NEAR Foundation Town Hall - June 14, 2023

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:01

   all right hello everybody thank you so much for being here in another near Foundation town hall um we are have we have a really great agenda today as usual but they keep becoming more and more packed as these go on uh I'm Marcus from the near Foundation Community team uh we're honored to have some great people on today's uh Town Hall uh we'll kick things off with an introduction from

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   Ilya himself uh we have a regulatory update from Chris Donovan legal counsel uh general counsel at near Foundation uh we have uh okr review from David Weinstein Chief of Staff we have a horizon update from Laura GM at Horizon team and then we also have a section on uh how nearest bringing developers and businesses in uh by Ilya and Alex keoki we also have a BD success and partnership Spotlight as well again this time uh presented by Devin as well as

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   Dylan from the BD team and then we have an events overview uh some Alpha on nircon and some other events near APAC by Olga Kiana and Ryan so really exciting um kind of agenda today I hope we have enough time for it all and I just want to also uh let you all know that we're working to make the town halls a Community Driven event uh there should soon be a uh Town Hall hum uh up on Boss where Community can actively have conversations around the content and

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   also kind of vote on what they want to see so this will be communicated as it rolls out and I hope you all get involved so without further Ado I'll go ahead and take it over to Ilia for an introduction and we'll get started thanks Marcus I mean you pretty much did the introduction uh so there's not much left I think yeah want to welcome everyone um it's gonna great to have a ton of people joining both directly and through

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   video we have uh kind of lots of good content and I think it's exciting to have more and more people in being involved in in those Town Halls um kind of high level really kind of continue seeing the ecosystem growing and more participants uh getting involved in different ways and I think that's uh really what we're trying to build here uh I'll I'll be giving more updates around the uh kind of how we bring developers as well as kind of some

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   of the things that I've been involved with in the past few weeks uh and a bit later but yeah we can kick it off to Chris awesome thank you very much and hello everybody um for those of you who don't know me I'm Chris Donovan I'm the general counsel here at the near foundation and I just wanted to spend um a few quick minutes just sharing some thoughts about the recent regulatory developments in the US that I'm sure

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   many of you are probably already aware of but some quick context for those of you who might not be last week the SEC the Securities and Exchange Commission U.S financial regulator it filed an enforcement action against coinbase alleging that coinbase is operating an unregistered Securities Exchange and as part of that complaint the SEC also alleged that a whole bunch of different digital assets that are available on coinbase's platform including the near

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   token are being sold as investment contracts and so as Securities under U.S law now a lot of you might have seen that we released a public statement last week actually you know covering off our views about those developments and confirming that you know we disagree with the inclusion of the near token in the complaint and that in any case more generally you know we're not unduly concerned by the development but

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   nonetheless I thought it would be helpful just to spend a little bit of time here running you all through some of our more detailed thinking on the issues and also just to expand on that public statement a little bit more as well so first really important thing to emphasize is that the complaint isn't against the near Foundation or any other member of the near ecosystem and nor does it allege that anyone in the near ecosystem has done anything unlawful which is you know obviously very

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    important and the foundation has always taken its legal obligations extremely seriously and we firmly believe that we have been and we will continue to be compliant with all applicable laws and of course like I mentioned at the top we also disagree with the inclusion of the near token and the complaint but notwithstanding that in any case it's important to recognize that the complaint doesn't specifically Target

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    the near ecosystem right there are many other tokens other ecosystems that are included in the in the coinbase complaints with 12 others in fact and actually over the last six to 12 months the SEC is actually designated over 55 tokens as Securities right so in our view the complaint is very much a reflection of how the SEC is thinking about approaching our industry as a whole right and chair ganzler at the SEC he's routinely stated that he thinks All Digital assets are securities and that

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    actually is a view that's considered unturnable by many lawyers many policy makers and and other commentators particularly when there is currently no viable route to registration or compliance for projects in the US right so one other important detail um as well just before I move on to the next slide is that you know the SEC asserts that actually it only needs to convince the court that just one of the

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    assets that it included in the complaint is a security to successfully establish a violation of Securities laws by coinbase right which means that the SEC is very much incentivized to cast a wide net and actually the way that the SEC is making these allegations so against an exchange coinbase and binance and others are not actually directly against the ecosystem participants it makes it hard

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    for any ecosystem participant to actually intervene and challenge the allegations so in effect the SEC can can make these allegations without fear of material challenge so without a doubt you know there is a lot of regulatory uncertainty in the US right now that's that's for sure and it's it's very unfortunate you know it's it's harming the industry particularly in the US and in my view it's it's very much unnecessary as well um and the complaint in many ways is a reflection of that challenging

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    environment but I think it's also really important not to forget that you know the technology that's underpinning our ecosystem it's Global it's permissionless it's decentralized right and the world is a lot bigger than just the United States and actually the US is becoming increasingly an outlier globally in terms of its hostile approach to our industry right there are many other jurisdictions globally that

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    are making you know lots of meaningful steps to engage with our industry in a good faith way and Implement a reasonable proportion of legal Frameworks that will actually support the growth and development of our industry and so you know Switzerland is a great example of that right which is where the foundation is based Switzerland has had a really clear symbol effective regulatory framework digital assets for several years

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    um and as a result as a you know there's a fantastic vibrant web 3 Community here and you know it's it's important to recognize as well that actually under Swiss law under that framework the near tokens been deemed to be a payment token and not a security now you know we've always believed that reasonable proportionate regulation is is essential right for the for the global growth and Adoption of web3 technology and that was a big part actually of the policy principles piece that we published a few months ago uh

