Imagine securing your own blockchain basename — like yourname.base.eth — with nothing more than a simple tweet. No need to download apps, set up wallets, or navigate complex interfaces — just use your existing X account. That’s the magic of Based Names Agent, an amazing tool that brings blockchain functionality directly to the social media platform you already know and love.

Built using NEAR Protocol’s Shade Agents stack and Chain Signatures, this shade agent makes claiming a basename as easy as posting a status update. A basename is more than just a cool identifier; it’s your personal stake in the decentralized web, tying your identity to blockchain ecosystems in a seamless, user-friendly way.

How It Works: Tweet, Pay, Done!

Getting your hands on a basename couldn’t be simpler. Here’s a detailed step-by-step breakdown of the process:

1. Tweet Your Request: Start by tweeting at the agent with your desired basename — for example, @basednames buy yourname.base.eth. The agent instantly scans X for your mention, checks the availability of your chosen name, and prepares to guide you through the next steps.
2. Receive a Quote: Within moments, the agent responds with a tweet containing the price of your basename and a unique one-time address (OTA). This OTA is a temporary Ethereum address generated just for your transaction, ensuring privacy and security by keeping it separate from your main wallet.
3. Send Funds via X: Use an X-integrated wallet bot (or any other crypto wallet) like @bankrbot to send the required funds to the OTA. These bots are designed to handle cryptocurrency transactions right within X, so you can complete the payment without ever leaving the platform.
4. Sit Back and Relax: Once the agent detects your payment, it takes care of everything else — interacting with the blockchain to register your basename to your address. You’ll get a confirmation tweet when it’s done, and that’s it! No private keys to manage, no complicated setups — just a few tweets, and you’re a basename owner.

This streamlined process eliminates the usual friction of blockchain interactions, making it accessible to anyone with an X account.

Why This Matters

The Based Names Agent is more than a neat gimmick — it can be a game-changer for blockchain adoption and usability. Here’s why it’s a big deal:

• Effortless for Users: Users don’t need to install software or learn new tools. If they can tweet, they can use blockchain. This simplicity opens the door to millions of potential users who might otherwise shy away from the complexity of traditional crypto setups.
• Secure and Trustless: Thanks to NEAR’s Chain Signatures, transactions are protected without the agent ever touching the user’s funds. Chain signatures enable secure, multi-chain operations without requiring users to expose sensitive information, keeping users in full control.
• A Boost for Developers: The technology powering this — the Shade Agent stack — empowers developers to build more social-media-integrated blockchain tools. By offering a framework for fast, trustless agents, it paves the way for a new wave of decentralized applications that meet users where they already are.

Beyond just registering a name, this shade agent can lower barriers, boost adoption, and create real benefits for both everyday users and the developers shaping the future of DeFi.

Under the Hood

Wondering how this all works behind the scenes? Let’s break it down into easy-to-grasp pieces:

• Tweet Detection: The Based Names Agent constantly monitors X for mentions containing valid basename requests. Using natural language processing, it interprets your tweet, verifies the format, and ensures your chosen name is available before proceeding.
• Unique Address Creation: For each purchase, the agent generates a one-time address (OTA) using NEAR’s Chain Signatures. This cryptographic trick creates a temporary, gas-free address tied to your transaction, keeping costs low and security high.
• Smooth Registration: After you send funds to the OTA via @bankrbot, the agent confirms the payment, interacts with the Shade Agent smart contract, and registers your basename on the blockchain — all without any manual intervention. The process is fully automated and trustless, meaning the agent can’t misuse your funds or deviate from its programming.

This combination of the Shade Agent stack and NEAR’s technology delivers a trust minimised, efficient system that’s approachable even if you’re not a tech expert.

About Shade Agents

Shade Agents are a groundbreaking innovation in the Crypto x AI ecosystem, designed to be the first truly autonomous, multichain agents. Developed by Proximity Labs, these agents run verified code in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), making them a far more reliable solution for tasks like launching tokens, managing user funds, or handling complex blockchain interactions compared to current agent solutions.

Each Shade Agent is paired with a corresponding smart contract that manages cryptographic keys and enforces trustless guardrails. This combination of TEE and smart contract technology ensures that Shade Agents operate with minimal trust assumptions, giving users confidence that their interactions are trustless and protected by the blockchain’s immutable rules.

The Shade Agent stack empowers developers to rapidly build and deploy these agents. By leveraging NEAR’s chain signatures, developers can access multiple blockchains from a single codebase, streamlining the development process and expanding the potential use cases for Shade Agents. This versatility allows Shade Agents to seamlessly interact across ecosystems — whether on Ethereum, NEAR, or other chains — making them a powerful tool for creating decentralized solutions.

Try It Yourself!

Ready to grab your own basename? All it takes is a tweet: @basednames buy yourname.base.eth. Follow the agent’s instructions, send your payment, and watch as your name gets registered — all without leaving X!

Disclosure: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with the technology mentioned in this article. These statements are intended to disclose any conflict of interest and the content of this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token or to use any protocol.

Disclaimer: This blog provides information about an experimental technology that is still in development and may involve financial risk. There are no guarantees of security, performance, or profitability.

By interacting with Based Names Agent, you acknowledge and accept that:

• You could lose some or all of your funds.
• The agent may behave unpredictably or execute unintended transactions.
• Smart contract vulnerabilities, hacks, or external attacks could compromise funds.

Proximity Labs does not provide financial, investment, or legal advice. Always do your own research and consult with a professional before making financial decisions. Use this agent at your own risk.

Terms of Service

This integrated approach seamlessly combines Bitcoin’s security with NEAR’s scalability, enabling the development of Bitcoin-native dApps that offer superior performance and an optimized user experience. From decentralized finance (DeFi) applications leveraging Bitcoin’s liquidity to novel cross-chain functionalities, this synergy unlocks an array of transformative possibilities without compromising on decentralization or scalability. By combining the strengths of both ecosystems, NEAR Protocol positions itself as a pivotal player in driving the evolution of blockchain interoperability and innovation.

NEAR’s Abstraction Stack: The Basics

NEAR’s abstraction stack provides a suite of services that enable developers to build applications with seamless user experiences. Developers can use this stack to build Bitcoin-native dApps without requiring users to manage multiple wallets or understand cross-chain mechanics.

The two key components in the abstraction stack are Chain Signatures and Omnibridge.

• Chain Signatures: Utilizing Multi-Party Computation (MPC), NEAR enables accounts and smart contracts on the NEAR blockchain to sign and execute transactions on external chains, such as Bitcoin. This allows dApps to interact with Bitcoin’s UTXO model, enabling advanced functionality like asset transfers or decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
• Omnibridge: An aggregator of various message passing layers and light clients that enable NEAR smart contracts to access states on external blockchains including Bitcoin.

By combining these technologies, NEAR acts as a bridge to Bitcoin, where developers can harness Bitcoin’s security and decentralization alongside NEAR’s scalability and smart contract capabilities.

Architecture Overview

Business Logic on NEAR

• Developers write smart contracts in NEAR’s WebAssembly-compatible languages (e.g., Rust or JavaScript).
• The business logic resides on NEAR, leveraging its high throughput, low fees, and comprehensive developer tooling.

Bitcoin Integration with Chain Signatures

• Bitcoin addresses are derived from NEAR accounts using deterministic algorithms.
• The dApp’s smart contract on NEAR, sends a signature request to the NEAR blockchain, where the Chain Signatures protocol module (backed by MPC) signs Bitcoin transactions securely.
• Signed Bitcoin transactions are broadcast to the Bitcoin network.

User Experience

• Users interact with the dApp through a single account, which could be either a Bitcoin or NEAR account, without needing to manage separate wallets.
• Tip: Check out this demo that shows using an existing Bitcoin wallet to interact with a dApp with smart contracts on NEAR through Satoshi Protocol
• Gas fees can be subsidized using NEAR’s relayer infrastructure, ensuring smooth onboarding for non-crypto-savvy users.

Use Cases

BitcoinFi

Developers can build DeFi applications on NEAR, such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending platforms, or yield farming protocols, while directly leveraging Bitcoin liquidity. For example:

• Users deposit Bitcoin into native Bitcoin accounts, derived and controlled by Chain Signatures.
• Tip: Satoshi Protocol already offers a solution for this, so developers can avoid building from scratch.
• The dApp uses Chain Signatures to execute Bitcoin transactions, such as locking or transferring assets.
• Business logic such as interest calculations, borrowing, and repayments are handled by smart contracts on NEAR.

Payment Gateways for Merchants

dApps can integrate Bitcoin payments for e-commerce or subscription services. The business logic (e.g., managing subscriptions, refunds, or loyalty rewards) resides on NEAR, while Bitcoin is used for actual payments.

• Bitcoin payments are received with a native transfer to a Chain Signature derived account
• Control of the payment flow e.g. subscription payments is signed using NEAR accounts.
• Smart contracts on NEAR automate tasks like order processing or reward distribution.

Cross-Chain NFT Platforms

NFT marketplace on NEAR where users purchase NFTs using Bitcoin. The marketplace handles:

• Bitcoin payments via Chain Signatures and Omnibridge.
• NFT minting and trading logic on NEAR.
• NFTs can also be minted on multiple chains leveraging Chain Signatures.

Bitcoin Custody Solutions

Using NEAR’s multi-chain capabilities, developers can create Bitcoin custody or wallet solutions that enable:

• NEAR smart contracts to manage rules for multi-signature wallets e.g. a DAO.
• Bitcoin transactions controlled via Chain Signatures.

Demo

The video below features a proof-of-concept from Satoshi Protocol, demonstrating seamless interaction with a lending platform on NEAR using existing Bitcoin wallets like Unisat, Xverse, and OKX. In this setup, NEAR smart contracts manage the core business logic, including interest calculations, borrowing, and repayments, while users enjoy a familiar Bitcoin-native experience:

Conclusion

NEAR’s abstraction layer introduces a transformative paradigm for Bitcoin-native decentralized applications (dApps), enabling developers to tap into the best of both worlds. By leveraging Bitcoin’s unmatched security, decentralization, and trust, alongside NEAR’s scalable infrastructure and advanced smart contract capabilities, this hybrid approach unlocks unprecedented possibilities for innovation.

Developers can build dApps that utilize Bitcoin’s robust network as the foundation for security and value, while employing NEAR’s high-performance blockchain for complex business logic, programmable interactions, and seamless scalability. This combination paves the way for groundbreaking use cases, from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols leveraging Bitcoin’s liquidity to NFT platforms that capitalize on NEAR’s cost-efficient and fast transactions.

The seamless integration offered by NEAR not only bridges the gap between Bitcoin and modern smart contract ecosystems but also enhances the developer experience by simplifying cross-chain development. This, in turn, results in dApps that are not only secure and scalable but also intuitive and user-friendly. By providing a practical framework for interoperability and performance, NEAR empowers developers to build the next generation of Bitcoin-powered dApps, driving adoption, innovation, and value across the decentralized ecosystem.

Further Readings

• Chain Abstraction homepage
• Chain Abstraction overview
• Chain Signatures overview
• Sample project on using Chain Signatures

Disclosure: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. These statements are intended to disclose any conflict of interest and the content of this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

Understanding Vaults: The Cornerstone of Yield Generation

Crypto vaults represent a transformative layer of DeFi, simplifying complex strategies for generating yield. By automating sophisticated mechanisms behind user-friendly interfaces, they have become essential tools for both retail and institutional participants in decentralized finance.

Vaults typically fall into one of the following categories:

1. Liquidity Provision in AMM Pools: Vaults can deposit assets into Automated Market Maker (AMM) pools, earning trading fees that the AMM collects from market participants. These fees are redistributed to liquidity providers, and the vault automates the reinvestment of these earnings, allowing compounding over time.
2. Yield Farming: Another popular strategy involves farming protocol-native tokens by staking liquidity in decentralized exchanges or other DeFi protocols. These tokens, earned as rewards, are automatically sold and reinvested into the original assets, enabling compounded growth for users.
3. Advanced Strategies: Vaults with sophisticated strategies use methods like leveraging to magnify returns, shorting to profit from price declines, or hedging to manage risk. These advanced strategies provide flexibility for users with specific financial goals, making DeFi vaults competitive with traditional finance (TradFi) investment tools.

