Start a Guild
Join a Guild to earn engagement-based rewards through building a community which supports the overall NEAR ecosystem.
What is a Guild?
There is no fixed way to define or run a Guild. It could be a local Meetup group, a chat community on Telegram, a university club or a subreddit. The important thing is that members are open to learning about or participating in the Open Web and that you, as a leader, give them enough value to stick around!
- Host educational workshops, hack nights or a speakers for developers
- Read white papers, discuss market trends or run validating nodes
- Support local project founders with pitch nights, building open-source tools and introducing them to funders
Who should start a Guild?
Leaders
Influencers
Communicators
Experts
Rewards
Guilds have the opportunity to earn rewards based on 3 revenue streams — one-off “Boosts”, predictable “Rolling Rewards” and “League” rankings based on the prior two. The best Guild Leaders use these rewards to reinvest in the health, education and engagement of their Guild.
Boosts
Boosts apply to one-time, short-term activities. Examples of Boosts include:
- Bounties: collect-as-many-as-you-can rewards, such as referring people to specific events or to the Developer Program for the first time.
- Tasks: specific tasks a Guild member (or Contributor Program member) can complete once, such as translating a post into another language.
Rolling Rewards
Rolling rewards are predictable, long-term incentives that are granted each month and are calculated based on a combination of the following characteristics of the Guild:
- Health: How engaged are the members of your Guild?
- Power: How many members of your Guild are currently active in core ecosystem activities like developing apps, running Validator nodes and participating in governance? How many successful apps are linked to your Guild members?
- Contribution: How many one-time rewards have been collected by the members of your Guild over the past month?
Leagues
A Guild’s League ranking rewards its growth and effectiveness by providing incentives to build sustainable and engaged communities. Active and growing Guilds will advance to higher leagues, which have better rewards.
- Bronze: receive 300 tokens per month for having 10 members and an active community
- Silver: receive 1200 tokens per month for being in the top 10 most rewarded Guilds over the course of 3 months (measured by # tokens received in a month through Boosts and Rolling Rewards).
- Gold: receive 3000 tokens per month for being in the top 5 most rewarded Guilds over the course of 5 months (measured by # tokens received in a month through Boosts and Rolling Rewards).
For Example
The Berry Club of Ukraine
The Berry Club of Ukraine (“BCoU”) is a fictional Guild which engages its members by hosting educational workshops and occasional hackathons. They have an active Telegram community where they keep in touch with each other and many of their members are developers who build with NEAR. One team of developers won a Hackathon this month and their app has been a surprise success. They run a validating node as part of the Stake Wars program to play with the network and learn.
The BCoU might receive the following rewards one month (which are purely for demonstration purposes and may not reflect actual reward structures):
Boosts: 1,720 NEAR
- Boost this month: New referrals to the Developer Program: 34 @ 10 NEAR each = 340 N
- Boost this month: member participants in the NEARHacks online hackathon: 15 @ 20 NEAR each = 300 N
- Guild Bonus: Additional 5% of prize for NEARHacks first place rewarded to team from BCoU: 20,000 N @ 5% = 1,000 N
- Multi-month ongoing Boost: Members who fund their NEAR wallet for the first time: 8 @ 10 NEAR each = 80 N
Rolling: 981 NEAR
- Currently active members of the Developer Program linked to BCoU: 55 @ 10 NEAR each = 550 N
- Bonus for successful apps deployed by BCoU members: 331 NEAR
- Running a node with 99% uptime on BetaNet as part of the Stake Wars program: 100 N
League Ranking: 1,200 NEAR
Silver: Based on last month’s Boost rewards of 1680 NEAR and Rolling rewards of 445 NEAR, BCoU was the #9 ranked Guild and thus earned a 1,200 N bonus this month.
TOTAL: 3,901 NEAR
Become a Guild
After you apply to the Guild Program we will get back to you with the next steps.
Apply Now
Ask Questions
Check out our Launch Post or message us
Be a Contributor
Are you more interested in contributing to individual tasks? Try the Contributor Program. Learn More
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my Guild have to be focused only on NEAR?
No, your Guild can be focused on specific tech stack or programming language, social sciences with a connection to the open web, or anything in between. It can be a validator community, a market-driven community or a developer community. It can be based broadly around interesting new technologies or specifically about the NEAR platform.
The goal of this program is to drive interest and engagement to the open web ecosystem. The incentives will most strongly reward those guilds who have strong alignment with the NEAR ecosystem but there is no requirement that the guild be 100% focused on NEAR.
Can I register an existing community as a guild?
Yes, we highly encourage you to sign-up with your existing community. When you do, feel free to reach out to the community for help rolling out the Guild to your members.
Do I need to have members to register my Guild?
No, only the Guild Leader registers with us. But a Guild is most effective when it has many members.
Can I register my app's users, my validator's delegators or my business's clients as a Guild so I can earn rewards based on their activity?
Yes, though it should be consensual. Most of the incentive tracking will tie back to having a NEAR account so only those members who are engaged with NEAR will end up counted in the rewards.
Will you change the reward structure?
Yes, definitely, based on what’s healthy for the ecosystem overall and long-term. Some incentives may be too easy to game. Guilds which are deliberately gaming incentives will be asked to de-affiliate themselves.
What's the advantage of getting started as a Guild now?
The earlier you start or register your Guild, the more momentum you can build as the NEAR community grows and local members look for education and support. The League Ranking system also provides incentives for communities to establish themselves early and maintain their ranking.
Who counts as a member of my Guild and how do they register?
Anyone counts and they don’t need to register officially. But they might if they’re part of something that’s counted in the Guild rewards like a Developer Program person, a Validator or a dApp creator.
If my community has only 20 members, do I stand a chance of competing with one that has 10,000 people?
Most of the incentives for the Guild Program are non-competitive so there are many reasons for Guilds to support each other. The League Rankings are intended to provide a baseline level of recognition and predictable reward to Guilds who are doing a fantastic job and who will have expenses that require them to rely on predictable rewards.
Regardless, the incentives of the program strongly emphasize quality and engagement over quantity. If you build a substantive, long-term community you can count on the program supporting you and rewarding you accordingly.
What happens if there is already a Guild in my country?
Guilds are intended to be both local and diverse. There is plenty of room for multiple Guilds in a given geography and some Guilds may have a large and international presence. If there is already a Guild in your region with the same focus area as yours, consider combining forces with them. If they focus on providing technical education around building web applications, you might focus on engaging potential users of decentralized apps instead.
Can I have multiple Guild Leaders in my Guild?
Only one Guild leader will connect with us, access initiatives, and receive rewards. We expect the Guild leader to communicate and share information with other Guild leaders. Note that you will not necessarily receive more rewards if you have more Guild leaders within your Guild. However, the additional efforts within your Guild might engage more members, allowing your Guild to scale up faster.
How do you calculate and keep track of rewards?
Most of the rewards will be calculated using automated tools, for example linking Guild Members with NEAR accounts to Developer Program participants and the apps they deploy. These tools are under development so early efforts will be somewhat manual. Rewards will be available in the Portal.