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    I'd encourage everyone to to give that a read because it you know it sets out what drives the foundation in the policy and advocacy work that we do but also how we think more broadly about the global regulatory environment there's a lot of important geopolitical shifts kind of happening at the moment as different jurisdictions compete to embrace our industry and we also actually have some exciting uh policy announcements coming up in the next few

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    weeks as well so very much watch this space and in the meantime you know really the messages that the foundations you know very confident that we're well prepared we're fortunate to have a fantastic team and Stellar external advisors to make sure that we can successfully navigate and you know help ensure that the ecosystem can successfully navigate whatever complexities whatever challenges the

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    ecosystem might face regardless of where those challenges might arise whether it's in the US or elsewhere right so we will continue to help keep the ecosystem safe and secure and in the meantime it's business as usual and we should all try and focus on what's important and and you know do our best to not let ourselves get distracted and I think that's a great segue actually into a

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    quick reminder of the foundation's core Mission so next slide please so here it is as a reminder for everybody the foundation's core mission is to support the ongoing growth and development of an autonomous and decentralized near ecosystem and we have a bunch of convictions that help us do that so quickly walking through these and many of you will have seen them before but just very quickly so first of all

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    developers and users they're at the heart of everything that we do um it needs to be you know easy for developers to enter the ecosystem begin using tools and Technology to build exciting things and great experiences and there also needs to be rich engaging user experiences with seamless onboarding so people can can come in and and start playing around and enjoying the ecosystem as easily as possible and fast wolf that was recently released is

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    a really fantastic example of that we also firmly believe in a the you know the true open web where we can easily transfer profiles data assets basically entire digital lives between different applications ecosystems and chains and we would very much like to see an end to the you know the fragmentation and tribalism that we sometimes see out in the industry because ultimately we think

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    that's harmful to us all and and lastly but probably the most importantly you know the fact that Nia is the boss the blockchain operating system that amazing you know stack of decentralized components um and actually the near ecosystem is the only place that has the Necessary Technology to support a true blockchain operating system you know with immediate finality and and scaling without

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    sacrificing security and all of that fantastic uh stuff now last thing for me before I hand over to DW for the ukrs just a quick reminder also on how we're thinking strategically about actually reach teaching as many users as possible and getting them into the ecosystem as you can see from this diagram It's a combination of a Bottoms Up and a top-down approach so the bottom-up

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    approach starts with the community with all of you here on this call and all of the amazing Grassroots efforts that are happening you know out in the ecosystem with the NDC with the Grassroots Dows and many other fantastic things that many of you on the call that are already a part of which is great and of course on top of that as we can also see and it's it's still early stages and we're going to hear a little bit more about it later today I think we also have near

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    Horizon which is effectively an accelerator for projects and for you know profound as an entrepreneurs that are coming into the ecosystem it helps to make sure that they have the tools and the services and the support that they need not only to successfully set up businesses but also scale them as well and then from a top-down perspective this is all about Partnerships we're going to be hearing a lot more about that from the uh the foundation BD team in a little while and

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    it's about bringing more users and more use cases into the ecosystem uh and there's a lot of exciting stuff to come so and of course where these two strategies meet right in the middle there of course is is near the blockchain operating system and that's what powers everything that we're doing and underpins all of the hard work that we're doing so on that note I'm going to hand over to David Weinstein to walk us

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    through the latest OK us amazing thank you Chris all right going through this relatively quickly um the biggest change Now versus what we shared two weeks ago is that a lot of our metrics are starting to improve it's only been a couple weeks but we are starting to see an uptick most notably in our North Star metric around monthly active accounts uh our goal for Q2 which uh is eventually go up this month is 1.2 million monthly active accounts and we

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    adjust our close to 1.1 million active accounts as of as of this morning um and then a couple other things to call out um near the blockchain operating system is the first major theme uh we now are seeing on near social around 16 or on Pace for 16 000 or so accounts uh and Twitter followers on Pace for 2 million and the rest is holding strong so nearer.org migration obviously happened and our share of Voice metric is a little less than 15 now but it's been

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    holding relatively strong for the past uh several weeks now in terms of near is thriving decentralized ecosystem uh we've said at the Dows NDC V1 governance is is coming along nicely we're not there yet but on Pace um the most exciting thing there is one of the goals that they had was to get a 1 000 humans on as part of the NBC and I think as of now they are just at 900 so 90 of the way there but it's a few weeks to go which is amazing to see

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    um NPS from the community we'll we'll do uh we'll do a survey uh by the end of this quarter to see how that tracks um and then near Horizon which we will hear about soon uh has over a hundred projects now with profiles uh as part of horizon so more to come there later this this update um and then uh unfortunately the one red mark here is external Capital being raised by projects in the

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    ecosystem uh still no fundraises for um near native projects uh fundraising has been a bit dry um across the industry uh these days and then near is where web2 goes to become web three uh 850 000 Maas from near Partners uh like BD partners that we brought on and are and are working closely with um and then in terms of deals that have closed uh five plus uh tier one and tier zero deals have been announced or about

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    to be announced and 15 or so tier 2 deals and it's going through this quickly so mentioned this we've seen now four weeks in a row of increasing engagement within the ecosystem and we have surpassed the one million Mark again talk briefly about this on the left it's showing near social accounts so uh close to 15 000 uh as of now um the past couple weeks have been quite strong so we had the massive bump a few weeks ago that we talked about last time

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    but it's amazing to see that in each of the past couple weeks we've had close to a thousand new accounts joining near social Twitter followers has been growing a bit after a relatively slow uh April due to the way we were changing some of our campaigns and brand messaging um May is coming in strong again and we've surpassed the 1.8 million mark and then share a voice mentioned it