In essence, vaults lower barriers to entry for DeFi participants. They allow users to benefit from complex financial strategies without requiring technical expertise, extensive research, or constant monitoring.

Multi-Chain Vaults: Unlocking Cross-Chain Potential

As blockchain ecosystems expand, opportunities for generating yield extend across multiple chains. However, traditional vault designs are often restricted to single chains or rely on risky and cumbersome mechanisms to access opportunities elsewhere. Let’s explore the prevailing methods and their limitations.

Bridging Assets:

Multi-chain vaults often depend on bridges to transfer assets across blockchains. For example:

• A user deposits Ethereum-based assets into a vault.
• The vault bridges these assets to Avalanche or Solana to access additional yield opportunities.

Challenges with Bridging:

• Synthetic Tokens: Bridged assets are typically represented as synthetic tokens, which are only as secure as the bridge issuing them. This adds an extra layer of risk.
• Operational Overhead: Rebalancing across chains and managing liquidity require additional infrastructure, such as oracles and third-party tools, increasing complexity.
• Vulnerability to Exploits: Bridges are among the most targeted components in DeFi, with high-profile hacks resulting in billions of dollars lost.

DeFi Chain Protocols:

DeFi-specific blockchains, or “DeFi chains,” aim to centralize liquidity and infrastructure for decentralized applications. These blockchains integrate core DeFi components, like Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and lending platforms, directly into their architecture.

Advantages:

• Consolidated liquidity within the ecosystem reduces fragmentation.
• Built-in tools provide seamless access to popular DeFi strategies.

Disadvantages:

• Users must bridge assets into and out of these ecosystems, reintroducing risks and costs.
• The dependency on a single chain creates bottlenecks and potential systemic vulnerabilities.

Omni-Chain Protocols:

Omni-chain protocols aim to provide a unified interface for users to manage assets across chains. These systems use intent-based mechanisms to execute actions, such as swapping or staking, without requiring users to interact directly with multiple networks.

Challenges:

• Heavy reliance on fast bridges and cross-chain integrations perpetuates risks associated with these technologies.
• Asset fragmentation and synthetic dependencies remain unresolved challenges.

NEAR’s Chain Signatures: A Paradigm Shift in Multi-Chain DeFi

Chain Signatures introduce a transformative approach to multi-chain operations. This protocol leverages advanced cryptographic techniques, specifically Multi-Party Computation (MPC), to enable direct control of native assets across chains without the need for bridging. Here’s how it works:

Native Asset Execution:

Chain Signatures enable vaults to have strategies managed by the user on NEAR, but directly execute transactions of the user’s assets on their original chains. For example, a NEAR-controlled vault can harvest rewards of Ethereum-based assets without transferring them to NEAR. All operations, such as staking, trading, or farming, are executed natively on their respective chains.

Eliminating Bridging Risks:

By bypassing the need for bridges, Chain Signatures mitigate common vulnerabilities. Assets remain in their native environments, eliminating risks associated with synthetic tokens, liquidity fragmentation, and bridge exploits.

Expanding the DeFi Design Space:

This empowers developers to create entirely new classes of decentralized applications (dApps), including:

• Vaults that execute multi-chain strategies without bridging assets.
• Cross-chain swaps that occur natively, without requiring intermediary tokens.
• Intent-based systems that allow seamless cross-chain interactions without user complexity.

A Bridge-Free Multi-Chain Vault: How It Works

Here’s how Chain Signatures transform the architecture of multi-chain vaults:

User-Friendly Deposits:

Users deposit assets into a vault by transferring them to a Chain Signature Derived Account (DA). This mechanism:

• Requires no synthetic assets or intermediary steps.
• Reduces gas fees and simplifies the user experience by removing the need to switch networks or open new wallets.

Native Chain Execution:

The vault protocol strategy is executed directly on native chains:

• It executes yield strategies, such as staking or liquidity provision, without transferring assets off-chain.
• Rewards are harvested and reinvested automatically, attempting to optimize returns.

Secure Withdrawals:

When a user wants to withdraw their principal and yield:

• The protocol generates a signature to transfer funds directly from the native chain back to the user’s wallet.
• This process preserves the non-custodial nature of the assets and ensures user autonomy.

On-Chain Provers for Deposit Verification:

This allows dApps to use on-chain provers to verify deposits and transactions. This mechanism ensures that all operations are secure, auditable, and resistant to tampering.

Future Potential Opportunities for Chain Signatures

The potential applications of NEAR’s Chain Signatures extend far beyond vaults. Here are some blue sky opportunities that could redefine DeFi and blockchain technology:

Unified Cross-Chain Trading:

Imagine a decentralized exchange (DEX) where users can trade assets across multiple blockchains natively, without relying on bridges or synthetic tokens. This could revolutionize liquidity access and reduce costs.

Cross-Chain DAOs:

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) could manage treasuries across chains using Chain Signatures, enabling them to operate efficiently and securely without relying on fragmented tools.

Interoperable NFT Platforms:

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) could be seamlessly traded and utilized across chains, unlocking new use cases for gaming, art, and metaverse applications.

Institutional Adoption:

By eliminating bridging risks and simplifying asset management, NEAR’s Chain Signatures could attract institutional players who require robust security and streamlined operations for multi-chain investment strategies.

Conclusion: Building a Seamless DeFi Ecosystem

Chain Signatures represent a fundamental evolution in blockchain technology and decentralized finance. By enabling direct control of native assets across chains, this innovation eliminates the long-standing challenges of bridging, synthetic assets, and operational complexity.

Key Takeaways:

• For Users: A simplified and intuitive way to manage assets across chains without sacrificing flexibility or security.
• For Developers: A powerful toolset to build next-generation DeFi applications that push the boundaries of what’s possible.
• For the Ecosystem: A more interconnected blockchain environment that paves the way for mainstream and institutional adoption.

Chain Signatures could not only solve today’s challenges but can also unlock a future rich with possibilities. Whether it’s creating multi-chain vaults, enabling seamless cross-chain trading, or powering interoperable applications, this technology sets the stage for the next wave of DeFi innovation. The future of decentralized finance is borderless and frictionless — and Chain Signatures are leading the way.

Disclosure: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. These statements are intended to disclose any conflict of interest and the content of this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

A Not-So-Cryptic Guide for Crypto Enthusiasts

Remember that time you fumbled through your massive keychain, desperately searching for the right key to unlock your front door while juggling groceries and trying not to drop your phone? Well, welcome to the blockchain equivalent of that frustrating scenario! But fear not, dear crypto adventurer, for Chain Signatures are here to save the day (and your sanity). Let’s embark on a journey to unravel the mysteries of this digital wizardry, shall we?

What Are NEAR’s Chain Signatures? (Spoiler: Not a New Boy Band)

Picture this: You’re at a massive music festival, and each stage requires a different wristband to enter. Total hassle, right? Now, picture having a single wristband that gets you into every stage, VIP lounge, and food truck. That’s essentially what NEAR’s Chain Signatures do for the blockchain world.

In tech-speak, Chain Signatures are a cryptographic innovation that allows any account to interact with multiple blockchains. It’s like having a universal translator for your digital assets, enabling your existing accounts to speak fluent Bitcoin, Ethereum, and who knows, maybe even Klingon (blockchain version, of course).

How Do They Work? (Warning: May Cause Extreme Excitement in Crypto Geeks)

1. One Account, Any Chain: Your existing accounts can interact with other blockchains. It’s like having one remote that controls your TV, Xbox, and speakers.
2. Creating a Signature: When you want to do something on another blockchain, your NEAR account requests to create a special “signature” (a digital stamp of approval) that tells the other blockchain it’s okay to proceed.
3. Multi-Party Computation (MPC) — The Blockchain Avengers: Remember how the Avengers are stronger together? That’s MPC in a nutshell. Multiple computers join forces to create this signature securely. It’s like having Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor all agree before you can order that late-night pizza.
4. Beam Me Up, Blockchain!: Once the signature is ready, it’s sent to the target blockchain faster than you can say “crypto-tastic!” This completes the transaction, allowing you to manage assets and data across different blockchains without breaking a sweat.

Why Is This Useful? (Or, “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Blockchain”)

1. One Account to Rule Them All: Multichain account abstraction turns a single account into a universal pass for the entire blockchain world. Interact with any chain or dApp seamlessly, and here’s the kicker — your BTC wallet, email, or any existing account could be your key to the crypto kingdom. It’s blockchain VIP access, minus the velvet rope!
2. Cross-Chain Asset Swapping: Trade Bitcoin for Ethereum faster than you can swap your comfortable sweatpants for jeans when unexpected guests arrive.
3. DeFi Everywhere: Bring the power of Decentralized Finance to blockchains that typically can’t support it. It’s like installing a gourmet kitchen in a treehouse — unexpected, but delightful!
4. Multichain Madness: Developers can create applications that work across multiple blockchains using just one NEAR smart contract. It’s the Swiss Army knife of blockchain development!
5. Microtransactions Made Easy: Send tiny amounts of crypto for things like tipping your favorite meme creator or paying per second for that obscure documentary about the mating habits of sea cucumbers.
6. Privacy, Please: Use Chain Signatures to encrypt and decrypt information based on asset ownership or NFTs. It’s like having a secret clubhouse, but for your digital assets.

A Deep Dive into the Technical Bits (Don’t Worry, We’ll Keep You Afloat)

Let’s get our nerd on and explore how Chain Signatures actually work under the hood:

1. Multi-Party Computation (MPC): This is a fancy way of saying that multiple computers work together to create this signature securely. Imagine having a group of trusted friends who all need to agree before any action is taken.
2. Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS): This is the backbone of Chain Signatures. It’s a cryptographic protocol that allows a group of parties to jointly compute a signature without any single party ever possessing the full private key. Think of it as a digital version of the nuclear launch codes — multiple people need to turn their keys simultaneously.
3. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC): Chain Signatures use ECC, specifically the secp256k1 curve (the same one used by Bitcoin and Ethereum and soon ed25519; Solana, TON and others!). This provides robust security with smaller key sizes compared to other cryptographic methods. It’s like getting a sports car’s performance in a compact car’s body!
4. NEAR Protocol’s Runtime: The NEAR blockchain’s unique runtime environment allows for the efficient execution of the complex computations required for Chain Signatures. It’s like having a supercomputer in your pocket, but without the need for cargo pants.
5. Cross-Chain Communication: Chain Signatures leverage light clients and relay networks to facilitate secure cross-chain communication. This ensures that the signatures generated on NEAR can be verified and acted upon by other blockchains. It’s like having a team of highly efficient, multilingual diplomats working tirelessly behind the scenes.

Real-World Applications (Because We’re Not Just Here for the Memes)

Hold onto your crypto wallets, because Chain Signatures are already revolutionizing the blockchain landscape. Here’s a whirlwind tour of some mind-blowing live and upcoming use cases:

1. Sweat Economy’s “Chainless” Wallet: One wallet to rule them all! Use Sweat Wallet on Pancakeswap (BNB), and it sets up your account faster than you can say “decentralized.” Pay gas fees with SWEAT tokens — it’s like a universal theme park ticket for blockchain!
2. Defuse’s Multichain Spot DEX: Unifying liquidity across crypto ecosystems, Defuse.org is the United Nations of DeFi. Creating and trading financial instruments just got easier than ordering a pizza.
3. Bitte Wallet: Web3 onboarding in 15 seconds, with support for NEAR, Ethereum, OP, Arbitrum, Bitcoin, Base, and Gnosis Chain. It’s turning your passkey into a skeleton key for the entire crypto kingdom.
4. Allstake’s Meshed Restaking: Restake assets natively without bridging on NEAR, SOL, and ETH/EVM. It’s like Eigenlayer, but with a “works on any chain” superpower.
5. HERE Multi-chain Wallet: With 1.2M + MPC wallets, gas-free signing, and multichain API support, they’re turning your devices into blockchain Swiss Army knives.
6. Aurora’s BTC Light Client: Bridging Bitcoin and NEAR faster than you can say “interoperability.” This superhighway enables protocols like Allstake.fi and SatoshiBridge to work their magic.
7. Satoshi Bridge: Introducing the Gossip Bridge — where blockchains spill the tea! Powered by BTC-Light-Node and Chain Abstraction tech, it’s like a coffee break for blockchains, letting them bridge secrets, stories, and sync up like besties.
8. Omnilane’s Cross-Chain Swap Revolution: Omnilane is cooking up a cross-chain storm with their decentralized, peer-to-peer swap infrastructure. Powered by NEAR Chain Signatures, it’s turning asset swaps into a high-speed, low-cost interdimensional highway. It’s like carpooling between blockchains, but faster and cheaper!
9. Unlock BTC Liquid Staking with Atlas: Turn idle BTC into a yield powerhouse. Stake, mint, and redeem BTC for aBTC, accessing cross-chain ecosystems. It’s like a blockchain summer camp for your Bitcoin!

