growth, and the NEAR ecosystem grew from 0 to over 1,000 teams. One of the central lessons learned during this time is that founding teams need a host of contributors — beyond investment — in order to be successful. 

Partner with NEAR Foundation for Accelerator program

NEAR Foundation recently announced Updates to Decentralized Funding, Development DAO, and the Accelerator, and released an Open Call for NEAR Accelerator Partners. To further assist founders and startups, the NEAR Foundation is looking to partner with existing products, experts, and services to support teams participating in NEAR Accelerator programs in a variety of different functions:

NEAR Foundation will offer service credits to teams participating in the accelerator program to use partner services to help them accomplish their vision. The ultimate goal is for founding teams to create great products and run successful fundraising campaigns, while also increasing revenue and market share for other stakeholders interacting with the product such as our service partners. NEAR Foundation commits to providing access to NEAR ecosystem teams for the selected service partner(s) as “preferred partners.” This will mean that the selected partner(s) are vetted and approved by the NEAR Foundation, and should lead to an increase in the number of projects that are interested in using the partner(s)’ product / services. 

Important dates for NEAR accelerator service partners

We will be assessing proposals based on the requirements outlined in each of the function-specific service partner open calls. Service partners are expected to submit their proposals by Apr 23, 2023. The NEAR Foundation review team will be conducting interviews with selected candidates between May 13-17. The review team will shortlist the service partners between May 20-23 and will communicate further with the selected parties. Final approval will be provided by the NEAR Foundation Counsel. 

The world of music and the blockchain is about to get a lot more exciting and promising thanks to Djooky and NEAR. The ongoing Djooky Music Awards (DMA) for undiscovered artists will feature on-chain voting mechanisms powered by NEAR, allowing artists to vie for funding and recognition, while voters compete for cash prizes.

For upcoming independent artists, Djooky serves as a streaming and discovery tool that links them to fans and industry insiders. Artists can also use the platform’s virtual marketplace, DjookyX, to receive funding by fractionalizing rights to future song royalties. Bringing DMA voting to NEAR will bring further engagement and innovation between musicians and fans.

That means voting for DMA finals will be completely on-chain using NEAR, with weekly prizes being distributed in the form of NEAR tokens. Artists simply need to create a NEAR wallet to claim their prizes. In addition, any users trying to predict the next big hit with HitHunder will need a NEAR wallet to receive token rewards if their song strikes gold.

How the DMAs empower both artists and fans

The DMAs were introduced in 2020 by Djooky co-founders Andrey Dakhovskyy and Brian Malouf as a way to help fans discover new artists and aid musicians in gaining visibility. The competition runs year-round, resetting every quarter with new awards and prizes. The DMAs run tournament style, with artists competing brack-style on the national, continental, and finally global level.

In the event that a contestant makes it to the finals, their music will be featured on an 18-song NFT album, the sales of which will be divided equally among the lowest 15 projects. If their song is selected as one of the top three songs, it will have its own NFT auction with bonus artwork created by a digital artist. Djooky also provides a platform to help artists reach a global audience, even if their song doesn’t end up topping the charts.

Additionally, Djooky runs weekly HitHunter competitions where users vie with one another to identify the next likely hit song by assigning HitPoints to songs they like. Users receive 100 Hitpoints every Monday, which they can then spend on the tracks they believe will be the biggest hits. HitHunters are ranked according to how early they allocate their HPs to tracks that become hits in the Djooky charts when compared to other HitHunters.

Users allocate their Hit Points to the songs which they identify as potential hits. And depending on the progress of the songs chosen, users receive winning points calculated by the platform’s algorithm. The top five users of the special user charts will be rewarded with get cash prizes for backing the right tunes.

NEAR x DMAs fueling a new future for musicians

The Djooky team and NEAR Foundation previously collaborated to develop DjookyX, their music marketplace that’s presently transitioning from Web2 to Web3. The DMAs and DjookyX demonstrate new economic models for fans and musicians in Web3, all made possible by technology and governance mechanisms of the NEAR blockchain.

As the DMAs and DjookyX marketplace grow, so will opportunities for musicians to earn more for their creative energy, and for fans to truly support undiscovered musicians they love.