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    um past five weeks or so has been about 10 which is incredible to see uh the near uh brand and near messaging resonating across across Twitter fundraising talks about that um the humans on year yeah so just at about 900 or so humans on near so amazing job to the NDC uh team and all the community members that are a part of that and then on the right we're showing near social developers uh which which has been growing over time

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    and a handful of announcements in the past two weeks I'm not going to go into too much detail here I know Ilya is going to talk about a few of them that are super exciting and then the BD team is also going to share a bit but for that uh we'll hand over to Laura talking about Horizon great thank you David hey everyone um so I am here to provide some updates about Horizon and where we are so as you

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    will remember Horizon is a startup support platform that connects web3 Founders and contributors and backers for growth and success um and if we go to the next slide our North Star goal for the year is to support a hundred projects in releasing two mainnet with a hundred or more monthly active accounts I also want to note that um with the sunset of awesomenir we are now directing all projects to create a profile on Horizon so it can be that

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    complete repo repo of all the ecosystem projects so even if you are not looking directly for support please do still create a profile on Horizon is the big CTA here um if we go to the next side um so where are we against that goal right so we launched Horizon on April 26th and as of June 9th we have 8 119 transactions we have onboarded 129 projects we have 19 contributors and we have had seven contribution requests

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    that have been made we have also been the number one staging boss component and number three in production so I think we're really excited about the traction that we have gotten so far um but of course are just sort of at the beginning if you go to the next slide we've also been forging Partnerships with accelerator programs ecosystem partners and education Partners all with the goal of attracting and supporting

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    new and current teams so if you go to the next slide basically in q1 and two of this year we have gone from zero to one right we were an idea in January we are now a product and a team um you know and and are really focused on finding and supporting our fabulous Founders um and so now we're cranking for traction so from a product perspective if you go to the next slide in June in July we are focused on really improving the founder Journey we're leads are

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    focused on Founders we will do this by redesigning the home page which actually is live as of yesterday and I'm going to show you a quick demo of we are also optimizing the onboarding flow we're improving searching and filtering we've created an admin dashboard so we can actually monitor platform activity better we are bringing also our partner program applications directly into the

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    platform so you can apply now through the platform and we have also been making some minor improvements to Mobile responsiveness in July we're going to be updating our landing page to make it more focused and clear productizing our credit application process so today this is happening off platform and then we're also going to be releasing new feature to allow Founders to actually ask questions to the community and receive responses so having a little bit more sort of social action that's happening within the

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    platform and then also fully optimizing for mobile I want to just take a minute to say thank you so much for all of the feedback and engagement from the community in Horizon so far we have a crew of super users who have been giving US Weekly feedback we've been hearing from you all via email via telegram all please keep it coming that's that's what's going to make this this product better and actually you know be able to

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    to meet the needs of everyone so I wanted to quickly show you some updates um so if I'm able to share my screen David I'm not sure amazing thank you all um cool can you see amazing um cool so um very quickly show you some updates that have been already released in June so for those of you who are familiar with Horizon you will notice a pretty big overhaul of the home page so we've made the calls to action a lot clearer

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    um and have also made it possible to see projects and requests and contributors and Backer information without needing to kind of Click around and use so much time so that is a big um a big update uh we have also made it easier to um to search and filter for projects so um we got you know gotten some feedback that it hasn't been incredibly easy to you know to be able to look through this project list and make sense of it so new

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    filters across the board um and then it is also now possible to apply for our partner programs directly within the app so you'll see here that we have in code Club outlier Ventures and Major League hacking which is the first set of our partners that you can apply directly to from from within the platform and then finally we also have a new FAQ that is addressing some of the questions that have come up during onboarding so um should should be able to sort of help

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    help you all out a little bit more in getting and getting on board so that is my quick demo we can go back to the slide deck and I will stop sharing um uh and so I wanted to also give you a sense of our partnership roadmap so we have a very busy um Q3 and Q4 ahead of us um So the plan is to launch our hackathon and fellowship programs with major league hacking and encode Club in

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    June into July and then launch our accelerator program with outlier in July um in August and September we're going to be kicking off our ready to raise boot camp so this is something it's a program that it's really designed for early stage projects who are actively raising in the Horizon Community um we've been hearing a lot from you know from all of you and and folks who are on are on the call

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    um that they need some support in getting ready to actually pitch and raise um uh and then we are also going to be kicking off our mentorship program where we were going to pair Horizon founders with our expert Network um in October and November we're going to be hosting demo days for the culmination of outline fire and the major league hacking programs and then in early December we're going to be launching an industry-specific incubator much more to come on that more design and r d needed and then in late December

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    early January the plan is to also launch our talent Network which is essentially a database of vetted Talent who are ready to contribute to Horizon projects so much more to come on all of those things so if you go to the next slide for the founders out there join Horizon today so you can validate your idea find help connect with other builders connect with capital if you go to the next slide

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    for service providers on the call join so you can get access to the Horizon ecosystem you can get Scaled reach and basically BD and you can also build long-term relationships with like new startups that will hopefully convert into high quality you know and high value clients as they grow and for the next slide if you're extend accelerator program an ecosystem team team who wants

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    to make their product or service available or an education program the big call to action here is join Horizon as contributor so you can start to engage with projects and then finally on the next slide we wanted to just give you a sense of our upcoming on the ground activities so we're going to be at Collision we're going to be at ECC near APAC near con of course um and then we're also partnering with outlier for a demo day um uh you know in in sort of October so please keep your eyes peeled for the

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    invitations um for these pitch and networking events so a lot is in store for you when you join Horizon if you go to the next slide our our sort of summary call to actions our Founders please set up your project profile and also join us every Friday at 9 00 a.m excuse me Eastern and 3 P.M Central um European time for office hours where we're going to help Founders maximize the benefits of our platform and also gather feedback and then for all of our potential contributors out there please