From wallet wizardry to DeFi acrobatics, Chain Signatures are making the multi-chain dream a reality. This is just the beginning of our cross-chain adventure — buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!

In Summary (For Those Who Scrolled to the Bottom)

Chain Signatures are the blockchain equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, universal remote, and magic wand all rolled into one. They simplify and enhance interactions across different blockchains, making the crypto ecosystem more accessible, versatile, and dare we say, fun!

This innovative technology opens up a world of possibilities for developers, users, and businesses alike:

• Seamless cross-chain asset management
• Enhanced DeFi capabilities across multiple blockchains
• Simplified user experiences in the crypto world
• Potential for novel applications in gaming, NFTs, and privacy-focused services.

While some of these applications are still in development or conceptual, the potential of NEAR’s Chain Signatures is undeniably exciting.

Ready to Build the Future? Here’s Your Launchpad!

Are you a developer, entrepreneur, or blockchain enthusiast itching to dive into the world of Chain Signatures? Don’t just sit there dreaming about the possibilities — start building! Here’s how you can get started:

1. Official NEAR Documentation: Your first stop should be the NEAR Protocol official documentation. It’s a treasure trove of information, tutorials, and guides to get you up to speed.
2. Chain Abstraction: For a deep dive into the world of chain abstraction and how NEAR is revolutionizing cross-chain interactions, check out the Chain Abstraction Page.
3. NEAR Chain Abstraction Dev Community: Join the NEAR Chain Abstraction Dev Community on Telegram to connect with other developers, ask questions, and stay updated on the latest developments.
4. NEAR GitHub Repository: Explore the NEAR GitHub for open-source code, examples, and opportunities to contribute.
5. NEAR Workshops and Hackathons: Keep an eye on NEAR Events for upcoming workshops, hackathons, and conferences where you can learn, network, and showcase your ideas.

Remember, in the world of blockchain, the NEAR-er, the better! (We’ll show ourselves out now! 😛)

Disclosure: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. These statements are intended to disclose any conflict of interest and the content of this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

TL;DR — This article:

• Demystifies NEAR’s new protocol feature, Chain Signatures, whether you are a developer or not.
• Compares multichain Web3 apps, before and after Chain Signatures.
• Presents two multichain app examples in which Chain Signatures improves DevX and UX: a DAO and NFT minter.
• Describes how Chain Signatures can add a layer of smart contract functionality to non-smart contract chains through a Bitcoin Runes airdrop example.

Proximity’s Matt Lockyer penned this article. Find the near.org version here. Reach the author via email or X.

Multichain Apps Before vs After Chain Signatures

NEAR Chain Signatures introduces a new approach to building multichain Web3 applications that provides a better experience for developers and users. Before, developers would write application layer smart contracts for each chain, possibly in different languages, requiring new smart contracts and audits every time. The re-implementation and re-deployment of application logic introduce several risks for users while switching networks and feature disparity among implementations creates poor user experience (UX). Additionally, users are often required to bridge assets or messages from chain to chain, introducing even more risk and even worse UX.

Developing multichain Web3 applications before Chain Signatures:

Now, Chain Signatures alleviates the burden of maintaining different contracts, deployments, and audits for each chain, by allowing developers to move a majority of the application logic to a single NEAR smart contract. Developers can focus on the UX of their application, instead of maintaining several different contracts on multiple chains. Users also benefit from not bridging assets. Instead, they deposit assets from the chain they wish to use into a Chain Signatures account the application can use. Users interact with the application using a single NEAR account and maintain full custody of their assets, even though they reside on another chain. Chain Signatures enables any NEAR account or smart contract to control and sign for an infinite number of accounts on any chain that exists today and chains that are yet to be launched! This is a major breakthrough for multichain Web3 application development, security, and UX.

Developing multichain Web3 applications with Chain Signatures:

With Chain Signatures, application logic can be in one place, one language, and on one layer; and hence only requires one smart contract audit. This facilitates a better developer experience, and in turn, a better and more secure user experience.

Let’s take a look at some examples of new and exciting applications that can be designed using Chain Signatures to better understand how this tech works.

Examples of Apps Unlocked by Chain Signatures

Multichain DAO

In crypto, users often want to pool funds and have an on-chain process for accepting proposals from the community and distributing those funds transparently. A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is generally the chosen approach for communities in Web3 today. Since Ethereum is the most widely accepted chain for popular stablecoins such as USDC, it makes sense to pool DAO funds there. However, running all of the DAO application logic using Ethereum smart contracts and transactions quickly becomes slow and cost-prohibitive, leading to voter apathy and disengagement.

Using Chain Signatures, one can develop a design that provides a more immediate and better user experience, while lowering fees significantly. In addition, there can be a single DAO application layer that accepts proposals and handles voting that distributes funds on multiple chains!

The DAO application logic is executed in a NEAR smart contract. Features such as membership, proposals, and voting are handled in the DAO contract. When a proposal is accepted, the DAO contract automatically calls the NEAR Chain Signatures contract to generate a signature for the derived address and account. This account exists on the chain where the DAO members originally pooled their funds. In the case of Ethereum, or any EVM chain, this can simply be an externally owned account (EOA) and does not require an additional smart contract to be deployed.

Multichain NFT Minter

Let’s imagine there’s a new NFT collection where the total supply is capped at 10,000, with one difference from the typical model: the collection will be minted across multiple chains. Without Chain Signatures, there are a few different ways to implement this.

1. You have the primary sales logic and NFT logic deployed to each chain. This forces you to predetermine the amounts you will allow on each chain.
2. This creates UX issues for users, who are forced to use a particular chain.
3. This also imposes limitations on how your collection is minted.
4. You have the primary sales logic on one chain and allow users to mint NFTs through a message-passing bridge to the chain of their choice.
5. Introduces UX issues; multiple transactions and wallets for users.
6. Adds bridging risks to the application and for user error.
7. Primary sales logic and NFT mints are done on one chain and the NFTs are bridged after the fact.
8. This introduces the above UX challenges and bridging risks.
9. Allowing bridging means less control over the supply of NFTs on any particular chain.

The first approach is too rigid. The second and third require a minimum of 2 transactions from the user with all the complexity and security risks of bridging assets. Depending on your preference, you may or may not want users bridging your NFTs after the primary sale and initial mint. Let’s assume you don’t.

Let’s also assume you want a seamless sale experience, where the user chooses the chain of mint, and the NFT is minted to an existing wallet on an arbitrary chain. Ideally, all of this should occur in a single transaction for the user. Note, the price of gas can be rolled into the primary sale via an oracle.

Here’s how this would work with Chain Signatures:

The NFT Sale contract takes payment. This can be in NEAR, USDC, or any other token on NEAR. The NFT Sale contract calls the Chain Signatures contract with a transaction payload that mints an NFT on the destination chain selected by the user, and with an account as owner supplied by the user. A signature for the mint is generated, passed back to the user client, and then broadcasted to the selected chain. The NFT is minted on the selected chain’s NFT contract and ownership is given to the user’s account specified in the sale transaction. In a single transaction, an NFT is bought and minted on another chain.

Bitcoin Runes Airdrop

Bitcoin Runes are a new fungible token protocol by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor. Improving on BRC-20, Runes aim to produce less clutter and improve the costs of issuing and trading fungible tokens on Bitcoin. One drawback to Bitcoin is restricted programmability, making something like a mass Runes airdrop difficult. With Chain Signatures, NEAR can function as a smart contract layer for Bitcoin through which a mass Bitcoin Runes airdrop could be executed.

One can use a NEAR contract to maintain an “allow list” for the airdrop, utilizing a BTC light client contract. Assuming all the Runes are premined and residing in the Chain Signatures address derived from the NEAR Airdrop smart contract, the first step for the user is to fund this BTC address with the necessary BTC transaction fees to transfer the Runes to themselves. Once this is done, they can submit this transaction hash and their BTC address to the NEAR Airdrop contract, which will call the Chain Signatures contract with a transaction payload that will transfer the Runes.

Here’s what this would look like:

The user funds the BTC address with the fees needed to transfer Runes to their account (1). They submit the transaction hash and their BTC address to the NEAR Airdrop contract (2). The NEAR Airdrop contract checks the user’s BTC address against the allow list. Then the contract calls the BTC Light Client to verify the fees have been paid (3). Finally, the NEAR Airdrop contract can generate a transaction to transfer the Runes to the user’s destination address. A cross-contract call is made to the Chain Signatures contract to sign the transaction. The signature is returned to the client and broadcasted to the Bitcoin network where the Runes are transferred (4).

Summary

NEAR Chain Signatures introduces a new way to design multichain Web3 applications for a range of use cases, such as DAOs, NFT minting, and airdrops. Chain Signatures brings rich smart contract functionality to non-smart contract chains like BTC and XRP. Building with Chain Signatures provides a better experience for developers and users. Developers have to write less smart contract code, submit fewer audits, and maintain fewer smart contract deployments across multiple chains. Users don’t have to bridge assets or perform several transactions in order to use the chains they feel most comfortable with. ll in all, Chain Signatures is a massive step forward for multichain Web3 applications and towards mainstream adoption for new and existing crypto users.

NEAR Chain Signatures is live on testnet and will soon be available on mainnet. For further resources on Chain Signatures, see here. To get support for building with Chain Signatures — for any of the examples above or beyond — reach us here.

Disclosures: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. This article’s content does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any token or protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

As 2023 witnessed the Cambrian explosion of L2s and modular blockchains, it simultaneously observed the pushback against Web3’s increasing complexity and fragmentation. Reflected in the buzzwords of abstraction and aggregation, we saw the ongoing discourse about account abstraction on Ethereum, Polygon’s AggLayer, and the chain abstraction narrative spearheaded by NEAR or Agoric, to name a few. Though all different in detail, the underlying idea is the same: Web3 is vowing to become simpler, unified, and more usable.

In the recent chain abstraction thesis, Illia Polosukhin, NEAR Protocol co-founder and NEAR Foundation CEO, hinted at the idea of “account aggregation:”

From a user perspective, this should be a single account where they interact with apps on different chains, and assets either get bridged or swapped automatically. I call this “account aggregation” […].

Account aggregation is the ability to sign transactions on any given chain from a single (NEAR) account, through a single interface, in a single transaction. In it lies the idea of chain abstraction: instead of having to separately manage accounts for multiple chains, often requiring a different wallet interface (e.g. Metmask for EVM, Keplr for Comos chains, Phantom for Solana), and going through several hurdles to send assets from one chain to another, the entire experience is boiled down to a single layer and a single transaction for the end user.

The technology enabling this is Chain Signatures, a novel threshold signature protocol utilizing an MPC (multi-party computation) signer network on NEAR. With Chain Signatures live on testnet, let us look at the technology and its potential for cross-chain development.

Challenges in Cross-Chain Interoperability

Recent peaks in bridge volumes testify to the growing demand for cross-chain transactions.

However, cross-chain bridging is not without its challenges. First and foremost, bridges have been proven time and again to be vulnerable to hacks. Bridges inherently have a large attack surface.

• Cross-chain Bridge Orbit Chain Confirms Exploit Worth Over $81 Million | CoinMarketCap
• DeFi hackers stole $3.2bn last year amid 35% surge in 'bridge' exploits

Secondly, bridges today lack comprehensive chain support. Many bridges or messaging protocols lack support for non-EVM chains, not to mention non-smart contract chains like Bitcoin, Doge, or Ripple. While bridges can cover a lot of space, they are limited from achieving 100% interoperability.

