[REDACTED] NEARWEEK State of the NEAR Ecosystem

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

1. 0:01

   so G near G enough GM everyone super excited to be here today um my name is Peter I'm the founder of NE week one of the leading NE media Brands and I couldn't be more excited to be here on stage today with four of some of the most contributing community members um workers of the foundation of the new protocol during the last couple of years um we got cronia head of ecosystem at Nea Foundation

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   we got MJ working at proximity Labs the R&D lab for chain signatures we got Vlad frolov from devhub one of the nicest and smartest near devs you'll ever meet and we got Marcus from Frontier working 24/7 to support our ecosystem and the boundaries of what we're doing so before we get started I just want to give like a quick sum of what's been going on for the last 12 months and we've seen 2.0 we're ready to scale to trillions of Agents we've seen The

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   Rebirth of Ni Ai and AI crypto Ani R&D lab the original Vision that Alex and Ilia started the near protocol blockchain from we've seen the launch of the deli xn uh AI accelerator on their second cohort we've seen the launch of the bworks xn AI program looking at more of the web 2 AI applications we've seen the launch of change signatures heard a lot of great updates the latest one this morning with infinex announcing they're actually doing part of their product on

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   near we have seen a new governance framework come to life very promising something I'm looking into digging deeper into in this conversation provided in cooperation with gauntlet and a big increase in tvl with a huge increase in stable coins Rogue near protocol marketing we finally got a clear narrative Network usage among the highest in the industry millions of genic accounts billions of transactions

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   and we've never had any outage I think that's pretty impressive throughout the last four years so I think it's always interesting to get the point of the developers in this ecosystem so vad I'm going to start with you I think it's fair to say that there's a growing interest in in near devhub your metrics has really been growing a lot over the past 12 months and it's really looking

6. 2:26

   great so what do you think has been working well for for devhub the the past year and and what are you trying to achieve with devop at this point very good question and indeed the we you see the growth and the um the Northstar for the near system has been always Mass adoption not just to build the blockchain for the sake of blockchain another tech for the sake of tech it's more about how to we how do we

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   get more users to it and uh with how to get users you start with developers building the apps uh and uh throughout the year we had a lot of uh uh initiatives that we tried uh and uh um use useful tools that we delivered so the it's a lot a lot of improvements on the tooling sdks CIS and uh um right now we are into the works of the world selector improvements so there are a lot of that stuff but also the community and

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   community building and the sense of community um ecosystem that uh we can um flourish and get engaged and helping each other um that is what something that we're trying to encourage in the new system and uh among developers so devhub is let's say about developers uh topic uh so I cannot you know say that we are on boarding 30 million users ourselves but we help developers to bring those users so I'm very happy to um to see that happening and there were number of hackathons that we did this

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   year uh there's there's been the the biggest hackathon uh reducted hackathon the longest and the uh I think through the number of contributions the is the biggest in the history of near um and it was uh very fun and a lot of Joy bring to near awesome as here and I think that like we're seeing a growing interest in the near protocol due to the narratives we're on to right do you feel that

10. 4:26

    there's a growing interest from developers as well in the in the Tex dech on and off uh but at the same time I like that's an hon honest answer but realistically we see a lot more interest when we start talking about deep Tech we kind of lost a bit of a um grasp uh a year before uh but this year we reinitiate restarted rebooted the whole narrative and the community is growing stronger now uh especially on like through the tool and through the best

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    better uh on boarding through be dos uh and Devils helping on the ground uh you may not see him them on uh on the reducted but they are well integrated and they're talking to everyone collecting the feedback and then we will act on it so there's a lot of work when it's when it does work you do not notice it so we hope that we will bring even more U to this community definitely and I think something that is really

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    exciting is that you recently announced your uh treasury dashboard that you built which um is going to enable you to decentralize funding a lot more and support the developer ecosystem what do you hope to achieve with this uh tooling yeah treasure management tool is long overd I would say uh Frankly Speaking uh but uh we needed the solution for non-technical people to also be able to uh efficiently uh Leverage The power of near and that is what I think we need to