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    join as a contributor and start to engage with projects and you can also email us at Horizon at near dot Foundation if you want to be a certified provider or if you just need help in getting set up so that's our update thanks so much for all of your Partnerships so far um and keep keep the feedback coming we love it thanks awesome oh yeah over to you if you're there thank you oh yeah are you there yeah my internet decided to become unstable that's not the right moment

56. 25:41

    amazing cool all right cool if we go to the next slide yeah so uh kind of two update everyone right how the go to market is going right and so kind of in in this aspect of near is the boss right meaning near is a blockchain operating system right there's actually a number of uh kind of ecosystem participants that are uh continuously pushing near uh kind of adoption across different aspects right in in very decentralized

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    manner was like very you know kind of each one focused on different aspects of of this go to market and so kind of to highlight some of them we have Dev Hub which is really focused on uh bottom up developer ecosystem right so this is everything from hackathons to volunteers to really engage English developers uh kind of through Community groups uh to governance um and so this is on itself a dow which kind of uh has like a number of initiatives and and people can

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    participate um and suggest new initiatives there uh so if you're not familiar uh go to near.org and search for Dev Hub and so it runs out of uh kind of a set of components on blockchain system now there's another uh kind of Dimension which is really bringing existing web3 Partners uh and really onboarding them kind of into blockchain operating system be that uh through existing components uh through Discovery or through using

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    some of the other Tooling in the ecosystem right and so proximity has been taking a lead here they're really working with tier one projects kind of across the ecosystem and kind of building this developer mind share in web 3. kind of the goal there is that we want blockchain operator system to be top of mind for any developer building in web3 because it provides uh all of the kind of benefits we talk about right uh everything from you know either building engagement you know even boarding as well as

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    anti-fragility for their applications then we have near Foundation business development team focusing on working with dub Enterprises as well as startups uh it's also worth mentioning kind of a number of regional hubs that are also involved in this kind of in parallel uh like near Korea and their Balkans and few others and also to mention we have near tasks which uh kind of been structuring as a one of the well one of the first businesses built on top of blockchain

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    operating system bringing both consumer and businesses uh kind of and starting an AI vertical right so I kind of tweeted about it earlier today there's uh just opened up kind of the preview uh you can try and so this is kind of based on some of the origins of near uh when near was the eye company building crowdsourcing system uh using blockchain as a facilitator of the uh kind of this Marketplace of tasks and

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    gigs and really delivering business kind of the business value as well as you know having those gigs and work working for the consumers so so these are all like very different aspects of go to market and again like there's lots of different participants uh doing work and this is only few highlighted so if we go to the next slide uh just kind of give like quick update on my side I spent last two weeks in Korea uh this was you saw hackathon as

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    well as Little Asia conference uh we kind of partnered up with near Career Team who established a lot of connections with stop Enterprises I also have met with uh um governor of gyungi province which is the biggest province in Korea um and so really been establishing kind of Partnerships there as well as uh uh kind of educating about blockchain operating system and getting more Builders involved in this uh this week I am in Vietnam for Bill Vietnam as well

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    as working with uh near Vietnam and their Community as well so I'm really excited here uh yeah so if we go to the next slide so this is kind of we had in parallel he saw as well as East Prague going on where in both of them we were kind of showcasing blockchain operating system and really introducing kind of this concept to broader developer base we had a good pickup on both of them I think

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    near had uh kind of major like if I don't have a majority but like a very large presence of projects that um a soul and his Prague there's there's a number of projects including really cool and cute uh lens component was built there so check it out next so uh on kind of the web 3 side uh Canada there was announcement between Partnership of Galaxy and space ID leveraging uh Discovery so the front-end blockchain kind of front-end component

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    of blockchain system to uh really create this kind of better experience for uh kind of Galaxy Quest holders as well as have this anti-fraction fragility of the UI that boss delivers next um there was mou sign with my assets so new assets is the biggest Asian uh kind of um asset manager uh they're really interested in real world assets and their tokenization and kind of really opening up markets around that and I think that this is one of the future directions uh for blockchain in general

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    to kind of create real economies and uh open up this is a composibility we know we have in blockchain to real world and so this is extremely important Direction and kind of um uh there's like a multiple participants in the ecosystem investing in this uh one to highlighters Aurora which are like launching their error Cloud instances for the organization with few Partners next so the other side is marble X so this is a net marble which is uh top three game

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    developer in Korea top 10 worldwide uh kind of their blockchain initiative it's called marble X really bringing top of the top gaming IPS that they have uh kind of introducing blockchain to them as well as connecting to a website economy and so uh the parking wrap as well they're going to be working with Aurora as well to bring some of their assets as well as over time some of the gave me earpiece next

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    I think uh Alex to kind of take off from here yeah thanks Ilya um so hey folks just uh following up on on the awesome news that uh Ilyas mentioned on on the business side and continue to give more visibility into um pakota's long-term roadmap for the next next six months um so as per the last Town Hall uh we wanted to share it focal points and and a few of the initiatives um that are happening so we have five key

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    focal points in the road map Gateway technology which is of course um related to the decentralized front ends and the component system the developer experience and continuing to improve that across the boss stack emerging technology so these are new kind of um bets that we are able to kind of push these new use cases uh on uh service services devops so there are many services that Pagoda provides whether

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    it's our PCS or or relayers and what progress is happening there and then of course we're starting to work with some of these Enterprises as Ilya mentioned and we will have that as a continued focal point uh as well next slide so you can see here it's kind of small and we will be posting this on on near.org as well um but in Gateway there is quite a bit of work uh that we are are starting to

