Community Update: Community Token Sale, Mintbase, Flux Phase 1.0, 🌈 Rainbow Bridge

Hello citizens of NEARverse! This is NiMA coming to you from a NEARby planet in the Milky Chain … 

A lot has been going on in the NEAR community in the past couple of weeks. But first things first, we are truly humbled by the level of enthusiasm and support we have received from the wider blockchain community who have joined NEAR as token holders through our community-first token sale. 

Our aim has always been to build and serve one of the most diverse communities in the Open Web ecosystem. This sale allows us to further decentralize ownership of the NEAR network and prepare for the launch of our community-governed MainNet. 

Speaking of MainNet, we are proud to announce the addition of several new trusted validators to NEAR Validator’s Advisory Board (NVAB). These organizations will have a crucial role in the upcoming MainNet Restricted launch. 

You can read more about NVAB here, but it’s worth highlighting here how validation and delegation are uniquely DeFi-friendly on NEAR! Read on to find out more …

NEAR’s Smart Contract Based Delegation Unlocks a Universe of Open Finance (aka DeFi) Use Cases for Validators and Delegators 🚀

In contrast to other protocols, NEAR offers much more flexibility to validators by allowing them to create their own unique delegation contracts on-chain without the need for centralized services. This is because delegation in NEAR is done through smart contracts vs. being baked into the protocol. 

From our NVAB announcement blog: 

“This contract-based delegation makes it easier to pipe together Open Finance components, so you can imagine contracts which dynamically allocate delegators’ funds to lending protocols or validators depending on the prevailing interest rates and return in the market. Essentially, staking becomes a core component of the Open Finance ecosystem while still providing security to the system as intended.”

NEAR Ecosystem Updates:

1, 2, 3, Flux – decentralizing mainnet 

Over the coming week, Flux Phase 1.0 will become the first protocol to go live on NEAR Mainnet. You can read more about their phased approach to launching on NEAR on their blog.The first version of the Flux Protocol will launch with the introduction of $DAI ported over via the Ethereum<>NEAR two-way bridge. 

The Non-fungible Cat is Out of the Bag – MintBase is joining the NEAR Ecosystem

Mintbase is a portal to the new virtual economy and they do that using the superpowers of tokens. Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are at the core of Mintbase. Users can tokenize, buy and sell anything from art to music and events tickets. 

According to DappRadar they’re one of the top 5 most used marketplaces on Ethereum. The team at Mintbase want to take NFTs to the next level and hope to one day tokenize an entire stadium’s worth of tickets. That however is not feasible on Ethereum today. We’re delighted that they are joining the NEAR family. Give them a warm welcome and shout out on Twitter! 

Engineering Updates:

🌈 Rainbow Bridge on TestNet

If you’re a developer you can already check out the Github repo and for everyone else keep an eye on our blog for an upcoming in-depth article about our decentralized ETH<>NEAR bridge. 

Rainbow Bridge is already making some noise in Crypto Twitter! 🙏 kudos to Anett from ETHMagicians for the shout out 🎉 

2FA added to NEAR Wallet 🏦

View your “Profile” page in the NEAR Wallet to enable Two Factor Authentication! Our version of 2FA uses a multi-signature contract deployed to your account. This allows you to secure your account with your email account or mobile device, and protects against a large number of potential attacks. Check back for a deep dive into how it works! 

Bounties, NEPs, and Releases: 

near-sdk-as 1.0.0 published 🎉:

https://github.com/near/near-sdk-as/releases/tag/v1.0.0

We are regularly publishing AssemblyScript bounties, here is the most recent one: https://github.com/near/near-sdk-as/issues/216 

There’s an NEP focused on significantly improving our contract call TPS, join the discussion here: https://github.com/nearprotocol/NEPs/issues/97 

Vital Point AI Guild building on NEAR*Textile @ HackFS 

Aaron, Guild Lead of Vital Point AI, has been hacking together some amazing stuff using both NEAR and Textile. You can follow Aaron and apply to join VP Guild, but here’s a short excerpt from his hackathon diaries: 

“Central to my whole plan was linking NEAR accounts to Textile threadsDB threadIds. If you’re not familiar with Textile – think of it as a database provider. You can run your own on your hardware or use their hub – which I’ve opted to do for the hackathon.”

One last thing … we are preparing to launch our first massive open online hackathon (MOOH!?), code name: Hack The Rainbow 🌈 If you are developer or designer you can already sign-up on the landing page. More info coming soon to you and all citizens of NEARverse! 

This week we are watching, reading, and listening to … 

Open Web Collective released several amazing episodes of their podcast. My favorite one is with Anton Bukov, founder of 1Inch exchange, who tells the story behind his journey from zero to hero in Crypto. You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts .

That’s it for this update. See you in the next one! 

Your friends,

NiMA and the NEAR team