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    communicate and this is also our message to other developers uh we lead by example look uh build the toolings that the tooling that is easy to use because near is easy to use when you just get it uh all right with handling the um Corner cases um and uh another example that you that if we are talking about a specific project that we are launching is race of SLO which which is a uh engagement platform for developers so it's a we we we build gamification into the process

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    of contributing to any open source project out there and we B in the near tag uh invisibly there uh and we will reveal it to the audience to the users when it when they are ready I don't think it's uh wise to you know throw into face of users all the TCH when they do not ask for it so it's uh um something that we are um building internally and that's what we try to communicate uh to developers that focus on the products first think

15. 7:10

    what the problem that is solving and then you know choose the attack and near has the best tech in my opinion uh to to to solve the problems for decentralization and uh we show it by example so it sounds like it's actually becoming a lot clearer to contribute as a developer absolutely Find Your Way in the new system super bullish super bullish so going from that hasit talking about Community you you worked all your way up from the community you've been grinding The Trenches everyone knows how

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    dedicated you are online 247 how do you see the the near ecosystem maturing yeah I mean it's it's been fun I've been involved in the ecosystem for four years been in the community before joining the foundation joined right out of University um you know the ecosystem has already matured a lot I I think originally it was just you know some people in the Discord server trying to find ways they could contribute but now

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    there's so much to contribute um for everyone so I think if you're developer non-developer if you love defi AI consumer you have you love deep Tech there's everything for any person to be able to contribute in the ecosystem I think the way I I see near as an ecosystem evolving from from a community point of view in the future is it it will all be about long-term alignment with the protocol and the ecosystem which is why you know elia's always had this vision of enabling users to be in

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    charge of the assets governance uh Power of Choice and you know this this whole idea of House of stake and Community owned governance uh we we did experiment with the NDC um and identity based governance in the past um learn you know building upon the learnings of the NDC uh is this idea of a house of stake which we'll hopefully dive more into when we have some time um is how do we enable community members and users who are aligned with the protocol um and

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    long-term success of the ecosystem to have the right to determine where resources flow and resources go into the ecosystem so uh that's something uh explicitly uh us empowering the users with um and eventually we're all building for the community so that's honestly if someone was to ask what is the near Northstar it would be build for the community and build the best community in the world I think that's a really really interesting point and that leads me to before we go deeper into the

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    house of stake framework um Marcus always being you know supporting the community at the foundation before now working at Frontier uh I think it's fair to say you are you've always been the community's man from the inside right um what have you been watching like how how do you've seen the the ecosystem mature and and and what have you been working on lately to to keep supporting the ecosystem yeah it's been a ride I mean

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    three years at Foundation transition a frontier a few months ago it's been pretty exciting uh I've seen a lot over the years um you know n's transitioned a few different times so with this we've seen you know new people come in some people kind of go out uh like lining up with with what n's um focus was at the time uh lately over the the past several months uh the sentiment is pretty high it's getting better and better uh I

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    think things are are going in the right direction um at Frontier we're hyperfocused on kind of like something that harit alluded to there's been a lot of really cool things being built on near a lot of breakthrough Technologies uh n's always been focused on the tech and and building an incredible experience but a lot of things have always been operating in an echo chamber so uh my my personal role at Frontier is kind of breaking that out of the echo chamber how do we kind of get people to

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    understand outside in The Wider CT Bas that there is actually some amazing stuff happening on near that even affects you on on whatever native chain you're you're really on um and then just uh we're also hyperfocused on just supporting defi on near so identifying gaps and friction points uh how do we kind of solve that uh whether it's working directly with the teams or maybe working with an outside agency uh and

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    then we're also focused on supporting projects that are uh launching a token on near end to end um really just kind of proliferating uh volume liquidity and and just general traction on near uh so it's been really exciting um I I could see that uh a lot of people are kind of coming in uh I've seen a lot of other people coming in from other chains showing interest in near uh yeah it's been amazing so what is the what's the reaction when you talk to people outside