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce that NEAR is heading to the 2023 edition of Coindesk’s Consensus from April 26-28. 

NEAR has a massive base at this year’s Consensus, from which we will introduce devs and end users to the Blockchain Operating System. The Blockchain Operating System is an industry-first category, functioning as a common layer for browsing and discovering open web experiences with any blockchain.

Here is what to expect from NEAR at Consensus 2023. 

The Blockchain Operating System at Consensus 

If you saw NEAR’s big announcement out of ETHDenver, NEAR isn’t just a Layer 1 blockchain. It’s a Blockchain Operating System for the Open Web — your easy entry point into Web3. 

With the BOS, NEAR has built an industry first, with decentralized frontends and forkable components for developers. For end users, the BOS makes app discovery easy and social. All designed to bring billions of people into Web3, on any blockchain.

The BOS and much more will be on display at Consensus! 

The NEAR booth at Consensus 

Consensus is the world’s largest and longest-running crypto gathering, bringing together devs, VCs, founders, policymakers and many others in the Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrency communities. NEAR will be at Consensus for three days of talks, panels, demos, parties, and more. 

The NEAR booth at Consensus will be souped-up and multi-faceted, delivering the latest tech and ecosystem updates for the Web3 community at Consensus! 

NEAR’s booth will feature 4 different components. Let’s explore them. 

BOS for Devs 

If you’re a developer, get onboarded into the Blockchain Operating System. Talk to NEAR and BOS experts. 

Get started learning how to build widgets and experiences within the BOS. Create interfaces, fork components, and much more, with NEAR experts as your guides.

BOS for End Users

If you’re an end user who loves Web3, experience how the Blockchain Operating System is revolutionizing the access to and discovery of Web3 apps and experiences. Set up an account and get access to all of the latest exciting experiences that are now live or being built on NEAR.

NEAR ecosystem members will be there to guide you throughout your Blockchain Operating System experience with demos, tutorials, and more! 

NEAR Ecosystem Showcase 

NEAR’s booth will also feature an Ecosystem Showcase component. Here you will learn about the latest game-changing announcements, and discover the apps and experiences being built on NEAR. 

NEAR Horizon Accelerator

The booth will also feature a space for NEAR Horizon, the ecosystem’s new accelerator. Meet with the Horizon team and get started on the Web3 funding and building journey. 

NEAR speakers at Consensus

Catch a number of exciting NEAR speakers and sessions at Consensus. The final list of participants and sessions is still being solidified. However, we do have some confirmed speakers to highlight. 

April 28th from 12:45pm – 1:30pm on Main Stage — Illia Polosukhin, CEO of Pagoda and Co-Founder of NEAR on “Devs Doing Something: BUIDLing in a Bear Market” panel with Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink and Emin Gun Sirer, CEO of Ava Labs.

April 28th from 3pm – 3:20pm on Protocol Village Stage — Illia Polosukhin, CEO of Pagoda and Co-Founder of NEAR, and Alex Chiocchi, Chief Product Officer of Pagoda will present on the latest Blockchain Operating System insights.

April 28th from 3:20pm – 3:35pm on Protocol Village Stage — Marieke Flament, CEO of Near Foundation and Special Guest VC 

April 28th from 3:35pm – 3:45pm on Protocol Village Stage — Alex Shevchenko, CEO and Co-Founder of Aurora: Web3 Cloud Containers

April 28th from 3:45pm – 4pm on Protocol Village Stage — Web3 Media Tech Panel. Special guests TBA.

Stay updated on the complete slate of confirmed speakers at Near.org/Consensus.

The NEAR ecosystem is ending March on several extremely high notes, from partnerships and community events to unfolding initiatives. 

NEAR strengthened its India and Southeast Asia presence, widened its gaming footprint — and of course, introduced the Blockchain Operating System (BOS). 

Here are all the key happenings from a massive March.