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    focus on um and really making sure uh that this decentralized composable front end layer as Elia mentioned is um very usable uh for users and developers um I think like a few highlights to look through uh is one this is a view to the the next uh six months um and some of these things are are sequenced um earlier than others um highlights are we are still actively working on uh the web engine meta

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    transactions notifications um we're continuing to invest into tooling for um trust and safety which will all be available for anybody to use on their gateways as well um or looking at more refinements to the developer sandbox and partnering with folks in the community on that and there's going to be uh in continued uh emphasis on on growth mechanisms for this this site partnering with both marketing as well as uh the community as

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    well next slide and then if we combine kind of Dev experience and emerging technology of course there are some developer experiences related to Gateway so this isn't completely mutually exclusive but specifically we're we're looking in developer experience um to continue to prove the query API help developers find groups to speak with each other um improve our multi-region hosting um and and have more visibility there on emerging Tech uh again the Fast Stop SDK

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    is in progress and we're hoping to have um something available I know it's something that's been asked quite frequently uh by August um the ability to White Label fast off um more account management as well as I think one thing not mentioned here is also multi-chain development is is underway by the end of the year um next slide and finally on the services side we are really trying to reduce the cost of of

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    running nodes in our PCS this is very expensive um and we want to really make sure that we're running as efficiently as possible and for those uh you know benefits to be available to community as well um there is like continuous work that needs to be done on Incident Management important to make a call out here that we're you know are always aware of this and on Enterprises um there will be some full vertical solutions that we will be able to share in the next few months that will be

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    hitting the market um and there will be uh availability of understanding for the community as well for folks who are interested in um working in in some of those verticals uh we can't disclose what those are right now because of just contractual terms with the the Enterprises but in the next few months we'll be able to share those Solutions next slide and that's it thanks folks

78. 37:12

    cool thanks Alex hi everyone it's Devin from the business development team here at near Foundation it's my pleasure to once again introduce a few remarkable partners that our BD team has recently invested in with their innovative solutions and shared Vision they're set to contribute significantly to the growth and development of this ecosystem before we extend a warm welcome to round let's hear from Dylan about how we introduce the boss to our BD Partners

79. 37:38

    thanks Dylan awesome thank you Devin um so hi everyone if I haven't got the chance to meet you yet I am Dylan and I'm with the success team here at near foundation so real quickly the success team blockchain success team sits within the business development team so as Devin mentioned you know soon we'll hear from partners that uh the BD team was excited about bringing into the ecosystem and they worked on getting that uh internal buy-in getting the

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    contract signed and and as those teams start to Pivot towards press releases and marketing and how do we actually integrate with the near protocol that is where the blockchain success team comes into play so we're kind of the the belly button to the organization for our our BD Partners uh handling that post sales relationship and that could look anything like you know what does marketing support look like or how can I get Amplified in front

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    of my in front of uh more backers you know that work within the near ecosystem and importantly is you know what is meta transactions what are relayers what does this SDK you know how does that work and how do I implement it and recently it's been all right what's fast off what is key Palm how how does a decentralized front-end apply to me in my business use case so on the success team we've taken it uh

82. 38:54

    you know upon ourselves to make sure that our existing BD partners are well educated about this so um you know you heard about a lot that's going on within the ecosystem in terms of educating people about boss now we're kind of zooming in to specifically what we're doing with our uh our business development Partners so over the last month or so we've had a handful of one-on-one sessions with our key uh nfbd

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    accounts that's led by Vic we've also LED multiple internal cross-functional workshops uh with our marketing team with Pagoda with the Korea Hub and as well as our our BD team to make sure that everyone is selling this technology in the same way and in a standard way we've done a Hands-On demo workshops where we've seen you know our BD team members actually building components on the boss and seeing what it's like to

84. 39:42

    build a brand new you know nft Marketplace uh in minutes right you know using some of our existing Partners components and gateways that they've built we've also had external partner workshops so we held two sessions uh you know recently in May that we had about 90 percent or sorry 90 plus attendees and a lot of our our key accounts and backers as well as our development shops were included in that to discuss that was Alton leading a discussion on what

85. 40:12

    are you know these new technologies and how can you implement it into your your business model we've also led a handful of input person workshops so blocks bit as well as eth Belgrade which was with Vic and the near Balkans hub and additionally we identified a few key accounts for different vertical specific proofs of concept that was kind of alluded to earlier by Alex and then

86. 40:38

    lastly we've created some one pagers on Fast off key palm and decentralized front ends and gateways for internal use to make sure that our team is a completely enabled to be able to sell this to Partners and and really help them take advantage of the new technology that Pagoda has been releasing lately so that's all from me I'll hand it off to Alton and the round team hi everyone um so I'm thrilled to introduce you guys to to round um they are a white Community backed

87. 41:11

    startup that is actually redefining user on boarding in web 2 and web 3 through advanced contextual authentication they've served a couple of uh interesting clients dropped in our ecosystem as well as the Tribeca film festival and the US Department of Defense um they've actually recently integrated with um with web3 sign in with us uh enhancing user interaction with blockchain Technologies uh please join me in welcoming Matt from around

88. 41:43

    thanks elephant hey everyone great to be with you uh here today um if we can move on to the next slide I just I want to quickly give you uh an overview of what round is I know we talked about it just for a second and then we'll we'll quickly move into uh you know what we're doing here in the deer ecosystem but round is essentially a frictionless authentication to in the static sign-in page uh being able to

89. 42:05

    um just you know get authenticate you in the context that you're already in get users in quickly as we move into the next slide um we um sorry there's a couple animations in there I'll just keep going uh we allow you to choose how and where authentication happens so wherever it makes sense you know for your users in the context of your product uh we get you in using all sorts of existing Technologies and new