Finally, bridge UX is inconsistent and cumbersome. Not only is every bridge designed differently — which means a learning curve for each one — but each bridge operates at a different speed. An additional UX hurdle comes when you try to bridge, only to learn that you need to acquire another token separately to pay for gas, for which you normally need to use a centralized exchange. A further challenge is that bridged assets are often a “wrapped” version of an asset, which is different from its native version on the origination chain, and may not even be the version the user needs for their intended action. After bridging, the user may end up with an unsupported token or a token with low liquidity.

Solving Cross-Chain Challenges with Programmable MPCs

Fortunately, there is a new design pattern for cross-chain messaging that can alleviate the challenges of bridging. Enter programmable MPCs.

MPC, or multi-party computation, is a privacy-preserving coordination protocol in cryptography where multiple parties can perform a computation together without revealing the data to each other. Many of us are familiar with the concept from MPC wallets such as the Coinbase Wallet or Fireblocks, where the private key of the user’s wallet is shared among multiple parties to eliminate a single point of failure. In this approach, the user retains a key, while centralized parties retain the other keys.

Programmable MPCs allow developers to tap into this and also decentralize key sharing. Core advantages include:

• Comprehensive coverage: programmable MPCs can support any chain including non-smart contract chains such as Bitcoin, Doge, or Ripple
• Instant support: as long as the MPC provider supports the elliptic curve for the chain in question, chain support is instantaneous and does not require separate integration efforts (as is the case for bridges)

e.g. ECDSA-based chains: EVM, Bitcoin, many Cosmos chains, etc; EdDSA-based chains: NEAR, Solana, Cardano

• Standardized DevX and UX: For devs, it’s just a simple API to utilize. For users, it means the same transaction speed across all chains in cross-chain swaps and even no gas token required, depending on the implementation (see Multichain Gas Relayer below). This marks the true potential for chain abstraction, where users do not have to know which chain they are on.

Chain Signatures: NEAR’s Approach to Programmable MPCs

Today, there are mainly two approaches to programmable MPCs. One is deposit-based and the other account-based. Deposit-based MPC networks maintain deposit addresses to create a canonical bridged asset. This is the case of Dfinity $ETH or Zetachain $BTC; Thorchain, where users deposit to a specific address to enact swaps with another user; or Axelar, where, as a generalized bridge protocol, it maintains the deposit address for the user without the user having direct access to it.

The efforts of NEAR and Lit Protocol fall under the category of account-based programmable MPCs. On NEAR, such an account-based approach to programmable MPCs is called Chain Signatures: threshold signatures controlled by NEAR accounts and smart contracts and signed by MPC nodes on the NEAR network.

At a high level, the mechanism of Chain Signatures is as follows:

1. An account on NEAR, which can also be a smart contract, requests validators (i.e. MPC nodes) to sign an arbitrary payload (e.g. a transaction on Bitcoin or Optimism)
2. Validators sign the payload via MPC and relay it to the destination chain
3. This entire process is abstracted away for the user: as a user, you are simply signing a transaction on a NEAR account and getting the amount on the destination chain (e.g. Bitcoin, Optimism, etc).

One of the biggest advantages of the NEAR account model is that it allows end users to hold any number of sub-accounts under a single top-level account. This means that with Chain Signatures, users can control 10s of 1000s of accounts across different chains from a single NEAR account. This is what we mean by “account aggregation.”

For devs, Chain Signatures is a simple API that looks something like this:

• Function call to sign payload
• Key derivation path: because a single NEAR account can have an almost infinite number of accounts it can sign for on any given chain, this designates which account is being signed for
• Key type: designates the elliptic curve of the chain in use (at launch, Chain Signatures will first support ECDSA, then later, EdDSA).

In the following example, Proximity Labs’ Matt Lockyer demonstrates Chain Signatures by sending $ETH between two accounts on the Ethereum Sepolia network using a single NEAR account, on a single interface, and in a single transaction.

Here, the Ethereum address (from which your $ETH will be sent) is generated from a path variable, akin to an HD path on a Ledger account. This address is an offset of your NEAR account that is uniquely generated for this purpose.

When you sign the transaction, the MPC contract generates a signature for this particular Ethereum transaction without revealing the private key to any party.

The example above is open-source for anyone who wants to check it out.

Multichain Gas Relayer

An additional protocol that can help maximize the potential of account aggregation is the multichain gas relayer, which realizes gas abstraction.

Let us visualize this flow with an actual implementation of chain signatures by Sweat Wallet to enable users to send $BNB from NEAR to BNB Smart Chain from the Sweat Wallet (a NEAR account).

1. The user initiates a signature from the Sweat Wallet (= NEAR account) to send 0.02 $BNB on NEAR to an address on BNB Smart Chain.
2. The MPC nodes sign the payload and send it to the relayer network.
3. The gas relayer picks up the transaction; the user pays for gas in $SWEAT on the NEAR network.
4. The gas relayer takes the payment and funds the destination address on BNB with the appropriate gas tokens (in this case, $BNB). The relayer network then routes the signed transaction. All of this happens in the same block (2–3 seconds).
5. The user has successfully sent 0.02 $BNB to their BNB address from their NEAR account.

When used in combination with Chain Signatures, the multichain gas relayer prevents apps and users from having to deal with multiple gas tokens on multiple chains. Behind the scenes, the gas relayer handles the gas payment on the respective chains — the user only needs to use one token for gas.

Check out the demo by Sweat Wallet. The transaction hash is here.

Use Cases

The examples above illustrate Chain Signatures use cases in which a single NEAR account signs a cross-chain transaction. A whole new design space for cross-chain dApps emerges when we consider that a NEAR account is natively a smart contract.

Here are a few:

1. DeFi on Non-Smart Contract Chains: Chain Signatures can enable DeFi on non-smart contract chains such as Bitcoin, Doge, or Ripple, which thus far only supports transfers on the network. NEAR smart contracts can act as escrow contracts and manage who controls what. On top of this primitive, you can build swaps or lending protocols, for instance, that support any asset on any chain, including assets in unique states (e.g. staked, in liquidity pools). Imagine swapping your staked $TIA for an NFT on Solana or using it as collateral to borrow $ETH on Optimism.
2. Multichain account abstraction (with support for gas relayer): Because NEAR accounts are natively smart contracts, there is a lot of flexibility out of the box: any NEAR account can have any number of keys, rotate keys for security, and have multi-signer patterns. Additionally, with the Multichain Gas Relayer, you can even abstract the complexity of multiple gas tokens for different chains. With Chain Signatures, one can essentially “NEAR-ify” any account on any chain by extension, thereby bringing about account abstraction on a multichain scale, from Ethereum to Solana to Bitcoin.

1. Bridgeless Cross-chain DeFi: As seen in the overview above, one of the most powerful things about Chain Signatures is that they eliminate the need for bridging and instead power cross-chain transactions via an MPC signature protocol. We can imagine net new DeFi products such as,

• Native cross-chain swaps (e.g. swap $XRP on Ripple for an NFT on Solana)
• Cross-chain lending orderbook (e.g. use X on Optimism as collateral to borrow Y on Arbitrum)
• Restake any asset on any chain; even handle the reward or slashing conditions from NEAR
• Trustless Bitcoin Ordinals Marketplace

Additionally, smart contract-based Chain Signatures would open up the possibility of privacy-focused apps as well as trustless multichain deployments.

Case Study: Bitcoin Ordinals Marketplace

Let us take one of the use cases and understand how it would work: a trustless Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace. Currently, one implementation of this idea is underway by the EastBlue team.

In this scenario, we are dealing with a trade between a seller whose asset (Ordinal) is on Bitcoin and a buyer whose asset ($USDC) is on NEAR; but this can be generalized to any asset on any chain.

1. The marketplace contract exists on NEAR.
2. The seller generates a deposit account on Bitcoin via the marketplace contract.
3. Only the marketplace contract can request the MPC signers to sign a transaction on behalf of this Bitcoin account.
4. Within the smart contract state, the seller is recognized as the owner of this Bitcoin account and only they are allowed to deposit and withdraw the Ordinal out of that account.
5. The seller deposits the Ordinal to the Bitcoin account and creates a listing for 10 $USDC.
6. To protect the buyer, the contract disallows the seller from withdrawing the Ordinal if there is an open order to their listing. No changes on the Bitcoin network will affect the account, only the marketplace contract and allow withdrawals.
7. The buyer deposits $USDC to the marketplace contract.
8. The buyer accepts the 10 $USDC listing.
9. The sale is executed. In other words, the marketplace contract has verified that two users have agreed to swap their accounts and atomically executes the swap in a single block (2–3 seconds).
10. The seller now has control over the 10 $USDC deposited by the buyer and withdraws the funds. In turn, the buyer is now the owner of the Bitcoin account holding the Ordinal and can withdraw.

Conclusion

Chain Signatures is currently on testnet and awaiting mainnet release before the end of Q1. In combination with the flexible NEAR account model and the Multichain Gas Relayer, Chain Signatures have great potential to bring cross-chain interoperability to the next level. Furthermore, Chain Signatures have the potential to drive chain abstraction, where the complexity and fragmentation of today’s Web3 are abstracted away with a single user layer that can interact with any asset on any chain.

If you are a developer, now is the perfect time to get acquainted with the concept and explore this technology for your cross-chain dApp. If you are building, do not hesitate to reach out to us via hello@proximity.dev or on the Chain Abstraction Dev Chat. We are more than happy to provide technical assistance, strategic advice on product and business development, as well as GTM support.

The content of this article is based on Kendall Cole’s keynote at ETH Denver and recreated by Rim Berjack. Find the full talk here.

Chain Signatures Resources

Find all the resources below and more in this Chain Signatures Linktree.

• Chain Abstraction Thesis
• Account Aggregation Deep Dive
• Chain Signatures Overview: Cross-Chain without Bridges (Video)
• Chain Signatures Docs
• NEAR Account Model Docs
• Chain Signatures API
• Generate MPC Private Keys for NEAR
• Github Discussions
• Sample Request and Response
• Multichain Gas Relayer
• (Example) Send ETH on Ethereum from a NEAR account: Demo video; Open-source component
• (Example) Sign a transaction on BNB from a NEAR wallet: Demo video; Transaction hash
• Official Chain Abstraction Dev Chat

Further Reading

BOS, The User Layer for Chain Abstraction

Disclosures: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. The authors of this article have not purchased or sold any token for which the authors had material non-public information while researching or drafting this report. The statements and content in this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token, or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

A First Look at Chain Signatures: Cross-Chain Without Bridges was originally published in NEAR Protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This research piece is a collaboration between CMT Digital, a global blockchain and Web3 venture capital firm, and Proximity Labs, a NEAR-focused research and development firm, to elaborate on our thesis on NEAR and how the BOS intends to fill the missing blockchain layer: the user/interface layer.

Numerous Blockchains Coexist in the Current Landscape. Which One Is Right for You?

Given the existence of multiple blockchains with varying design choices, it can be a daunting task for new dApp entrants to decide which stack they want to use or build their project on.

In a nutshell, blockchains are simply execution environments for any application looking to provide a function to users. Given the variety of mechanism design choices made by various blockchains (developer tooling, smart contract language, access to liquidity, etc.), certain chains are more suitable for specific types of applications than others. For example, let us compare the tradeoffs when choosing between an optimistic rollup (Optimism or Arbitrum) and a Zero-Knowledge rollup (zkSync).

These design differences provide certain tradeoffs that make each environment more or less suited to a particular type of application. For example, a DeFi protocol would probably be better positioned on a ZK Rollup due to its fast finality and need for strong cryptographic guarantees of security, whereas a social application may be better suited to an optimistic rollup, due to the ease of development.

The Problem of Blockchain Fragmentation

The blockchain landscape is rife with fragmentation, from liquidity splits and virtual machine incompatibilities to varied communication protocols due to the intense competition for widespread adoption. Each chain aspires to lure developers to craft applications that resonate with the most number of users and thereby emerge as the principal ledger. To illustrate, just within the Ethereum ecosystem, there are 32 Layer 2s (L2s) currently live with 21 more upcoming, all under the mission to scale Ethereum. Tech-wise, these 50+ L2s may deploy Optimistic or ZK proofs if they are rollups, or use stacks from StarkEx, Polygon, and zkSync. In terms of capital, a total of $15B in value is spread out across these chains.

