NEAR and Alibaba Cloud Team Up to Grow the Open Web

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce a major new partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. 

In this new partnership, NEAR Foundation will collaborate with Alibaba Cloud to offer Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) as a service to developers and users in the NEAR ecosystem, as well as multi-chain data indexing to provide data query API to developers. The partnership will also find the companies collaborating on tools to help developers build decentralized applications more easily. 

“Our partnership with Alibaba Cloud is a major milestone for the NEAR Foundation as it proves that NEAR protocol’s technology has the capabilities to truly lift the restrictions surrounding Web3 development to allow more creators to build exciting applications while also helping to onboard billions of Web2 users to the possibility of Web3.,” said Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. “We look forward to supporting Alibaba Cloud as it leverages the scalability of NEAR Blockchain and the BOS to expand its Web3 offerings to a global market.”

Alibaba Cloud infrastructure to help power the BOS

App developers building on the NEAR Blockchain Operating System (BOS) — a common layer for browsing and discovering open web experiences, compatible with any blockchain — will now also enjoy Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure. 

With BOS, now accessible directly on Near.org through a browser, developers can easily fork components and create new experiences, while end users can explore open web experiences, social, and news all in one place. FastAuth, a new standout BOS feature, allows app developers to onboard new users with only an email — no crypto required. 

Alibaba Cloud’s plug-and-play infrastructure will empower NEAR developers

Commenting on the partnership, Raymond Xiao, Head of International Web3 Solutions, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said: “The NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud partnership is an important one as we continue to support Web3 developers to explore opportunities.”

“It is also significant for developers and validators in the Asian markets, as they can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive infrastructure in Asia,” Xioa added. “Together with NEAR’s Node-as-a-Service initiative and BOS, we supports the Web3 community create exciting applications that will benefit a wide consumer audience. We are looking forward to what we can achieve with this partnership.”

NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud will continue to expand its partnership together through collaborations at a variety of global Web3 conferences and events.