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    of near and you know start taking them through what we're actually doing here like are people excited yeah so if you were ask me this even like 6 months ago it would have been literally a 180 from asking me today uh I'm I'm getting a lot of interest like my DMs are pretty full of people that uh you know even a year ago probably weren't too interested uh you know they were more focused on the the trending narrative at the time um but near is fully aligned in my opinion

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    I really love the direction we're taking it's like a it's like a holy Trifecta uh that we're focused on being the blockchain for AI Ilia and Alex are pretty much at the Forefront of this and also it's it's an a massive meta narrative in the space um so with all of this as well as uh the the like rapidly incre ining onchain activity and volume over the past few months uh yeah we're

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    getting we're getting quite a lot of uh positive sentiment from outside awesome to hear I think that's really that's really bullish and and that make that that makes me want to ask you a question MJ so now that we're talking about the tech that's what's going to power um you know the next revolution of the open web we have near as the blockchain for AI what's going to help AI achieve a good blockchain experience sovereignty it's

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    going to powered by Chain abstraction right and chain signatures where do does that put near in the in the broader crypto landscape I like I cannot explain how big it was for me to hear this morning that you know Kane and The infinix Stand team standing on stage um defy ogs from ethereum talking saying you know you're not bullish enough uh on near because of chain signatures um and I don't feel like the rest of the world is is as excited as I am so um we get to hear you

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    you know as a specialist working with proximity where do where do you see this put near yeah sure that's a good question um so I think the way I see chain abstraction is that so to achieve the vision where we can create a seamless experience where user don't have to worry about you know on which blockchain they're transacting right so technically it comes down to two problems so the first problem is what I call the outbound problem right so let's say if I'm on you know chain number one

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    and I want to do something on CH number two right how do I create an account construct a transaction and propagate transaction from chain number one to chain number two right so that's the outbound problem and then there's the inbound problem so if I did something on chain number two right how do I know verify and approve that it happened uh on chain number one right so for the outbound problem so one of the core products we release the change

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    signatures so which essentially you know provides uh you know a unified interface for anyone or any application to interact with any blockchain so that solves the outbound problem and then for the inbound problem problem it's you know relatively easier so we have the Omi Bridge which is a wrapper of you know message passing layers you know light clients for example with have Bitcoin like clients ethereum like clients uh that can relay or can help

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    you know smart contract to verify transactions on foreign blockchains so with the Omni bridge and CH signatures I feel like near has the most complete you know tax stack for solving chain abstraction you know problems and on top of that uh what we have here is a open platform right so anyone can come come and build on top of our infrastructure so um yeah so come build it with us so

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    basically chain abstraction unlocks web 3 right um which which of the current streams or projects excit you the most at the moment if there if if you were to name one or name a few yeah sure um I would say we are currently seeing know the projects we're seeing right now generally fall into three categories the first one which is the one that I'm most excit EXC about is you know def5 for Bitcoin uh so the concept here is that you can use near for smart contract and use Bitcoin for custody right so we are

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    seeing lots of projects uh building things like you know Bitcoin Landing protocols you know cross chain swaps and so forth um the second category is what we call the multi-chain account obstruction so you can think of it as like a building super apps or you know wallets that can that you can use to interact with you know nhen so we have you know B we have you know SWAT we have you know hot wallets um and the last category is uh what we call you know

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    Chan agnostic uh apps or NH apps so essentially the concept here is that for developers instead of explicitly or intentionally you know choosing one Chan to deploy your application too right you can actually build your application in a way that is agnostic to you know to the chain that they deployed on for example uh diffuser is actually one example right so uh yeah near intense I'm sorry

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    near intense exactly one example we also have another uh project called omn land and so essentially uh imagine you can swap like you know uh you know Bitcoin on bitcoin black you know blockchain to you know usdc on ethereum right and since um chain signatures you know uh supports those chain on the signing scheme level right so for example it currently supports ecdsa so it covers all the ecdsa chain out there uh but

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    once it adds support for ed25519 that will automatically cover all the you know Ed ddsa chance like Solana ton and so forth so that means for all applications building on top of chain signatures they don't have to manually add support for each individual new chin um that's the beauty of it so that's the three categories that we are currently seeing uh and I would say the project I'm mostly excited about is Satoshi