Despite the siloing of capital, frictions faced by users and investors, and the additional effort required from developers to navigate new stacks, the resulting diversity could nonetheless be beneficial in terms of security and catering to the needs of different audiences. Therefore, the solution might not center around reducing the number of blockchains, but around creating a virtual environment that abstracts away the complexities of this world for the average user and offers a seamless user experience.

Blockchain Interfacing, As We Know It.

Fragmented UX

Let’s imagine a user who wants to interact with DeFi. Today, they would have to (1) select a specific blockchain to use, which might be imposed by the desired dApp, (2) create a wallet with a seed phrase that needs to be carefully stored, and maybe even a hard wallet, (3) move funds from their bank using an on-ramp app or via CEXs, (4) interact with the different dApps signing and executing transactions, and (5) maybe even move assets across different chains, making sure they get the correct RPC and other setups.

To add to this onboarding hassle imposed by the current wallet UX, discoverability is another issue plaguing blockchain interfacing. The competitive blockchain landscape is overwhelmed with new protocols and the dozens of dApps that are born on top of them. Today, there are 200+ chains, 3000+ DeFi protocols, and nearly 9000 cryptocurrencies. However, the current Web3 UX is that the burden of discovery and research lies on the user. There are certainly ecosystem directories or information dashboards that aggregate data across chains such as DeFiLlama or DappRadar, but there is no “App Store” or “Netflix”-equivalent that enables streamlined discovery and access.

What this means is that the current blockchain interaction is complex and still far from Web2 applications where you log in with your email and a password across all platforms, and the burden of security and discovery is not solely on the individual. Although most blockchain users will be familiar with all of this, we cannot expect less tech-savvy users to select the correct execution client or sign every transaction, as correctly deciphering these interfaces requires deeper technical understanding.

Security Concerns

To add to this onboarding friction that the user experiences, they currently face a minefield of malicious contracts that even experienced crypto “natives” struggle to avoid. For this article, we will break up hacks into two main categories: 1. blockchain code exploits, and 2. frontend exploits.

1. Blockchain code exploits occur when there is a fault in the logic of a smart contract that allows someone interacting with the contract to interact in a way other than the developer of that contract intended them to. An example would be a contract that allows a user to “re-enter” the contract before it has been executed, resulting in a reentrancy attack. For a more detailed explanation of reentrancy attacks, see this overview and X thread.

2. Frontend exploits occur when a user interacts with a contract other than the one with which they were aiming to interact. A common attack vector for hackers is the creation of a spoofed website, that looks identical to the one that a user is expecting to interact with, but on interaction will execute a different contract. If the user was expecting to conduct a swap between ETH and Aurora on Uniswap but conducted it on a spoofed website they thought was Uniswap, they could fall victim to this attack. This contract, instead of swapping from ETH to Aurora, could drain the user’s wallet of the ETH to which the interaction gave the contract access.

While methods for crypto exploits are diverse, recent frontend exploits of prominent DeFi protocols call attention to how vulnerable frontends can be.

Balancer on Twitter: "The balancer frontend is under an attack. The issue is currently under investigation. Please do NOT interact with the balancer UI until further notice! / Twitter"

The balancer frontend is under an attack. The issue is currently under investigation. Please do NOT interact with the balancer UI until further notice!

The core issue is that while blockchains and smart contracts are decentralized and transparent, centralized web servers are not. Almost all interactions with decentralized protocols are done by interfacing with a centralized frontend website. The website may tell you it is executing a certain smart contract, but the actual logic is hidden behind private elements of the code. This allows the hacker to obfuscate their true intentions until the very last minute when it is often too late to prevent. Can we really say that something is decentralized if it requires interfacing with a centralized server?

BOS: A Universal Access Layer

The BOS, or the Blockchain Operating System, is a new paradigm of blockchain interaction that completely abstracts away blockchain execution for the end user. This can be thought of as a new layer: the user layer, or the interface layer.

What would an ideal user layer look like? If we consider the fragmentation that currently exists, then the interface layer would best improve the usability of blockchain technology by being an aggregator of interactions so that for the end user the diversity and the complexities of the blockchain are abstracted away. In practice, this means aggregating virtual machine support and enabling the use of a variety of communication protocols to enable the user to interact with any application, across any blockchain, without having to control the native account directly, all within a unified interface.

In addition to the improvement in efficiency, the BOS provides a meaningful way by which we can protect user bases against security threats: decentralized frontends. When using the BOS one does not need to worry whether they are on a legitimate frontend, or whether they will be taken to the contract they expect. Not only will users always be able to check that they are on the correct gateway, but they can also verify the source code of the frontend components that make up the page because all BOS frontend code is on-chain and open-source. The BOS enables decentralized frontends to execute transactions on a decentralized backend, finally making the entire Web3 user journey truly permissionless.

What Becomes Possible with the BOS?

Frontend Verification

In blockchain, smart contract testing and audits are crucial for ensuring protocol reliability and user trust. However, there’s often a lack of a verification mechanism for the frontend UI, leaving users vulnerable to attacks mimicking legitimate designs. The BOS, through decentralized hosting and component-based design, enables frontend page verification. A component on the BOS could in the future confirm that UI elements correctly interact with expected smart contracts, enhancing security at the interaction level made theoretically feasible with zero-knowledge proofs. This approach extends security from transaction signatures to the frontend.

Decentralization and Censorship Resistance

The benefit of fully on-chain frontend code lies not only in its ability to resist frontend hacks, but also in decentralization. Firstly, the BOS allows for true decentralization of apps by decentralizing the frontend as well as the backend. Secondly, the decentralization on the frontend level means BOS applications are more censorship-resistant, as the code is fully on-chain and cannot be meddled with by an external party. The only caveat in this regard is that, if the BOS components have to be accessed via website-hosted gateways, such gateways are hosted by third parties and may rely on centralized servers. That said, BOS components can also be accessed locally via downloadable Tauri app gateways, eliminating the third-party hosting present with website gateways.

Additionally, the permissionless and open-source nature of the BOS also allows for extended user control over their experience, allowing for UI rollback or community-driven customization; for instance, if a DAO were to curate a unique dashboard with the components of their choice on a gateway that they host. This is yet another way in which the BOS fosters decentralization, especially in the case of ecosystem pages or governance forums, which thus can be meaningfully handed off from the respective foundations and to the community.

User Experience

The current user experience for interaction with blockchains is not intuitive at all for any non “blockchain-native” user. The realization of the transformative potential of blockchains is critically dependent on simplifying the user experience, while maintaining security standards. Ethereum has been spending significant time trying to address the user-experience issues, with the release of ERC-4337 as an example.

The BOS can build simpler and more elegant user experiences thanks to the composable nature of its components. Composable frontends mean that components can be embedded in other applications, enabling a more integrated, seamless, one-stop user experience; in the same way that widgets do for traditional websites. For example, let’s say one of NEAR’s most popular dApps, Sweat Economy, was to operate its wallet as a BOS gateway. Sweat could then embed a swap widget powered by Ref Finance, an orderbook widget powered by Orderly, a multichain bridge widget, all within the Sweat wallet UI. Essentially, Sweat Wallet would act as a single user layer for different dApps across the NEAR ecosystem, or, even across external ecosystems, for their users.

When it comes to onboarding, the BOS has the added advantage of tooling such as FastAuth. The current mode of Web3 onboarding mandates users to create wallets, seed their wallets with the native token of the network (for which users need to initially purchase the token from a CEX), separately store and not lose a seed phrase for recovery, and so on. FastAuth allows a Web2-like journey where users can create a free account using biometrics, phone prompts, or an email address to access any BOS app. This allows users to quickly interact with an app and significantly reduces the friction associated with onboarding.

FastAuth also addresses the burden of securely keeping seed phrases on the individual with no other option for recovery. In the future, with decentralized social recovery, users will have the option to designate trusted wallets or multi-sig contracts as their guardians during wallet set-up to help recover their accounts if they lose access. The fact that the BOS has this capability in production gives it an advantage over solutions that require separate integration.

Developer Experience

Developer experience-wise, the BOS’ permissionless nature and the reusability of its components foster rapid iteration and modularity, reducing development effort and enhancing scalability in product development. The BOS’ strength especially shines when it comes to expanding the product offering at scale and pace, compared to native integrations on the protocol level.

For instance, wallets or portfolio projects often require weeks to months of development time for native chain integrations, along with dedicated resources for upkeep, and yet suffer from service disruptions when a chain undergoes upgrades or outages — which affects their users, though the problem does not stem from them. In comparison, if a wallet or portfolio project were to operate as a BOS gateway and approached chain integrations on the frontend level, the development time would be significantly reduced as they would not need to touch anything on the backend, and could reuse existing components or build upon them.

What Needs to Be Done for Full Realization of the Goals

Although significant developments have been made to the BOS since its release in February 2023, further improvements could be made to elevate the implementation to its desired end-state.

Library & Component Support

While the BOS currently has support for commonly used libraries such as ether.js, additional support for arbitrary libraries would help scale the rate of development occurring on the BOS. Furthermore, the continued expansion of components made available to builders will additionally scale the rate of development, as developers can leverage the verifiability and modularity of components to drastically reduce development timelines as components will no longer have to be made in-house.

Developer Experience More Broadly

Everything we have discussed thus far is also playing a role in improving the developer experience. Some progress has been made in this regard with BOS-specific integrated developer environments (IDEs), such as this VS code extension or an in-browser one by Jutsu.

While additional library and component support reduces developer lift, it also lays the groundwork for a no-code developer experience to be curated on BOS. With the use of base-level components, the BOS is positioned such that it could offer a uniquely effective no-code experience, again being able to verify BOS components allows for abstracting away many complexities from the developer experience without compromising on security.

Security

Security should always be top of mind and some additional tools can be implemented to improve the experience on the BOS.

Fuzzing is one such example, Fuzzing, also known as fuzz testing, is a software testing technique used to uncover security vulnerabilities in software applications. The method involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs to a computer program. The program is then monitored for exceptions, such as crashes, failing built-in code assertions, or potential memory leaks. A fuzzing tool for periodic testing would allow the extension of verifiability of components, to include security testing with all potential inputs, ensuring that developers can feel maximum peace of mind that not only can the user verify which contracts they are interacting with, but they can also be sure that frontend code logic will not allow them to take any unintended actions.

Smart Contract Composability with Frontend Components

Right now, BOS components can only be deployed manually, meaning that a developer has to implement any changes individually. Future upgrades to the BOS could introduce smart contract composability, meaning that BOS components can change as a result of state changes on a smart contract.

For example, let’s say Aave Labs were to deploy the Aave frontend on the BOS, and there were multiple different frontend designs available for an Aave rebrand (hypothetically), the Aave DAO could vote on which direction they want their branding to go and the BOS could update the frontend as a result of the actual on-chain vote. This reduces the avenues by which power in DAO structures can be centralized as no one party is responsible for the implementation of frontend changes.

Chain Abstraction

Just this November, NEAR made a series of announcements at NEARcon hinting at its new direction which is more Ethereum-aligned than ever. At a higher level, it’s not simply about being closer to Ethereum, but NEAR becoming a means to enable chain abstraction for an increasingly fragmented multichain world.

As a monolithic L1, NEAR is simultaneously becoming a modular tech stack to scale Ethereum. On the execution layer, NEAR is a flexible environment offering NEAR native runtime in Rust and WASM, NEAR EVM (Aurora) in Solidity, and now collaborating with Polygon to build a zkWASM L2 prover as a component for Polygon CDK. On the data availability layer, NEAR DA offers data availability to L2s that is reliable and significantly cheaper than some competitors. On the settlement layer, NEAR is collaborating with EigenLayer to provide 3-second finality to EVM rollups. On the user layer, the BOS abstracts away the hassle of Web3 onboarding and fragmented user experience.

The ultimate vision is one of chain abstraction, a world in which the user doesn’t have to think about the chain that they are on: a unified UI for any dApp on any chain; a single account that controls every account on any chain; in-app cross-rollup transactions and bridgeless cross-chain swaps in mere seconds. NEAR will be able to support all of these things soon, with the BOS being just one piece of this puzzle.