NEAR unveils itself as the Blockchain Operating System (BOS)

Coindesk broke the biggest news of March, announcing NEAR as the Blockchain Operating System (BOS) at ETHDenver. NEAR will now be the common layer for browsing and discovering open web experiences in an industry-first category. The BOS makes NEAR the entry point for both web2 and web3, enabling easy web3 access and navigation for users and devs.

The BOS adds composable frontends to NEAR’s tech stack, simplifying onboarding and enhancing development from a collection of over 1,800 components. In only a few lines of code, builders from any ecosystem can create custom components and benefit from quick onboarding to help construct their web3 applications.

“The iOS provides developers a place to show their app in front of billions of users, and it gives them all the services and the infrastructure underneath to build,” NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin told CoinTelegraph. “We’re trying to give the platform underneath and let developers build.”

An alpha version of the BOS is now available for both users and developers to test at alpha.nearpages.wpengine.com.

Near at ETHDenver Highlights: the BOS, NEAR Day, and more

Exciting times for NEAR at ETHDenver, with a capacity crowd and jam-packed NEAR booth as the ecosystem engaged with builders from around the world. NEAR’s presence included a range of, including OnMachina on Web3 storage, Keypom for Web3 onboarding, and the Sweat Economy. Not to mention the BOS being first introduced to the world by Illia.

Let’s also not forget the over 1,000 people in attendance for NEAR Day, a one-day mini-summit for all things NEAR. Other big highlights out of ETHDenver included premium NFT platform Few & Far raising $30 million, the very first session unveiling the BOS, and Flowcarbon’s new carbon-market ecosystem built on the NEAR blockchain.

Arpit Sharma joins as Managing Director for eastward expansion

March also saw the appointment of Arpit Sharma as the Managing Director for India, South East Asia, and the Middle East regions. His focus will be on expanding the NEAR ecosystem’s presence in those regions, bringing a wealth of experience and expertise from a wide array of industries, solutions, and use cases.

Sharma’s web3 experience extends from the metaverse and NFTs to supply chain tracking and stablecoins. He sees enormous potential in regions and countries like India and the Middle East, believing that Web3 can be used to connect, collaborate and change the world. Regional hubs in India, Vietnam, and Korea should see a huge boost with Sharma on board.

Korean web3 gaming in focus with BORA and WEMADE 

Next, NEAR set its sights firmly on the Korean gaming sector as Yahoo! Finance reported a new partnership with BORA gaming, the first of two such agreements. A subsidiary of METABORA, the two will explore new frontiers of web3 adoption in Asia and beyond. Both entities are affiliated with Kakao Games and bring a wealth of IP and gaming expertise into NEAR’s orbit.

Together, NEAR and METABORA will work to identify global IP-based web3 joint ventures. This means leveraging BORA’s existing gaming catalog and future development capabilities to bring fun and interactive web3 games to the world. And per Business Insider, the NEAR Korean Hub should be an enormous beneficiary as the partnership progresses.

On top of that, MarketWatch reported the new relationship between NEAR and global web3 gaming company WEMADE, also based out of South Korea. The partnership will leverage WEMAKE’s over 20 years of experience in the gaming industry, as well as its WEMIX 3.0 mainnet for advanced blockchain services.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with WEMADE as part of our shared vision towards a decentralized future for the gaming industry,” added Marike Flament, CEO of NEAR. “By joining forces, we are confident in our ability to accelerate the development of cutting-edge solutions that meet the growing needs of gamers and developers in the web3 space.”

Popp’s web3 customer engagement platform launches on NEAR

Finally, small-to-medium-sized business owners are about to get exciting new tools for customer engagement using web3 and NEAR. Popp, a web3 customer engagement solution-as-a-service, announced that it will launch its white-label service exclusively on NEAR.

Popp lets businesses set up micro-tasks called “Popps,” which reward users when completed. Actions like retweets and reviews are rewarded with Popp’s native token that can be redeemed for vouchers, discounts, experiences, and more.

March was certainly a whirlwind month for NEAR, with the BOS taking the ecosystem into the next era of web3 usability. And not to mention NEAR Day at ETHDenver being a rousing success. NEAR will continue to forge ahead at full steam in April, but if we missed anything that happened in March the community should hear about, don’t hesitate to let us know!

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