The NEAR Token Sale and Unforkable Community

The NEAR community utterly humbled us this week.  The NEAR token sale, which occurred on CoinList and was available to many non-US participants, sold out completely in just over 2 hours.  We didn’t even remotely expect this level of excitement and appreciation but we are deeply grateful.  

The goal of the sale was to expand the reach and participation of the NEAR community as we move along the final steps to making MainNet fully community-governed.  By many measures, this was an outstanding success — we now have the opportunity to welcome over 1,500 new token holders, who collectively purchased 100M tokens.  This is an overwhelming show of support!

In this post, I’ll review some of the early details of the sale but also introduce a new opportunity for those who wanted to participate but were unable to and highlight how they’ll be supported in the future.

A Summary of the Sale 

The sale generated a tremendous amount of interest within the broader community and resulted in the following statistics:  

1. > 9500 unique registrants
2. > 1500 successful participants
3. > $152M allocation requests made
4. > $30M commitments made
5. 135 minutes (and 2 attempts) to sell out

Please note that specific numbers aren’t yet available because it takes several days to finish some of the financing and KYC processes.

Interest in the blockchain space has increased in recent months as fees on Ethereum have again skyrocketed.  On our side, the NEAR team has spent 2 years building a platform that both solves the scaling challenges and allows developers to easily build decentralized apps that real humans can use. This sale is a fantastic endorsement of that platform as a solution to today’s problems.

A Second Chance

The conditions of the sale meant that over 6,000 verified registrants were not able to participate.  Many of them experienced congestion and server issues on the CoinList platform which made it challenging to take part. This group includes both longtime community members who have been excited about the project for years and brand new enthusiasts who just caught the bug.  

We’ve spent the past several days listening to what these people had to say — the good, the bad and the ugly.  We heard frustration about some of the technical challenges but, ultimately, it was mostly because people just wanted the chance to take part and felt like they missed the opportunity.

We’d like to give everyone who has that kind of enthusiasm for the project a chance to participate and to join this community.  In order to do this, we have the following offer:

Anyone who already registered for the sale but didn’t receive an allocation will have the opportunity to purchase up to 3,000 NEAR tokens at the original sale price.  Participants can choose either the 12-month linear release or the 24-month linear release option. To ensure things go smoothly, they will have a full seven days to purchase tokens and there is no preference given to earlier purchases so all eligible participants who want an allocation will receive one. 

This second chance sale will take place from August 18 to August 25. CoinList will send an e-mail out to all eligible participants by early next week with details on how to participate.

While we realize this may not be the exact allocation everyone originally anticipated and represents an imperfect solution, we hope this helps people who want to have a meaningful part in the NEAR ecosystem to join us on this journey.  

A Continued Commitment to Community

Beyond just providing people with an opportunity to join the community, both CoinList and the NEAR team want to make it clear that their efforts to build that community will be supported in the future. Thus CoinList will be seeding the first ever NEAR community fund with a $750,000 donation, which will be matched in kind by the NEAR Foundation.

This $1.5M commitment is just the start. It will support future projects on the platform and help underwrite new community-focused initiatives. 

We hope this fund will provide our community with an opportunity to contribute to the evolution and growth of the NEAR ecosystem.  If you are interested in getting involved directly, reach out to us at [email protected]

We are so excited to build alongside you! 

Thank you.

FAQ

• Who can participate? This is not open to any new registrants.  It has the same geographical restrictions as before, including being unavailable to US-based participants. Participants will still need to pass the full Swiss KYC and anti-bot checks to participate in the sale if they have not already.  Participants who already received allocations are not eligible.
• Are new tokens being created? No, there are no new tokens being created to do this.  Tokens are being reshuffled from other categories, where they would otherwise support future activities, in order to serve this community now. 
• How does this affect circulating supply? The net result on token balances and circulating supply will depend on how many people participate in this, but we expect it to reduce circulating supply in early days (because some tokens are being moved from an unlocked category) and slightly increase it during later periods (because some tokens are being moved from longer-term categories).  The token distribution post will be updated but only after we have finished this activity because it heavily depends on the final participation rate.
• Where can I go to participate? You will receive an email with instructions from CoinList if you are eligible.  You do not need to ask us if you are eligible!
• Am I guaranteed an allocation if I’m eligible? Yes, you will be able to purchase up to 3,000 NEAR tokens.  We have reserved enough space for everyone who was not able to participate the first time to do so now. You will have between August 18 to August 25 to claim this. There is no rush because you can participate as long as you are in before time expires.

• I already purchased NEAR tokens. Can I participate? This is only available to people who were not able to participate in the sale already.  It doesn’t matter which option you chose the first time — if you were able to receive an allocation, you are not eligible for this sale.
• Where can I ask questions about this? Please email the CoinList team at [email protected]
• When can we learn more about the community fund? We’re not ready to release details yet on this yet but stay tuned.  We’ll notify the community via the mailing list at https://near.org/newsletter.