In our eyes tooling in general is also just one piece of the puzzle. As a broader ecosystem, blockchain projects need to curate a UX that is easy to navigate. In this article, we aimed to draw attention to some of the initiatives that NEAR has in place to aid the developer community in the realization of these goals.

Further Resources

• BOS Documentation
• Get to Know the BOS: FastAuth for Easy, Web2 Style Onboarding and Account Recovery
• Tauri app for BOS Gateways (Run BOS gateways locally)
• Polygon zkEVM Interactive App Dashboard on the BOS
• Mantle Ecosystem Gateway on the BOS
• Coin98 Decentralized Dapp Store, Powered by BOS
• Dap Dap hosts the frontend for Uniswap v3 on Linea
• Polygon Labs and NEAR Foundation Collaborate to Build a zkWasm L2 Prover as a Component for Polygon CDK
• NEAR Foundation and Eigen Labs Partner to Enable Faster, Cheaper Web3 Transactions for Ethereum Rollups via EigenLayer
• NEAR Foundation Launches NEAR DA to Offer Secure, Cost-Effective Data Availability for ETH Rollups and Ethereum Developers
• NEAR DA Documentation
• “Announcing Multichain Accounts (a.k.a Account Aggregation) on NEAR,” David Millar-Durrant (Pagoda)
• “Monolithic and Modular,” Kendall Cole (Proximity Labs)
• Chain Abstraction is NEAR: The Monolithic and Modular Thesis

About CMT

CMT Digital is a leading global blockchain and web3 venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments that accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology. Incepted in 2015, we were one of the earliest investment firms to allocate capital into the digital asset ecosystem. By 2018 we made our first venture investment and have invested in over 150 companies and protocols to date as we continue to push the blockchain ecosystem forward. We are investors in notable companies that are expanding the frontiers of web3, including Circle, Coinbase, ConsenSys, Crusoe Energy Systems, Dapper Labs, dYdX, FalconX, Horizon Blockchain Games, Lightning Labs, Pyth, Strike, Zero Hash among many others.

CMT Digital is also a division of CMT Group, which has been in operation for more than 25 years. Since inception, CMT Group has evolved into a diversified asset manager, with a portfolio that spans public and private equity, debt, real estate, technology, and digital assets. CMT relies on its seasoned team of professionals with significant trading, technology, investment, and legal experience to drive adoption of the digital asset ecosystem.

Website · Twitter · Get in Touch

About Proximity

Proximity is a research and development firm supporting the NEAR DeFi ecosystem through investments, developer support, open-source software, and advisory services. The Proximity team consists of former members of the NEAR Foundation, Binance, Consensys, Facebook, and more. It has advised numerous DeFi projects contributing to both NEAR and Aurora’s recent success.

Website · Twitter · Get in Touch

Disclosures

CMT Digital and Proximity Labs hold $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. The authors of this article have not purchased or sold any token for which the authors had material non-public information while researching or drafting this report. The statements and content in this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token, or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

BOS: The Universal Access Layer to the Blockchain was originally published in NEAR Protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Disclosures: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. The authors of this article have not purchased or sold any token for which the authors had material non-public information while researching or drafting this report. The statements and content in this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token, or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

Decentralization is a core tenet of Web 3.0 and cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, while many protocols and chains are quite decentralized, most users rely upon centralized interfaces to access and interact with them. To help reduce this reliance, the NEAR Ecosystem introduced BOS — the Blockchain Operating System — a tech stack that enables decentralized full stack applications. In this report we explain what BOS is, the problems that DeFi dApps suffer, and how BOS aims to solve these problems for NEAR and the crypto space.

Introducing BOS: Blockchain Operating System

NEAR Protocol is evolving from a singular/enclosed/self-contained Layer 1 for smart contracts to the BOS: the Blockchain Operating System for all of Web 3.0.

What is BOS? BOS is a tech stack that allows developers to create, deploy, and store frontends in a secure and decentralized way, for any protocol on any chain. Currently, NEAR and EVM-compatible chains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Polygon are supported, with more to come in the future.

With BOS, NEAR can power decentralized frontends for all Web 3.0 applications, and act as a common layer for storing, browsing, and discovering products such as DEXs, money markets, NFT marketplaces, social networks, gaming platforms, and more. This technology enables NEAR to become the discovery layer for crypto users in the same way that Apple’s App Store is the discovery layer for iPhone users.

The Three Pillars of BOS

BOS is based on three pillars: Gateways, Components, and Blockchains.

Gateways

Gateways are access points to Web 3.0 apps that pull frontend code directly from the NEAR blockchain and render it for their users. A gateway consists of a specially designed virtual machine that loads and runs frontends for protocols built on Ethereum, L2s, and other Layer 1s like NEAR. In this way, they make locally-run, decentralized frontends available to the masses.

Anyone can create and run a gateway, and all of them can have different specializations. For example, near.org acts like an app store for dApps; near social offers a more social-oriented experience where users can engage with each other, access their favorite dApps, and even share their findings, interactions, and content; and bos.gg targets EVM dApp developers. For more examples of gateways, check out https://near.org/gateways.

Soon, apps like Ref Finance will implement their own gateways, becoming a one-stop shop (aka “Super Apps”) for DeFi on NEAR. Users will be able to trade using AMMs or orderbooks, access different types of perps, money markets, or bridges, all within a single interface (see Figures 5 and 6). Additionally, use case specific apps like Sweatcoin can utilize gateways to expand their functionality, becoming “super apps” that bring DeFi access to millions of Web 2.0 users.

Apart from these popular applications, like Ref or Sweatcoin, gateways can assume a variety of forms including wallets or portfolio management tools (e.g. Zerion, Pulsar, Zapper, or Debank). BOS enables them to add extra functionality such as execution, allowing their users to perform trades and interact directly with DeFi from these products.

If protocol teams use BOS and keep their components updated, then gateways can rely on these components for their native integrations (and simply add some CSS/design to them rather than implement themselves). This provides an important solution for the common issue of portfolio management teams having to drop native integrations because they can’t keep up with numerous native protocol changes.

Components

Components are frontends for app-layer protocols (think Lido, Uniswap, Aave), whose source codes is stored entirely on-chain. The code for these apps can be viewed in a gateway, similar to viewing a smart contract on Etherscan. In the Ref Finance gateway example above, the Figure showed various apps — these are all components built using BOS, which are the frontends interacting with the respective protocol’s backend.

One of the main advantages is that developers can fork these apps and deploy their own versions, or even compose different Components together. For example, many components showing prices of swaps across many different chains, could all be displayed side by side in a single comparison interface component. The author of this component need not develop all the underlying swap components, but rather compose them into their “super app” component.

Blockchains

The true power of BOS comes from the fact that it is chain-agnostic. Components can call functions on any blockchain, with BOS currently supporting all EVM chains/L2s and NEAR. The source code for the apps (frontends) is on NEAR, due to its ability to cheaply store HTML/CSS/JS (a few cents).

BOS: Benefits & Use Cases

BOS aims to tackle several critical challenges around building frontends for Web 3.0 apps, including access, security, composability, and time to market.

Decentralization and Security

With BOS, the code for Components is always on-chain, making it auditable, versioned, and viewable in explorers. All component code is stored on the NEAR blockchain. This enhances security and robustness, while providing strong uptime and access guarantees.

Back in August, the popular dApp Curve suffered a frontend hack that allowed hackers to steal ~$570,000. Hackers compromised the Curve website and domain name to redirect unwitting users (or their transactions) to a malicious destination. BOS would have stopped this from happening, and any attempt of malicious interaction would have been spotted on-chain. Examples like these prove the need for a secure and decentralized frontend stored natively on-chain.

Since the source code for BOS components can be verified both on-chain and in-browser, this attack is more likely to have been spotted. And if the user was running their gateway locally, it would have been impossible.

@samczsun.com on Twitter: "🚨🚨🚨@CurveFinance frontend is compromised, do not use it until further notice! / Twitter"

🚨🚨🚨@CurveFinance frontend is compromised, do not use it until further notice!

Censorship Resistance

Frontends stored in centralized servers such as AWS or GCP are a centralized point of failure that run counter to decentralization and the promise of crypto in general. BOS solves this problem by decentralizing the frontends and thus making them as censorship resistant as the underlying NEAR protocol itself.

Open source and Composability

Building frontends with BOS means that frontend code is public and more compatible with open source principles by default. In the same way that developers could access the code of a certain DeFi app and fork it to create a new one (with different branding and maybe added features), now developers can also access frontends and fork them to be used in several applications via BOS. Let’s further understand this with Lido as an example.

As you can see in Figure 7, Lido’s backend smart contracts can now be accessed through a decentralized frontend deployed using BOS. This opens the door to customization and enhanced UIs for users: for example, devs would be able to create new components to improve the UI of other dApps (e.g. include charts and analytics in the Lido UI). It is much easier and quicker as they can leverage built-ins such as profiles, payments, and notifications as well as searching, without the need to host anything themselves.

Users might decide to use this frontend instead of the official one. And anyone can create one as long as the smart contract code is open source. That also allows users to keep using the application even if the official, non-decentralized frontend is compromised or down due to AWS problems, improving robustness, security, as well as user empowerment.

Furthermore, BOS fosters composability by enabling developers to reuse and remix Components, and improve the UI of DeFi apps thanks to the decentralized and open source nature. Composability is one of the things that DeFi has leveraged the most: token swaps, flash loans, LP positions as collateral, etc. Thanks to BOS, composability is also coming to frontends. For example, devs can integrate components that were created for Uniswap into Lido, or components that were created for Aave into dYdX, if they decide to enable any money market feature. Components can be reassembled, modified, duplicated, or integrated in any way into other Components or frontends, opening the door to more sophisticated applications catering to different needs and experiences.

“The composable decentralized frontends as a framework can work with any Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 backend and any wallet. In the future we will be offering [use of] wallets from one chain to interact with another via seamless bridging.” — Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol. [Source: Coindesk]

Seamless Onboarding

For DeFi to achieve mass adoption, UI/UX for DeFi applications need to be improved. The current landscape, characterized by numerous blockchains, applications, infrastructure, and wallets, along with fragmented liquidity, can be daunting for newcomers to DeFi. BOS seeks to establish itself as a unifying layer for discovering Web 3.0 offerings. We foresee the development of all-in-one applications (aka “Super Apps”) on BOS that integrate popular dAcurvecurpps such as DEXs, money markets, NFT marketplaces, and liquidity staking protocols, across various blockchains. By also enabling users to sign up without a seed phrase, using only their device through Fast Auth (just announced at Consensus!), BOS aims to substantially reduce entry barriers and make Web 3.0 more accessible.

Developer Experience

BOS offers a nimble approach to prototyping and constructing frontend applications. This enables developers to concentrate on coding while avoiding the hassle of establishing infrastructure and managing servers. Additionally, BOS facilitates a unified platform for collaboration and code-sharing among developers, enabling the option to relinquish ownership and create immutable components. With its utilization of JavaScript and ReactJS, developers can easily get started with a minimal learning curve. For example, the Lido component on BOS was completed in two hours.

Roadmap

With the main BOS gateway (near.org), meta-transactions, and zero-balance accounts live, and FastAuth announced at Consensus2023, BOS is well on its path to mass adoption.

In the near future, you can look forward to further features such as the compliance engine, private data, on-chain and encrypted chat service, account extensions and remote accounts. Stay tuned also for upcoming partnership announcements and the unique product experiences they will beget.

For those interested in learning more, check out near.org or near.social to explore different components and the gateway experience. For other gateways, you can explore the BOS Viewer Directory.

For developers, check out the BOS docs on docs.bos.gg, as well as the Component examples on bos.gg. For inquiries or feedback, join the BOS Development Telegram chat.

Finally, if you are interested in building BOS gateways or components for DeFi (on NEAR and beyond) and are seeking technical or financial support, contact us through our website.

About Proximity

Proximity is a research and development firm supporting the NEAR DeFi ecosystem through investments, developer support, open-source software, and advisory services. The Proximity team consists of former members of the NEAR Foundation, Binance, Consensys, Facebook, and more. It has advised numerous DeFi projects contributing to both NEAR and Aurora’s recent success.