90. 42:30

    technologies like you know Google sign in passkeys that sort of thing um and uh just just do it like in the context of your existing product on the next slide uh one of the problems that we've seen is that between 60 and 95 of users drop off during the you know sign up flow and round's goal is to really improve that we've already seen that improved greatly in some cases even doubling the the sign up rate with with

91. 42:54

    some of our customers so let's talk a little bit on the next slide about what we're doing with near again apologies for the the animations I pulled this from uh from another deck um yeah just click through there keep going uh so we're really uh our goal is to make uh you know sign in frictionless for web3 and just you know get anyone regardless of how much they know about web3 you know on board as quickly as possible uh next slide so you know first

92. 43:25

    of all we want to just make it easy for average people to get into the web through ecosystem no matter what they know about web3 or how familiar they are and just be able to take advantage of a lot of the capabilities of web3 and so we start you know that by using existing web 2 Technologies like some of the existing sign-in Technologies and then behind the scenes we can create near wallets automatically or near accounts

93. 43:49

    automatically implicit accounts we can give users tools to convert those accounts into named accounts uh without even needing to understand exactly you know what the what the near ecosystem is and then of course as our as our partners you know who are building with this technology you know putting the round SDK into their mobile apps or web apps or wherever they happen to be implementing it um you know they're able to use uh all

94. 44:14

    the all the near tools and introduce uh users into these you know different concepts um and our goal is really to make this plug-in play so you know you don't have to spend a lot of time understanding exactly how to how to get people into the near ecosystem into web3 you can really just plug in around get users authenticated get their their accounts created and start uh start doing things immediately like uh dropping nfts into

95. 44:40

    into their wallets and things like that um and you know we can even do things like Auto Funding uh accounts as they're initially created um and from either you know a pool of near that you already have or or from uh you know we can even convert um on our end you know Fiat into engineer and fund those accounts that way as well uh next slide uh we want to give you're just the average person control of their accounts and data so um around you know when we create these implicit accounts we securely and

96. 45:13

    encrypted encryptedly in store you know store the account keys in the KMS on behalf of the user but then you know we also recognize that you know as web3 continues to grow and mature users are going to become more and more comfortable and familiar with with what's going on um and so we allow them to you know self-custody that data and those keys at any point in time or if they already

97. 45:35

    have a near wallet and they already kind of understand more about what the newer ecosystem is they can even bring uh those you know those personal wallets you know into into the platform and then we'll connect those back to um you know the partners that we're working with the businesses that have that have implemented uh you know around um so that you know they can continue staying connected to to those particular

98. 45:56

    wallets and accounts uh next slide we really just want to make uh you know onboarding even cheaper and faster you know right now um you know it takes some amount of near right to set up the the account but we're working you know even even as I speak we're working on Integrations with key Palm to just make it easier to to get going to make it cheaper um to get those accounts created to drop nfts in there so on and so forth and

99. 46:21

    we're also exploring things like the you know meta transaction layer and integration of things like Fast off and and some of the the you know innovations that are really you know coming up here in the near ecosystem just make this even faster uh without a lot of lift from you know developers they can just continue using the round SDK the round ecosystem while they're on platform and you know

100. 46:44

     um just get it get Advantage get the advantages that are brought by these uh additional Innovations uh finally uh round offers a bunch of of features um you know just across all of just different ways to get you know accounts get users signed in uh to your platform forming your system and we're really excited to just uh to just continue innovating with the with the near team and with the near ecosystem on improving this this flow uh so that's round thanks everyone thanks very much everyone

101. 47:20

     thanks Matt uh hi everyone I'm part of the new fun side and uh I want to introduce everyone to a super exciting project called neck uh where we recently on board was near particle so this um nag is actually sitting at intersection of crater economy and also Webster as everyone knows with the rising of the creature economy many Creator uh many creators that are seeking to elevate their brands discover a new stream of revenues or connecting with fans on a

102. 47:50

     deeper level to uh they can they can utilize the blockchain to helping them to achieve different goals on on here so we're super excited to introduce Knack as one of the first project on your protocol to facilitate the greater economy in websterite and I'll pass the floor to Micron Dan to give everyone more introduction from from their side hey guys um nice to meet you all this is Michael

103. 48:17

     and Dan we're the co-founders of knack um like Maggie mentioned we're building a loyalty platform for the Creator economy so we're really trying to bring you know the gap between web 2 uh into web 3 for fans and creators and Brands um so the idea here is to basically build a browser extension on top of Google Chrome and other types of formidable browsers to you know essentially capture user activity and

104. 48:41

     then reward them accordingly uh via engagement you can go to the next slide um we kind of talk a little bit more about our product um like I said we're building a very simple browser extension um effectively this doesn't disrupt normal user Behavior across different social media platforms and we're really trying to bring a gamified experience here meaning we allow users to actively engage with their creators by also

105. 49:04

     fostering community and in return we give them Awards um in the form of gift cards products Services um that they can redeem for Via our platform token and um you know the product really just centralizes around um YouTube In the Beginning meaning we Target fans who are there on a daily basis to engage with their favorite creators and Brands and channels and they can basically start earning our

106. 49:28

     tokens through the engagement process and we believe this really creates a very very appealing uh value proposition because um not only does it drive more engagement um from the fan side but also helps creators monetize and boost their own brand exposure um at the same time we're onboarding you know at least 15 to 20 brands at the moment to kind of partner with us and provide gift cards products and services

