Since its launch in April 2024, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee (IC) has strived to provide a fairer, more transparent, and more sustainable approach to NEAR ecosystem development. The IC has directed focus, funding, and technical solutions toward addressing pain points and building for the future. Responding to the evolving needs of the ecosystem means that the IC is about to begin proactively funding infrastructure innovation for AI and Chain Abstraction. Looking back on a transformative year and ahead to 2025’s exciting possibilities, here’s how the IC is strengthening NEAR’s technological foundation.
2024: From Duct Tape to Infrastructure
In just eight months since its inception, the Infrastructure Committee has become the most prominent open grant mechanism in the NEAR ecosystem in response to “infra not infra-ing.”
The current infrastructure committee is composed of technical leaders from around the NEAR ecosystem: Bowen Wang, head of NEAR One; Alex Shevchenko, founder of Aurora; Eric Winer, CTO of Pagoda; Vlad Frolov of NEAR DevHub; Evgeny Kuzyakov of FastNEAR—with admin support from the NEAR Foundation and DevHub contributors.
The committee’s impact has been substantial, supporting critical infrastructure that powers the entire ecosystem. The Infrastructure Committee approved 24 proposals, out of 99 submissions, in 2024.
Some notable 2024 highlights include:
- Enhanced Wallet Infrastructure: Supported most major native wallets (NEAR Mobile Wallet, HERE Wallet, Nightly Wallet, Meteor Wallet, MyNEARWallet transition to Meteor), enabling innovations like HERE Wallet’s HOT wallet (which became one of Web3’s most-used dApps), Meteor Wallet’s successful launch of Harvest Moon, and the Nightly Social Login
- Decentralized RPC Services: Successfully transitioned RPC services to decentralized providers (Lava), improving network reliability and performance, and onboarding additional providers like FastNEAR and BlockPi, significantly enhancing RPC node response times and uptime
- Multiple Analytics Vendors: Funded NEARBlocks, the primary explorer on NEAR, and onboarded multiple analytics providers, including Token Terminal, Chainspect, and Intear, strengthening core infrastructure tools and analytics capabilities
- Pagoda Sunset: Supported the transition of critical services to sustainable, community-driven alternatives with the wind-down of Pagoda services
- Innovative Endeavors: Funded DevHub’s self-service treasury app and an exciting partnership with Mercuryo for a NEAR-branded Mastercard
- Create On-Chain Funding Process: Established an on-chain process for RFPs and proposals through DevHub’s portal product
Looking Ahead: 2025 Priorities
Based on extensive builder feedback and ecosystem needs, the Infrastructure Committee’s focus in 2025 includes:
- Continuous Improvement: Continuing to support infra and ongoing commitments from the previous year, including but not limited to the wallets mentioned above, Fast NEAR, and NEARBlocks
- Working Groups: Setting up working groups to manage accounts, respond to proposals actively, find innovation, and draft RFPs so that ecosystem development can become more proactive instead of reactive. Expect RFPs to be posted regularly throughout the year.
- Wallet Improvements: NEAR single sign-on from NEAR wallet to Solana app, on-ramps, and off-ramps
- Chain Abstraction Infrastructure: Supporting the development of tools and services to make NEAR more accessible and interoperable with other blockchain ecosystems (multichain explorer, oracles, Omnitoken, Omnibalance support)
- Decentralized AI Infrastructure: Investing in foundational infrastructure to support NEAR’s growing role in decentralized AI applications from across the ecosystem
Get Involved
Do you have an idea or see a gap that needs addressing? The Infrastructure Committee welcomes participation from the entire NEAR ecosystem through the NEAR Infrastructure Committee Portal. Ecosystem members are welcome to help create strategic RFPs and vet proposals in the following ways:
- Builders: Share your infrastructure needs and pain points
- Infrastructure Providers: Submit proposals for innovative solutions
- Community Members: Provide feedback on current infrastructure and future needs
Thanks to everyone who contributed to critical NEAR infrastructure in 2024 and the IC looks forward to even more great work in 2025.