Website · Twitter · Get in Touch · $10M Orderbook Fund

BOS: The World’s First Blockchain Operating System was originally published in NEAR Protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Disclosures: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR, $AURORA, and other tokens or investments that may be associated with protocols or projects mentioned in this article. The authors of this article have not purchased or sold any token for which the authors had material non-public information while researching or drafting this report. The statements and content in this article should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token, or to use any protocol. This article also contains forward-looking statements about third-party projects that the authors have no control over and, as such, actual future developments may be substantially different from the expectations described in the forward-looking statements for a number of reasons, including those that are not under the control of the authors. The content of this article reflects the opinions of its authors and is presented for informational purposes only. This is not and should not be construed to be investment advice.

Index

I. Proximity’s Role in the NEAR Ecosystem

II. NEAR DeFi 2022 Recap

i. On-chain, Non-custodial, Decentralized Trading is On the Rise

ii. Central Limit Orderbooks (CLOBs)

iii. Capital-efficient AMM DEXs: Concentrated Liquidity, Hybrid AMMs, LP-based Perps

iv. DEX Aggregators

v. Money Markets: Community Lending Pools, Orderbook-based p2p Lending, Margin Trading, and Non-liquidatable Loans via Options Strategies

vi. Liquid Staking

vii. Infrastructure to Support a Booming Ecosystem

• Interoperability
• Stablecoins
• Wallets
• Portfolio Management Tools
• Analytics
• Fiat On/off-ramps

III. Looking Forward to 2023

What a year for the markets, especially for crypto. As 2022 is coming to an end, we at Proximity wanted to recap the most notable DeFi trends from this past year and highlight how they have developed in the NEAR DeFi ecosystem.

Proximity’s Role in the NEAR Ecosystem

Proximity started over a year ago with the goal of helping talented builders establish a healthy and robust ecosystem of open-source DeFi protocols, teams, and infrastructure on the NEAR blockchain. Proximity's role is to provide a full-stack service of financial, technical, and advisory support to the NEAR DeFi ecosystem to achieve this goal.

Proximity initially received a grant of 40 million $NEAR tokens from the NEAR Foundation to further this mission. Over the last 14 months, Proximity has allocated ~8 million $NEAR via investments, grants, and other initiatives. In addition to the remaining treasury of $NEAR, which will be utilized and allocated over a period of several years, Proximity also has multiple years of operational runway in stable assets.

Proximity’s operations have evolved over the last year as we have adapted to providing different services based on the ecosystem’s most pressing needs. Key initiatives that we have spearheaded include:

• Researching and developing open-source projects, including MetaMask compatibility through NETH, NEAR components (e.g. on NEAR Social), and others;
• Providing key resources in the form of grants, investments, and advisory support to over 40 talented teams and builders such as Ref, Orderly, Spin, Tonic, Bastion, Derivio, and Aurigami;
• Launching a $10M Orderbook Fund in collaboration with Orderly, Tonic, and Spin to support top teams building DeFi products on top of orderbooks;
• Publishing original research, such as an analysis on NEAR’s tech and its potential for DeFi;
• Supporting key infrastructure projects such as bridges, on/off-ramps, wallets, analytics, etc;
• Supporting the Aurora ecosystem through a 25 million $AURORA pool granted from the Aurora DAO.

As we head into the new year, our focus continues to be supporting and growing the number of talented teams and projects in our ecosystem, as well as ensuring that NEAR continues to lead in terms of user and developer experience.

Our goals for 2023 are the following:

• NEAR is the de facto orderbook chain, with industry-leading decentralized orderbook products;
• NEAR components enable the most robust, fully-decentralized frontend deployment experience, including full support for Ethereum and its L2 protocols (see near.social widgets for a developer preview);
• NEAR (and soon NEAR OS) becomes the homepage and entry point to Web3, enabling seamless, safe, and verifiable discovery and usage of the most popular Web3 products from any device. More info about NEAR OS soon.

If you are interested in contributing to the above goals or believe you can contribute to the NEAR DeFi ecosystem in a meaningful way, please reach out to us! Builders can contact us via our website.

And now, on to the year-in-review!

On-chain, Non-custodial, Decentralized Trading is On the Rise

In May 2022, we witnessed the $LUNA/$UST collapse and related contagion extending across the market, resulting in 3AC, Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi, and other prominent lenders to become insolvent. The recent FTX and Alameda fallout has shocked the markets yet again, leaving many to wonder whether we have hit bottom or there is yet more to come.

Through these events one thing has become clear: building a non-custodial and decentralized future is of the utmost importance. The reckoning of centralized actors, combined with improved protocols and more capital-efficient mechanisms, caused DEX volumes to rise in November. At Proximity, we believe the future of finance will be dominated by protocols that can offer a CEX-competitive experience while maintaining the core values of self-custody and decentralization. In this regard, NEAR is extremely well positioned to become the leading trading chain.

We are already seeing this thesis unfold through the rise of orderbook DEXs such as Orderly Network, Spin, and Tonic; as well as capital efficient AMM DEXs with CEX-like functionalities, such as Ref Finance v2 via its discretized liquidity AMM with limit orders.

Central Limit Orderbooks (CLOBs)

By Q3, NEAR saw three strong orderbook platforms launch on mainnet:

Orderly Network positions itself as an orderbook infrastructure layer with a risk engine, matching engine, and shared liquidity, allowing different frontends to build on top of it. Such products can be spot DEXs, perps, options, lending/borrowing; and even ERC20 tokens on Aurora could be tradeable on Orderly without bridging via EVM support through cross-contract calls.

Orderly first launched on mainnet two months ago with WOOFi DEX offering spot trading and, since then, it has achieved $130M+ in cumulative volume with $5M+ in liquidity, 4.8k+ unique users that have deposited $8M+, and over 192,000 transactions. Perps are expected for January 2023 with options and other products set for a later debut.

Spin is a fully on-chain orderbook DEX with both spot and perps on mainnet, and options coming soon. Spin announced this year they are partnering with Calimero Network to operate a private shard to ensure up to 200K TPS (transactions per second), and it is currently engaging users through an airdrop campaign for early adopters. Spin has 9.1k+ unique users (+64% in the last 30 days) and has handled over 417,000 transactions on spot and 565,000 transactions on perps.

Tonic is a fully on-chain and open-source orderbook DEX with spot trading live on mainnet and perps coming before the end of the year. With 1.3k+ users (+125% in the last 30 days) and over 414,000 transactions, Tonic has kickstarted the growth of its ecosystem by integrating CellFi, which is a decentralized LP for CLOB DEXs via bots that allows you to create special trading strategies, DCA and TWAP orders, and others.

The activity of decentralized perps and options on-chain has significantly increased in 2022 across all chains and we think this trend will continue in 2023. Perps will have a strong presence on NEAR in 2023, with Spin perps already live on mainnet, Tonic perps set to launch before 2023, and Orderly perps to debut by early Q1 2023.

Given Proximity’s commitment to the development of a robust orderbook ecosystem on NEAR, we recently launched a $10M Orderbook Fund for projects to leverage and build atop the existing Central Limit Orderbook (CLOB) infrastructure provided by these protocols. If you are interested in participating, please apply here.

#OrderbooksAreNEAR

Closing The Gap: Capital-efficient AMM DEXs

While CLOBs are normally a more capital efficient way to trade, AMMs on NEAR have also made strides this year to close the gap between CEXs and DEXs.

If you have ever traded on Uniswap V3, you will have noticed that you don’t need deep liquidity to avoid a huge price impact. Concentrated liquidity allows LPs to provide liquidity in tighter ranges. Ref Finance has just launched their V2 with a next-gen concentrated liquidity model called the Discretized Liquidity AMM (DLAMM), which also enables limit orders with near-zero slippage. Besides, Ref also supports multi-chain liquidity aggregation via cross-chain contract calls between Ref, on NEAR mainnet, and other DEXs in Aurora such as Trisolaris, thanks to the true cross-chain composability that NEAR offers.

Another upcoming capital-efficient AMM on NEAR native is Veax. It is a Hybrid AMM DEX that raised $1.2M to bring a suite of TradFi trading products to DeFi. Among its features, the most promising are adaptable liquidity pools, true margin & derivatives, an Orderbook UX, and smart contract OTC trades and auctions for illiquid tokens.

On the Aurora side, we find three exciting trading protocols:

• Arctic also features a DLAMM DEX and has collaborated to implement Ref V2. Arctic plans to launch their native token $ARC and their veNFT model in 2023.
• Derivio is building an institutional-grade LP-based derivatives platform that will offer margin-based perpetuals, binary options, and interest rate trading, with dynamic market-neutral LP protection.
• Holdr, a friendly fork of Balancer, is an automated portfolio manager and trading platform that provides LPs an opportunity to mitigate impermanent loss and to take advantage of self-balancing portfolios similar to traditional index funds. They just launched a liquidity bootstrapping pool (LPB) event for its token $HLDR.

DEX Aggregators

With so many interesting options to trade on, DEX aggregators are a fundamental part of an ecosystem. In 2022, NEAR saw the launch of two aggregators, Perk and Arbitoor, which allow users to trade not only across AMMs pools but also across CLOBs, and in the future across Aurora and different shards. Fluxus Finance is also launching its DEX aggregator soon on mainnet, along with a host of other DeFi products such as a portfolio dashboard, auto-compounder, and vaults.

With the discretized liquidity feature of Ref Finance V2, Veax’s hybrid AMM, three Orderbooks, and Aurora-based trading platforms, users are assured to get an optimal quote when trading on NEAR. Perk will also help users auto-manage LP positions in protocols with concentrated liquidity and aggregate yields from money markets to make the most out of yield farming.

Money Markets

Despite the demand for borrowing and leveraging diminishing in a downward market, decentralized money markets have proven their value this year in light of the fall of prominent institutional lenders and associated insolvency issues.

The NEAR ecosystem has three main money markets: Burrow on NEAR native; Bastion and Aurigami on Aurora. As of December 19th, Burrow sits at $17M in TVL with $3M in loans; Bastion has $50M in TVL with $6M in loans; and Aurigami’s TVL is $8M with $2.5M in loans. In total, TVL for money markets in NEAR is $75M and the total amount of borrows $11.5M, accounting for a utilization ratio of 15.3%. (Source: DeFiLlama)

The goal heading into 2023 is to generate real and sustainable demand in money markets via, for instance, margin trading, and create more capital-efficient mechanisms thanks to the composability offered by Orderbooks and AMMs. In 2023,

• Orderly will be introducing community lending pools where LPs lend out assets to market makers while enjoying single-sided liquidity provision with sustainable yields, and will allow orderbook-based peer-to-peer (p2p) loans, optimizing APRs for both lenders and borrowers.
• Omomo Finance, a spin-off of Blaize.tech and a new money market on NEAR native, plans to offer leverage trading with zero-slippage limit orders on top of NEAR DEXs, starting with Ref’s V2 concentrated liquidity pools. It will cover positions from the borrowing pool and fees are 0% as you can get them back as an LP.
• Cora Protocol plans to offer non-liquidatable loans with a one-time fee by introducing a new DeFi primitive: lending protocol powered by options strategies. The protocol uses quantitative finance analysis methods to define the optimal borrowing amount, borrowing fee, and associated risk. They just launched their testnet on Aurora.

Liquid Staking

In 2022, Linear Protocol and Stader (from Terra) launched on NEAR, adding to Metapool. Having three liquid staking solutions allows users to diversify their risk and optimize their trading and farming strategies.

These three protocols offer their own derivatives: $LiNEAR ($4.3M), $NEARX ($2M), and $stNEAR ($12.5M), respectively, which distribute your staked $NEAR tokens across different validators pools. These assets are composable, meaning that can be used in lending/borrowing protocols as collateral, traded in AMMs and Orderbooks, and even leverage-farmed in protocols like PembRock.

Infrastructure to Support a Booming Ecosystem

2022 showed that crypto is evolving into an increasingly multi-chain world. Proximity actively contributed to the huge upgrade the NEAR ecosystem saw across the board with bridges, fiat on/off-ramps, stablecoins, wallets, and more.