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    protocol so what they have done is that they have built a protocol where Bitcoin holders they can connect their Bitcoin wallets and instantly be able to interact with other D apps on you know on near for example they can deposit Bitcoin uh and borrow usdc on burrow right but there's more right they can extend it so that Bitcoin users they can connect their Bitcoin wallets and be

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    able to interact with the apps on ethereum or other blockchains and there is more so in addition to being able to connect their Bitcoin wallet right they can even make it like they can support any you know Wallets on any chimp that has you know um you know uh a mechanism for signing you know a random payload like like bip 322 so which means that they can enable any chance any wallet to

40. 18:08

    any CH type of interaction right so I I think this really solves the the kind of The Last Mile problem uh in ch abstraction so with that being said hashit being the head of ecosystem you have all this great Tech that MJ just talked about where do you put your focus for the next 12 months to grow this ecosystem what parts of the near ecosystem with the current state it's in are really important to grow um yeah yeah I would say fundamentally novel

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    Primitives I I think something I alluded to in my talk earlier as well um is you know it's it's very easy to get a copy paste of you know a compound fork or an a fork or a Unis swap Fork on any chain but you know if you have fundamentally cool technology like chain signatures and near intents you can build net New Primitives that's not possible anywhere and you can not only build that for the near ecosystem but unlock net new flows

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    of value for all chains I mean one thing I think we should all acknowledge is we we we live in an era unfortunately where it's it's PVP all across crypto like we have ecosystems uh that basically try to siphon liquidity um and and and developers from each other with like predatory inflationary incentives so how do we change that meta how do we break out that cycle and really grow the pie for everyone is is what I personally am and the whole ecosystem is focused on

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    and I think honestly each of these new teams uh that are building on near with chain signatures near intent they are all building with a chip on their shoulders to deliver something of value that act that actually tangibly unlocks previously unexplored U areas um like such as you know you you are a big xrp holder let's say um there's nothing you can do with xrp everyone in crypto hates you um like hey you know these these bad guys these Boomers um you know what do

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    they want to do with def um if if you know if if you're an xrp holder there's no chance any protocol on ethereum or any chain would enable uh xrps collateral for Lending like this this notion that something's good something's not good is is what we need to breing um and chain signatures and near intents uh do that where you can natively have these assets take out loans on any chains without bridging without rapping so very excited for that touching very lightly on AI I think you know Ilia has

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    talked about it um multiple times that we we can't you know Sleepwalk into a future where it's it's big tech companies determing you know what's what type of assets we control whether we even control them in the first place um and you you know what's our freedom of choice I think giving that to the users and you know not me as a foundation Diplomat sort of saying it in a philosophical B but actually uh you know giving power in their hands to make their choices with Sovereign AI uh

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    training models training data that they control they can decide whether they want to give it to Big Tech whether they want to give it to any decentralized protocol is is what I think we'll be enabling so do do you think we have all the pieces in place to really grow the ecosystem like we've seen F come on board programmable money um a lot of other interesting projects you're talking to um are there anything we're

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    missing or are there any um verticals you'd like to see built out or that you are working on building out yeah so I think yes we're missing a ton like uh it was a complete F5 uh MJ would know as well in terms of D5 um and and more broadly as well where there was this two-year period of lull um where you know there was like barely anything interesting to do in D so we've been laying the foundational sort of building blocks uh for various defi Primitives we you know have a ton of new teams for each vertical now one thing that I'm

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    very excited about personally um someone who does a bunch of derivatives on synthetics or Vex is derivatives which are chain attracted so stay tuned I mean you we haven't seen derivatives take off on near yet but that's about to change in a very big way um chain abstracted derivatives is something I'm very excited about and something that is currently missing um and then as MJ also

49. 22:33

    said Bitcoin uh Primitives so I'm also excited for things like RWS uh yielding assets so you have take Athena or fra for example I mean fra we already have uh srax on near which is a yielding asset now being able to redeem SRA uh the yield on any chain or Athena uh that's that's really powerful and doing that on non-smart contract chains where you are long on no Financial advice where you are long on the native asset

