Community Update: NEAR EDU, Flux Beta Program, and GooGuild

  Hello citizens of NEARverse! This is NiMA coming to you from a NEARby planet in the Milky Chain ...  This week marks the beginning of a series of educational workshops that will help us onboard more web 2.0 and web 3.0 developers to the NEAR ecosystem. We would love to have you join us for the first workshop this Thursday with Sherif, our head of education. These workshops will be evolving based on your feedback and suggestions into a larger initiative that could onboard millions of developers to the most developer-friendly platform for building A Better Open Web.    Good news! We would like to have you join us on our official Telegram channel to talk all things NEAR with the rest of the community. We are re-opening the Telegram channel and will be hosting a series of AMAs with NEAR core team, backers and founders. First one will be this Saturday with Illia!  Use the hashtag #NEARAMA on Twitter or Telegram so we can find your questions and answer them during the AMA.  One last thing, don’t forget to upvote and comment on our Reddit scaling bakeoff submission  🙏✌️  

Linking real world data to NEAR with Chainlink 🔗

We recently announced a partnership and integration with Chainlink, the leading decentralized oracle network in the Web3 space! We’re excited to see more DApps on NEAR connect to offchain data sources using Chainlink. This is particularly useful for DeFi and OpenFinance applications that require reliable price feeds. Here’s what our friends from Chainlink have to say about this integration:   “Chainlink integration provides NEAR with most versatile oracle network in the market, as well as the ability to connect to any off-chain API. These are key building blocks for connecting Web2 and Open Web environments, which ultimately allows our developers to build a much wider range of applications, ranging from decentralized financial products and NFTs, to asset tokenization and insurance contracts.”    You can read more about the Chainlink partnership here or dive deeper into TestNet repos and instruction on Github.   

Welcoming Xoogler to the NEAR Guild program 

  We’re excited to welcome our friends from Xoogler.co to the NEAR Guild program. Xoogler is a group of Google alumni and current Googlers who have come together to help each other build and grow in the startup ecosystem. The Xoogler.co community consists of startup founders, early team members, angel investors, VCs, and mentors. If you’re a Googler or Xoogler, make sure to get in touch with Rune, the Guild lead, to get involved in our joint activities and future ventures. Our first collaboration with Xoogler is going to be around educational workshops and an upcoming global NEAR hackathon! Beyond that, we are also excited to have experienced angel investors and builders from Xoogler grow our DApp ecosystem on NEAR.   

MOAR Guilds … Designer Guild and Open Shard Alliance want you!

🎨 Designer Guild is looking for designers in the NEAR community … 

The NEAR Design Guild is an independent community focused on crypto-related art and designs. As part of the Guild Program, the community is consistently contributing to the NEAR ecosystem and is looking for more like-minded artsy guild members to join their group. Get in touch with Bruce on Twitter to find out more!   

The Open Shards Alliance (OSA) is recruiting new validators! 

Are you interested in becoming a validator, but are unsure where to start or if you have the needed skills? The OSA can help you learn the skills necessary to become a validator on the NEAR decentralized network. Basic Linux or Windows PowerShell skills are preferred, but not required.  Join the OSA and help build the open web with NEAR Discord --> https://discord.gg/t9Kgbvf or directly email Henry -->  henry@ascentialmarketing.com   One last thing …  We would like to thank Henry, the leader of OSA for all his relentless support and welcome him to the NEAR collective in a more formal role and long term engagement with the NEAR Foundation. We hope to be able to collaborate with more Guild leads and community members in the future in a similar fashion. The best way to join the team building NEAR is by becoming an active member of our community.   

NEAR Ecosystem updates: Flux is launching their Beta Program ... 

  The team behind Flux are hard at work preparing for the phase 1 of their launch. They’re also launching a Beta Program for developers interested in building on Flux. Here’s a short snippet from their latest newsletter, but for more Fluxy goodness go to Substack to subscribe to their future updates!    “Over July, we’ve taken considerable strides toward Phase 1 of our main-net launch. Phase 1 will consist of Flux Protocol on the main-net with the introduction of DAI ( a stable coin pegged to the USD ) for trading. Phase 1 will also feature the update of our open-source app and SDK to enable developers to start preparing for testing and eventual launch on Flux. In addition to tech updates, we have many exciting programs and communities popping up on and around Flux to support our ecosystem.”  

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

  We released Alex’s white board session with Michael from Starkware → youtu.be/JIlLAxFUcwA StarkWare Co-founder and Chief Architect, Michael Riabzev and NEAR Co-Founder & CTO, Alex Skidanov discuss StarkEx, STARKs vs. SNARKs, and do a deep dive into Stark's algebra. StarkWare solves the inherent problems of blockchains – scalability and privacy. They develop a full proof stack, using STARK technology to generate and verify proofs of computational integrity. StarkWare’s cryptographic proofs are zero-knowledge, succinct, transparent and post-quantum secure.   Open Web Collective published their latest episode with Jesse Walden of Variant Fund (ex-A16Z) where they talk about Ownership Economy which is the backbone of Jesse’s thesis for his new fund.    Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts    That’s it for this update. See you in the next one!    Your friends, NiMA and the NEAR team