107. 49:52

     on top of our extension so we're able to actually use our tokens to redeem for those gift cards and services and Brands can also um you know drop affiliate links people can actually do Drop Shipping as well and um we can also offer advertisement spaces for Brands um and we get a cut of the ad Revenue share um so the next slide we can talk about more about our platform token thanks

108. 50:17

     Michael so like Michael mentioned The Knack token is what's going to go and power the entire platform it will be an NEP 141 token so running natively on the L1 and this will be what the users earn and what they redeem for all the experiences goods and services that are inside our platform and I'm really excited to highlight the key things here that we've done to go and really improve on what we've seen on like the other attempts in this social Phi token space

109. 50:45

     uh the three things to highlight are the scalability the accessibility and the liquidity which we think were key roadblocks in the previous attempts that we believe we have alleviated in terms of scalability if you look at the Creator economy right there's over two million professionals alone and so if you were to go and try and make one for every single person that is something that even no exchange is handling right

110. 51:09

     now I think the most number of markets is around like 2700 on Eighth and so millions of is not scalable this directly leads to accessibility before the user right so when a user is trying to go and focus on engagement focus on what they love about their famous Creator you don't want them to have like an exchange like experience where it's very confusing and then ultimately this

111. 51:33

     leads to liquidity because by aggregating all of the user's activity and every Creator into one single platform token we make it so that users can be really familiar what's going on all the liquidity is aggregating to one place so anyone can go in and out super simple and they don't have to have to deal with any like you know slippage any of these kind of more Trader focused terms that would be very distracting and we'll go to the next slide so this is kind of our high level review

112. 52:04

     of our of our roadmap um you know we have the extension built out right and we have a current partnership with YouTube so we have access to all their API data so we're able to track kind of user activity as you know fans start to engage with with um their creators that they follow on um on YouTube So the plan here is we've signed with two major talent agencies who've given us access to 65 different creators who want to partner with us they have about over 100

113. 52:28

     million in terms of following across all their platforms um platforms being Tick Tock YouTube and twitch so and then we're opening more applications to new creators um at the moment and we've seen a lot of inbound interests as well so the plan would be just integrate with YouTube um start the official rollout process by the end of the summer and eventually move on to Twitch um and then the goal for next year is we're hoping to become a also offer a y

114. 52:54

     label service um for a B2B service provider for for Brands so we've spoken to a handful of companies including large consumer good business like Shake Shack express interest on working with us so we're hope we're hoping to basically build a wide label loyalty platform for them and then at the same time focus on the b2c side um as well so that's kind of the high level roadmap at the moment so we're really excited to work with near

115. 53:19

     um really appreciate all the support you guys have given us um I know you guys are really big onto the Creator economy and helping Bridge web 2 into web 3. so we feel like there's a lot of alignment here between us and the near protocol so really excited to see you know where things take off thank you team let me introduce everyone to Mint base so mint base is an Innovative Marketplace built on the near protocol

116. 53:49

     that enables fast and affordable Market entry for Brands developers and creators through their smart contract and developer tooling they recently integrated payment services like stripe and usdc into their platform to enhance the overall user experience and mint base also happens to be one of the top contributors of Boss components in the near ecosystem so without any delay let's hear from the founders Caroline and Nate what's cooking recently in the mid-based kitchen

117. 54:20

     over to you Carolyn thank you so much because for your introduction um I would like to intro to interview um invite you all for our Main Place Grands demo day on the 28th of June in Lisbon in Portugal in our office or online so for those of you who don't know um mint base is an nft infrastructure tool on Neo um so the background of our mint base grants demo um grants is that last year we received a

118. 54:53

     grants from the near Foundation to issue to projects to build on near and on mint base tooling so it is actually one of the most transparent um programs out there it's all publicly available on GitHub so everybody can see how many people how many projects applied who got funded For What and we like in total had over 100 applications and in the end we funded 17 projects and I'm sure you know many of them as well

119. 55:26

     so we funded rocketto named Sky Ireland Nifty rent and also in beverage tokenization project in Portugal called oh beneficial so for the Grant's demo day you can expect to see what other people in the ecosystem are building you can connect with 17 final projects and you can discover over 35 open sourced open source tools that are also focused on both and Horizon will be present as well so it will be a really interesting

120. 56:05

     event so please come and join either online or here in Lisbon so just scan the QR code and I hope to see you there now over tonight Marcus can we allow Nate to share a screen yeah thank you hello I will be super super quick uh so really really quickly uh what we've been kind of messing around with lately uh in the space is artificial intelligence has kind of been a big big thing right so everyone's kind of excited I've heard a

121. 56:54

     lot about it uh so we've basically kind of put our heads down and figure out okay how can we handle this uh massive onboarding issue so uh microchip gets most of the credit uh but basically we mushed meta transactions with Chachi PT and created two plugins and I'm super excited to see where this heads uh so essentially we're able to uh create an implicit account from a Chachi BT oauth connection so someone without near can

122. 57:25

     create an account uh and from there we can actually start funding all of their transactions on it so uh obviously I think this opens the door for a gazillion things uh if we look at sort of the old way here's a graphql query to get all the tokens from something uh you need this really complex system on the left on the right we have just a simple give me all the tokens owned by nate.testnet so really

123. 57:51

     what you're doing is you're taking really complex uh data sets and you're you're dumbing it down to really simple stuff so with mint based search which you'll probably be able to uh install on Chachi pt4 next week uh you're going to be able to not only read all of our data on near which is every single Mint or anything that's happening whether it's on mint base or your own contract but you're actually going to be able to make transactions from that feedback so now

124. 58:20

     send this token to either.testnet so give me information based on an information uh send it to someone else so we created this little guy that basically literally created this image from this one single command that says get an image of a dog and mint it on beer chain contracts uh which is crazy uh the amount of stuff that we can do from here so we can I'll put this link in the uh in the chat you can actually