50. 23:03

    of that chain especially you know by virtue of holding it and being able to earn yield uh by borrowing against that asset is is something I'm super excited about so it sounds like overall the near ecosystem the state we're in actually now is actually we're ready for the next 12 months we're ready for the next 24 months we're ready for the next 10 years um making me extremely bullish and I

51. 23:27

    want to tap into we have got like 5 minutes left the role that house of stake hopefully will play in the ecosystem decentralizing funding empowering the community and optimizing for engagement right long term so maybe hashid I know you've been one of the core contributors working with gaunlet maybe you could just walk us through what what house of stake is and then I want to open up the panel to discuss various ways that that you know we think this is going to be working for the ecosystem yeah so uh tldr on the house

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    of State by the way there will be a recording um The Gauntlet team just did a presentation on the main stage so um House of stake is a new um stake weighted governance framework for the ecosystem where the idea is um near stakers ultimately determine uh the direction in which liquidity resources um and everything uh flows in the near ecosystem so giving this power to near stakers where they can delegate their near tokens lock these near tokens in a smart contract um for a number of months

53. 24:29

    or years and then get voting rights uh corresponding to that stake amount and uh stake duration uh that's that's basically House of stake with that uh voting right or or like V near which is based on the V Curve Model um they can not only do uh you know governance on chain but participate in broader defi engagements as well so that's the tldr on House of stake how this ties to

54. 24:53

    ecosystem building in general is you know decentralized uh fund has been a big bottleneck uh for all ecosystems despite it being a big Focus for all chains um you know this first started in the ethereum ecosystem with Grant making um things like giveth for charity and then getcoin uh for funding uh public goods as well but no ecosystem has achieved decentralized funding at scale it's still a foundation sitting at top a

55. 25:18

    hill making funding decisions which pisses some people off for good reasons so really determining what near holders want to see get funded without any inherent Buy or gaming mechanisms where people can game uh the flow of funds is what the house of St would unlock um and some Alpha here uh that Elia is also going to talk about soon is we will be exploring elia's um Vision further with the house

56. 25:44

    of stakes so for those of you who were at neon last year you would remember Elia teased this idea of an AI president um we will first start with an AI Delegate for the house of stake where it's not just a human that you trust or uh you know some entity that we trust but there will be AI delegates that people will be able to delegate their near tokens to and trust that delegate to AI delegate to make decisions on

57. 26:09

    their behalf for for the Goodwill of token holders and building on on top of that will continue exploring with subd Dows and subcommittees uh leading to an AI president hopefully okay so I hope these AI delegates will build upon some of the personas that we have up here today uh Marquez are you going to delegate to an AI or you going to delegate to a human I mean in in this space I probably

58. 26:34

    trust uh an AI with with a delegating more than a human so and how do you see do you see the house of stake empowering the the community like you you always been in the community right yeah yeah I could see it as a more Rock Solid kind of model than what was uh the previous governance experiment that was run uh I'm pretty excited for it um definitely it's been kind of in the works for a while so and Vlad how do you see how do do you see has St play a role for for

59. 26:58

    Dev Hub um there are still challenges on the way so we'll definitely look uh into the Future How It will unroll I definitely see that it's evolving rapidly and we need to not just you know ask if if we are okay with it it's happening so we need to find out how to actually uh employ it how to integrate with it uh in a most efficient way and in the capturing the values that we believe uh needs to be there so that's why I

60. 27:31

    believe near is well positioned to lead this because it all started as uh from the core ground up uh people with the core values aligned with openness and open like open source and all those initiatives and uh like during the keynote yesterday Ilia was pitching this idea that like there is no other better uh uh Team to uh lead it just because there is just one team and I think that

61. 28:01

    that that sums set up for like in general I really want to Advocate that we have a PR pragmatic mindset in the ecosystem let's keep on iterating let's keep on innovating let's keep on experimenting let's keep on giving open feedback and let's not dwell with the failures we learn from the failures and the things of the past and we can only look one way which is forward so thank you so much for coming today guys it was

62. 28:25

    a pleasure