Interoperability

The Rainbow Bridge between NEAR, Aurora, and Ethereum continues to be one of the most secure and robust bridges in crypto, successfully shutting down exploit attempts and implementing a $1M bug bounty program. According to Nansen, it has surpassed $3.3B+ in bridged assets with over 15,700 unique users, positioning as the 4th native bridge in bridged volume just behind Polygon, Axie, and Arbitrum, and ahead of Optimism. During NEARcon, it was announced that the Rainbow Bridge’s NEAR-native token connector is now live, meaning that users are able able to bridge any NEAR-native token to the Ethereum network.

However, a thriving ecosystem consists of different options that adapt to users' demands. Last month, Multichain, the top bridge by both TVL and volume, joined the NEAR ecosystem with over $30M in initial shared liquidity. Now, you can bridge assets between NEAR and other 15+ chains, including Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos, and more, in a faster way, especially when bridging from NEAR to Ethereum. Along with Allbridge, Wormhole, and the Rainbow Bridge, Multichain brings a new level of connectivity to the NEAR ecosystem. The integration comes at the right time with orderbook DEXs and Ref v2 providing sophisticated trading options for high frequency traders and market makers that require access to fast, cheap, and secure bridging options; as well as great arbitrage and rebalance strategies.

Stablecoins

Ironically, one of the best trades this year was to hold USD instead of any other currency. People from countries that are suffering from hyperinflation are able to access USD via the blockchain in the form of Circle’s USDC, Binance’ BUSD, and Tether’s USDT, among others. The ease with which people can access USD is one of the main value propositions of DeFi and we consider it fundamental to develop a prominent infrastructure around stablecoins in the NEAR ecosystem.

Currently, native $USDT is live on NEAR, available on Bitfinex (and soon on other top-tier CEXs), and can be bridged using Multichain. Ref Finance has already deployed a new native $USDT pool and soon Tonic will be launching perps with native $USDT. Finally, Circle has announced that, in early 2023, native $USDC will be deployed on NEAR.

Wallets

While one year ago only a couple of wallets were available on NEAR native, multiple options have arisen in 2022. The NEAR ecosystem comprises of web wallets (NEAR Wallet, MyNearWallet), browser extension wallets (Sender, Nightly, Meteor), mobile wallets (Here, Opto), hardware wallets (Ledger), institutional-grade wallets (Fireblocks, BitGo), and even Ethereum wallets such as MetaMask via NETH, which was announced 2 days ago.

Developed by Proximity, NETH is a smart contract that enables your Ethereum account to sign transactions and remotely control your paired NEAR account, allowing you to directly interact with NEAR dApps using your Ethereum wallet. It is compatible with MetaMask* and you can already use it in dApps such as Ref or Burrow. For more information about NETH, including how to create and account, click here.

The variety of both software and hardware solutions, combined with innovative features such as transactions using a linked phone number instead of an address (Here Wallet), integrated in-wallet DeFi services (Meteor), institutional-grade support, and Ethereum compatibility (NETH<>MetaMask), NEAR offers one the best onboarding experiences when it comes to wallets. And soon, in 2023, zero balance accounts will be ready so that you won’t need any $NEAR for the storage cost when you initially set up an account.

Additionally, the release of the NEAR Wallet Selector plugin by Pagoda has smoothened the wallet integration process for dApps, as well as providing a unified interface for wallet options on NEAR.

*NETH is not affiliated with MetaMask or its parent company Consensys Software, Inc.

Portfolio Management Tools

Adding to the improved user experience provided by wallets, NEAR also saw the introduction of portfolio management tools in 2022. Most notably, Pulsar and Leap Wallet launched their portfolio tracking & management tools for NEAR, both coming directly from Terra. You can track your assets across multiple wallets and aggregate information on debt, DeFi positions, NFTs, performance over time, activate notifications, and more.

Analytics

Launched last summer, Pikespeak.ai is the Nansen of NEAR. It provides access to live and historical on-chain data with visualizations of the most fundamental Web 3 use cases: DeFi, DAOs, NFTs, Gaming, etc. You can track contract calls, inflows and outflows to/from dApps, monitor wallet activity, contracts deployed, NEAR validators performance, and many other on-chain analysis. The project will start its integration with Aurora and Ethereum in early 2023.

Fiat On/Off-ramps

Fiat on/off-ramps are crucial to lower the entry barrier to crypto and gear it towards mass adoption. In 2022, NEAR saw multiple fiat on/off-ramp solutions enter the ecosystem. On top of Moonpay, which was NEAR's go-to solution until now, NEAR is now also supported by Transak, Ramp, and Onramper. Transak, most notably, has already been integrated on Ref Finance, enabling fiat-to-crypto payments at the dApp level.

Looking Forward to 2023

2022 has been a year of exponential growth for NEAR: the number of wallets skyrocketed from 2 million to 20 million, the number of transactions just passed 250 million, and developer activity has grown through bull and bear. It is safe to say our year in review, even confined to DeFi, is far from comprehensive and there is a lot more brewing underneath the surface.

On that note, here are a few things to look out for DeFi on NEAR and Aurora in 2023.

• Orderbooks: perps on Tonic; options and more on Spin; perps and lending pools on Orderly; and a thriving ecosystem of DeFi products built on top of these orderbooks.
• Upcoming launches in early 2023: Veax and Omomo (NEAR native), Derivio and Cora (Aurora).
• Stablecoins: full integration of native $USDT and native $USDC in top-tier CEXs, bridges, on/off-ramps, and DeFi protocols.
• Decentralized front-ends for DeFi through NEAR Social and NEAR OS.

Happy holidays — see you in the new year!

About Proximity Labs

Proximity is a research and development firm focused on supporting the NEAR DeFi ecosystem. Consisting of former members of the NEAR Foundation, Binance US, Consensys, Facebook, and more, Proximity works closely with projects building on NEAR, whether through its investment arm, grant program, open-source software solutions, or by deploying its deep expertise to help design impactful strategies and serve as a bridge between DeFi teams and ecosystem participants. It has advised numerous bluechip DeFi projects contributing to the NEAR’s and Aurora’s recent success.

Website · Twitter · Get in Touch · $10M Orderbook Fund

A Year in Review: NEAR DeFi in 2022 was originally published in NEAR Protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Disclosures: Proximity Labs holds $NEAR, $AURORA, and tokens that may be associated with other protocols mentioned in the article. These statements are intended to disclose any conflict of interest and should not be misconstrued as a recommendation to purchase or sell any token or to use any protocol. The content of this article is for informational purposes only, and you should not make investment decisions based on it. This is not investment advice. Proximity Labs is not affiliated with MetaMask or its parent company Consensys Software, Inc.

To date, MetaMask is by far the most popular wallet in crypto: it has over 30 million monthly active users (MAU), connects you with 3,700+ dApps and Web3 protocols, and the majority of DeFi flows through it.

While projects on Ethereum and EVM chains have the advantage of inheriting existing infrastructure such as MetaMask, non-EVM chains have needed to come up with their own solutions. At Proximity Labs, we wanted to change this. We have built the first solution to offer MetaMask compatibility on a non-EVM chain through a smart contract called NETH, which allows you to remotely control a NEAR account using your Ethereum account.

Cut to the chase? Check out the demo and start using NETH on Ref Finance and Burrow.

This is NETH: Unlocking Ethereum Wallets on NEAR Native

While NEAR can support EVM runtimes, like Aurora, NEAR's native runtime is not EVM-compatible. This creates an onboarding barrier to users accustomed to their Ethereum wallets, who have to relearn everything when entering a new chain. NETH sets out to solve one thing: allow users to utilize their Ethereum Wallets to interact with NEAR Native dApps.

NETH is a smart contract that enables your Ethereum account to sign transactions and remotely control your paired NEAR account, allowing you to directly interact with NEAR dApps using your Ethereum wallet, such as MetaMask.

Deployed on the NEAR side, NETH allows your paired NEAR account to accept transaction details (payload) and the signature from your paired Ethereum account. The contract:

• verifies the signature from the Ethereum account,
• recovers the Ethereum public address and,
• executes the transaction if it matches the address from the initial NETH setup.

This means that NEAR is now accessible through the most widely used non-custodial wallet in crypto, removing the entry barrier for EVM users to enter the NEAR Native ecosystem. Also, NETH accounts can handle NEAR transactions with multiple receivers and multiple actions per receiver, making a NETH Account capable of using the most advanced NEAR dApps.

Setup, Usability, and Security

NETH comprises a NEAR account with a deployed smart contract and the NEAR Wallet Selector plugin. Some of its key features are as follows:

• Everything is open-source. The repo for the Wallet Selector plugin and setup frontend can be found here.
• The entire process is non-custodial: you are in charge of your keys the whole time.
• The NETH Account setup flow is entirely client-side: it runs on your computer only and is not communicating with a server or third party.
• We worked with OtterSec to audit the contract and various user journeys for potential risks, the report of which can be found here.
• NETH is whitelisted on NEAR’s Wallet Selector, which smoothens the dApp integration process. Projects on NEAR only need to integrate the Wallet Selector and NETH will show up as one of the default options. The repo for the Wallet Selector can be found here.

As with any transaction on NEAR, there are some fees that go to validators (not affiliated with Proximity) to fund the wallet initially. Currently, the creation of a NETH account is 0.5 $NEAR, which is used to pay for the account name, access keys, and contract storage.

Note that the setup process is not without risks. Should your device suffer a catastrophic failure during the setup process resulting in a loss of access to the local storage of the website, you may not be able to recover the funds used to set up the NETH Account. This is why we decided to write the NETH Contract as a no-std Rust contract deployed on NEAR since it only requires 0.5 $NEAR to create the account and deploy the NETH Contract.

Once set up, there is also an option to disconnect the account and walk away with a seed phrase to a NEAR Native account. From there you can use any NEAR Wallet by importing the seed phrase.

Using dApps is as simple as signing transactions using your Ethereum Account (e.g., through MetaMask or MetaMask mobile) as you normally would. We made sure to include headers, receiver IDs, and size information in the transaction payload to increase legibility and security and to minimize the chances of malicious tampering with transaction details.

Bringing MetaMask and other Ethereum wallets to NEAR native combines the full potential and capabilities of the NEAR blockchain with the familiarity, user experience, and battle-tested track record of Ethereum’s wallet ecosystem.

Importantly, although we use MetaMask as an example, NETH works for most Ethereum wallets! This is because NETH is a smart contract entirely on the NEAR side, which uses Ethereum accounts (whether it be MetaMask or not), and is not an official integration by the MetaMask team.

Future Work

With the core functionality live, these are the next steps for NETH that we are currently exploring:

• An improved onboarding experience, with a cost reduction in the amount needed to fund the account (currently 0.5 $NEAR), which can be achieved in several ways:

1. A subsidized faucet for account creation based on certain criteria, such as bridging a non-trivial amount from Ethereum or other networks;
2. Using bridged funds via the Rainbow Bridge to swap and pay the 0.5 $NEAR (or less);
3. Initial funding using NEAR’s Moonpay integration; and
4. Zero balance accounts on NEAR, which would eliminate the need for initial set-up costs altogether.

For now, feel free to reach out to the NEAR community if you do not have access to any NEAR tokens or explore other potential opportunities for funding, such as NEAR Crowd.

• Tighter integration with bridging assets as a feature within the Wallet Selector plugin, embedding the Rainbow Bridge into other dApps.
• More dApp integrations.
• UI/UX improvements.
• Educational materials and guides for users and devs.

Today, you can find NETH live on NEAR’s Wallet Selector plugin on dApps such as Ref Finance and Burrow, with many more to come. Watch the demo and start using NETH here!

About Proximity

Proximity is a research and development firm supporting the NEAR DeFi ecosystem through investments, developer support, open-source software, and advisory services. The Proximity team consists of former members of the NEAR Foundation, Binance, Consensys, Facebook, and more. It has advised numerous DeFi projects contributing to both NEAR and Aurora’s recent success.

Website · Twitter · Get in Touch · 10M Orderbook Fund

Introducing NETH: NEAR Becomes The First Non-EVM Chain to Offer MetaMask Compatibility was originally published in NEAR Protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.