125. 58:49

     see a full conversation of what we we did let's see if it loads uh I'll put it in the chat but essentially uh get an image of a dog uh what's my account uh transfer tokens and all sorts of other just crazy stuff so where this opens the door later is eventually you could say I won't even go into all that I'm just going to stop since we only have so much time so really cool stuff uh we'll see where it heads thanks

126. 59:30

     hi everyone near Foundation marketing team is here with an event update next slide please near is coming to Collision on June 26 29th to Toronto Canada the event is less than two weeks away and we have curated a few ways near will be represented in one of the largest web to conferences in North America either we have a we'll have a fireside chat with an investor a logical on the crypto stage on Tuesday June 27th at 205 PM three master classes are scheduled

127. 1:00:01

     through June 27th 28th in binfield Center presented by Ilya MJ from proximity labs and this is panel discussion led by The Horizon team and Laura cynam if you are in town earlier make sure to check out if watch rulu and it Global hackathon hosted in Waterloo on June 23rd 25th for in-person participants only UAE is the confirmed speaker they are a candle call of proximity Labs will run the works shop and we have 10K in volunteers check out

128. 1:00:33

     their website come and hack last but not least during the Collision week near Horizon team will host the kitchen networking event on June 27th at the present head Irish Pub from 6 to 9 pm the event is almost sold out check out the link or CP and come media network with near Community Check out near.org Collision for all the updates with near in Toronto thank you and over to you Kiana thank you Olga so now jumping into near

129. 1:01:03

     at ECC near is heading to Paris this year and we're hosting a two-day Side Event featuring panels Workshop workshops co-working spaces happy hours and more those two days will be the 16th and the 17th of July and the venue is going to be on a beautiful Museum grounds about a 10 minute walk away from the larger Etc conference we will have an indoor and outdoor area so it'll be a

130. 1:01:26

     nice Garden Oasis feel in a very hot uh July in Paris so our go to market we went live yesterday and our page is now up so please head to near.org backslash FCC if you are going to be in Paris be sure to RSVP like I said we shipped yesterday and the RSVP is already flying out through the door and we do have limited capacity so if you will be in town make sure to get your tickets as

131. 1:01:51

     soon as possible in terms of structure day one will be more of a technical focus and day two will be focused more on Founders and backers we'll have awesome sessions with people from Pantera Bean Capital proximity and more so if you are in Paris definitely come by we'd love to have you next slide please okay the near con update big big update for everyone the nircon 2023 website and ticket sales go live tomorrow so remember this date uh June 15th at 11

132. 1:02:23

     A.M eastern time you can head to nearcon.org and you can see everything about near con this year and secure your tickets so in terms of ticketing we have an early bird price that's 79 that'll be available until July 1st after July 1st tickets go up twenty dollars and that will be the price that remains all until November in terms of payment options we have Fiat you can pay with credit card

133. 1:02:46

     and you can also pay with near the wallets that are enabled are listed here I wanted to give a really really big shout out to petar Benji Jake and Michael Coburn and the entire American team for bringing this to life everything is built on boss and we partnered with varican because they are an ecosystem project for this um first phase of payment on Rhymes so we're very very excited and just wanted to give

134. 1:03:10

     um that shout out to the team because it is very well deserved in terms of applications we have speaker applications that are open until July 31st if you are selected you'll be notified by August 15th so keep a look out for those comms and then in terms of hackathon applications that will be live tomorrow along with the website you'll be able to access that on as I mentioned nearcon.org and then just wanted to plug the sponsorship prospectus that will

135. 1:03:35

     also be ready tomorrow we have a very very robust offerings this year different tiers varying options so if you are interested in sponsoring or know anyone who is the events team is always always open for these conversations and now over to Riley for a near APAC update thank you Kiana and hello everyone I'm Riley the leader of the new Vietnam Hub and I'm really excited to announce to the people about the knee apoc so this is the new Nikon in a park and also the

136. 1:04:07

     first uh new ecosystem Congress in Apec region and it will uh continuous event series from June to September the conference will scale up to will scale up to 8 000 practice participants for the event with a lot of activities like hackathon with free dating with free career festival and also we have the both exhibition as well so don't miss the change to branding your your project through the variety of the general and also attract the apoc user 500 event in

137. 1:04:41

     April and in terms of application at the moment we also open to Chrome for the speaker so please visit the website apart to submit for the application form we will be reviewing it and it selected the announcement will go out by 1st of August and at the moment we also go to the market and sell out for the early birth ticket so first one thousand people claim the nft tickets will get the free nft ticket a free Vib ticket class uh with the price is 99 dollar and

138. 1:05:13

     already over 60 600 sticky sold out so don't miss the chance for for the the free ticket and next next slide please and also besides to the together with the knee a part we also hosting the hackathon so this hackathon will name the hack face with the idea of unlimited hacker so the hackathon will have the series of events we also have a lot of boot camps for the developer with variety of the programming lenses so we have the boots came on Gross language

139. 1:05:44

     JavaScript move and ZK to with the armors to attract the developer from all of the other blockchain ecosystem and then we will have the POS Booth came to let them know how to build a component and also be able to how to build some of the decentralized iPhone and on POS and we also have some the university to to attract for the I.T student to have some of the simple developer tools on the bus at the moment we are calling out for the just and also the partner together with

140. 1:06:15

     us to join on the web free face so please visit the website the web free face for more information it's really interesting to share it with you and like looking forward to see all of you in Vietnam this year okay thank you thank you all apologies for being a few minutes over talk to y'all soon thank you