July in Review: 700 Projects Milestone, NEARCON Tickets, and Women in Web3

Hello, NEAR! There’s been lots of action in July, from new milestones and the NEARCON 2022 announcement to a major new initiative aimed at expanding diversity in Web3.

Let’s take a look at what’s been happening across the NEAR ecosystem, from communities to NEAR Foundation initiatives and beyond.

Ecosystem Panel: Helping the Climate with Web3

In July, the NEAR Town Hall got a makeover. The new town hall format, Ecosystem Panel, allows the NEAR community to focus on projects and initiatives popping up across the ecosystem. 

In the first Ecosystem Panel, “Helping the Climate with Web3”, learn how blockchain, crypto and the world of Web3 will enable social good and take climate, transparency, and finance to the next level. Moderated by David Morrison, the new Community Engagement Lead at NEAR Foundation, the panel features Frederic Fournier, CEO and Co-founder of Open Forest Protocol, Candice Ammori, Director of On Deck Climate Tech, and Emiliano Gutierrez, CEO and Co-founder of Raiz vertical farms. 

Twitter Spaces AMA on Social Good

On July 25th, NEAR hosted an AMA on “social good” on Twitter Spaces. The AMA featured moderator David Morrison (Community Engagement Lead at NEAR Foundation), Open Forest Protocol’s Frederic Fournie, On Deck Climate Tech’s Candice Ammori, and Raiz Farm’s Emiliano Gutierrez.

Check out the Twitter Spaces AMA here. 

Foundation News

This month, NEAR Foundation announced NEARCON Beta, the second edition of its flagship conference. NEARCON is returning to the beautiful coastal city of Lisbon, Portugal, and the foundation has the ambitious goal of selling more than 3,000 tickets. Spread the word!

The Foundation also launched Women in Web3 Changemakers, an an exciting new initiative that will celebrate the pivotal role women are playing in the Web3 story. We’ve teamed up with Forkast, one of the fastest growing media companies in the Web3 space. Nominations are now open. So, if you know of women who are making a difference in this space, nominate them! 

NEAR Foundation has also been publishing “NEAR & Social Good”, its July content series. The series explores a number of projects that are building for social good on the NEAR ecosystem. Read part one, part two, part three, and part four. 

Ecosystem News

The NEAR ecosystem is popping. It just hit a huge milestone of 700 projects now building on NEAR. This demonstrates incredible growth from last year when the number was a fraction of the new total. 

At EthCC, NEAR Protocol Co-founder Illia Polosukhin gave a talk on governance. As Illia noted, decentralized governance is one of NEAR’s core pillars. To get it working smoothly at the protocol and individual DAO level, Illia recommends the community begin a major effort to experiment with and iterate governance.  

NEAR now offers more institutional custody options through its partnership with BitGo. This is a huge step for the ecosystem, as institutional investors now have more ways to  support NEAR’s continued growth. 

In other ecosystem news, Sweatcoin recently broke 11m wallets created. In Stake Wars II: A New Validator, NEAR introduced the Chunk-Only Producer—the next step in network decentralization.  

Elsewhere, Globe Exchange announced a NEAR listing, and Pocket Network now supports NEAR. By adding RPC support for NEAR, the ecosystem is now able to serve the needs of developers who can now access reliable and highly decentralized blockchain data on demand. 

Wallet provider Nightly received a NEAR grant, joining a growing list of wallets in the NEAR ecosystem. Also, CornerstoneDAO announced an airdrop for LiNEAR users, while Aurora launched a community grants program.

Oh, and NEAR Wallet issues are now fixed. Pagoda successfully worked through a series of issues with currency prices on the main NEAR Wallet. Get up to speed with the complete update here. 

NEAR in the press

Open Forest Protocol, which is bringing the forestration industry into the Web3 era, is now on NEAR mainnet. OFP’s mainnet launch made the press in Fintech & Finance News. 

Forkast, a Web3 news publication, interviewed NEAR Foundation CEO Marieke Flament on the gender gap in Web3. Flament said, amongst other things, that despite progress on this front, there is more work to be done. Read the full interview with Marieke here.

ICYMI: Man on the Streets interviews 

At Consensus 2022, NEAR Foundation’s Community Engagement Lead, David Morrison, caught up with several ecosystem figures to talk about the latest happenings on NEAR. David spoke with NEAR Co-founder Illia Polosukhin, NEAR Foundation CEO Marieke Flament, NEAR Foundation CMO Jack Collier, and Mya Shofany, the Foundation’s Regulatory Specialist, amongst others. Watch short “Man on the Street” interviews of them talking about the NEAR’s new Javascript SDK implementation, ecosystem values like openness and inclusivity, and the regulatory space.