In the past couple of months, Open Web Sandbox and NEAR education have been working together to create a Web3 Entrepreneurs’ Guide — a resource for developers, entrepreneurs, and educators who aspire to kickstart educational businesses on NEAR.

Created by a team of entrepreneurs, Guild leaders, developers, and writers active in the NEAR ecosystem, the group worked together to put forward an informative and accessible guide based on an in-depth study of NEAR Hispano — the most successful NEAR regional educational hub. The guide is designed to be a toolkit for anyone looking to build a successful educational business, and a starting point for anyone interested in Web3 entrepreneurship.

Fostering Web3 Adoption Through Education

NEAR’s infrastructure was built to power the Web3 revolution is and open up a new frontier for developers and entrepreneurs interested in creating innovative businesses. Education is key to this mission. It will play a major role in facilitating the transition from Web2 to Web3. That is why NEAR Education is investing in creating the necessary resources to onboard the next generation of entrepreneurs, educators, and developers. The Web3 Entrepreneurs’ Guide positions itself as a tool for those interested in leveraging NEAR ecosystem resources to create thriving educational businesses that will help attract talent and new users.

What is the Web3 Entrepreneurs’ Guide?

This guide is a valuable resource that gathers all the information and insights from an in depth case study of one of the most successful NEAR educational hubs. Designed to be simple and informative, this guide provides its readers with a clear picture of the steps required to create a Web3 educational hub to foster innovation and across different regions. Starting with a thorough introduction of NEAR Hispano that highlights its business model and value proposition, the guide breaks down the stages that preceded the launch of NEAR Hispano, the strategies put in place to promote the project, as well as an overview of the result achieved. By examining these processes, the guide puts forward nine key takeaways that will help future entrepreneurs replicate NEAR Hispano’s success.

Launch and Future Development

The guide will be available in English and Russian on the Open Web Sandbox Website starting from the 31st of March. After the launch the team will continue updating the guide to keep it relevant and up to date. It will serve as a living document that will evolve as the community grows.

About Open Web Sandbox

A human-centric digital hub for everyone wishing to engage with projects building on top of the NEAR Protocol.

Twitter | Website

Written by La Devochka.

Announcing the Release of the Web3 Entrepreneur’s Guide was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A series on humans currently and previously involved with OWS.

Abdelillah has been into blockchain since university — working on projects developing distributed data structures for medical data. Now, he sees no other career path but the one he has found himself in: the NEAR ecosystem.

Retrospectively, it makes sense.

Abdelilla grew up and studied in Algeria, which means he is fluent in Arabic, French, and English. His forte is in distributed networks, receiving a bachelor in computer science and a masters in distributed systems. As a kid, Abdelillah hoped to become a professional football player, but as many of us have most likely experienced, as we begin to conceptualise competition and probability, we start to aim for more contextual solutions. As a teenager he loved watching Real Madrid and Roger Federer, and also began to grow an interest in maths. Of course, as any romantic, he is also into sitting on the beach and watching sunsets. But back to his professional life, Abdelillah decided to pursue his interest and natural ability in maths, but applying it to something rather pragmatic, keeping in spirit with his initial career plans. After university, he began working as a freelance front-end developer, on Angular and Solidity projects.

This isn’t surprising, given his technical background, and focus on distributed systems. However, that only lasted 6 months, after a good friend of his, Mustafa, contacted him with an unexpected opportunity.

Building communities from scratch

Mustafa is (and was) the leader of the NEAR Arabic community. After briefing him about the early stage opportunities within the NEAR ecosystem, Abdelillah found the Open Web Sandbox, and began collaborating in the OWS Rolling Opportunities provided by the guild. Joining as early as March 2021, he was one of the first people to get involved in OWS. Part of those opportunities allowed Abdelillah to establish the NEAR France community, by creating a myriad of social media channels, creating NEAR related content and translating existing ecosystem information for his new community.

He is now the go to for any French related translations or community events. A prime example of a proactive community builder.

Success post Rolling Opportunities

Now OWS has removed the Rolling Opportunities, which were the initial phase of the role of OWS: financially enabling community members to set up community infrastructures to support and aid all future incoming demographics, both in terms of language, culture, and interests. So, what happens now for people like Abdelillah? Well, his enthusiasm to keep the community rolling, and its self-sustaining property that has followed from its now large amount of members, has made the NEAR France community a great example of the launchpad role that OWS took for individuals and their communities throughout 2021: provide the appropriate support to get the ball rolling. Now that NEAR France, and other established communities, are continuing to grow independently, OWS focuses on providing educational content, mentoring initiatives, and project opportunities, to grow the collaborative output of the growing amount of community members, which ultimately aims to grow the general NEAR ecosystem.

France, NEAR and Abdelillah

The next immediate goal for Abdelillah is to create a 3 to 4 person team to help him with the ever growing internal operations and content creation of NEAR France. With developing ambassador ties with the Octopus Network and DeBio, and a maintained friendship with NEAR Arabic, Abdelillah has plenty on his hands, and hopes to collaborate with these projects, both from a technical, and community building perspective. As a young individual beginning his career, Abdelilla has an unstoppable drive. For now, he keeps busy with developing new connections and finding new opportunities.

Stay updated for future events by checking out our website, following us on Twitter, and don’t hesitate to ask questions on our Discord. If you miss any of our events, watch them anytime on our YouTube channel. See you next time!

Written by Jacopo Nuti, a writer for OWS.

Humans of the Open Web Sandbox: Abdelillah was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Web Sandbox Party Recap: January

This January Sandboxers and NEARians reunited for the first 2022 edition of the Open Web Sandbox Monthly Party. During this hour long live event, we discussed the emergence of the web3 metaverse, its social and philosophical implications, and some of the pragmatic benefits it will bring, especially in the new and fast growing NEAR Hub. Here we will provide a short recap of the presentations held by our guest speakers.

What is the metaverse and its opportunities?

In general, the term metaverse has gained popularity both in the web2 and web3 space. It has turned into a bit of a buzz word, of course with the rebranding of Meta being (they hoped) the beginning of its mainstream popularity. But what is it that we are talking about when we say ‘metaverse’?

Essentially, the metaverse increases the way in which we interact with a digital reality — and the other humans that are a part of it — by creating a three dimensional world inside our digital devices. This is still a pretty conceptual description and can be specified toward clarity in various ways, as shown by our panelists.

Clarian, co-founder of Tamago, a decentralised music streaming platform being built on NEAR, begins by highlighting the new market that this technology will allow, and the yet unknown directions this could take.

“The metaverse is potentially…an emerging market of opportunities for different technologies to ensure a more virtual type of medium of exchange taking place on different platforms. Creating a more virtual-centric way to increase optimization, utility, or create interesting worlds for games.”

— Clarian.

Similarly, Sasha, co-founder of the Human Guild, considers its geo-economic impact:

“I think the metaverse is just part of this bigger trend of economy getting completely decoupled from geography. People from anywhere can go meet up and collaborate and build stuff.”

— Sasha.

But it is also important to keep in mind the roots of the web3 movements: the fragmentation of market capitalisation through the decentralisation of technology and decision making.

“It’s definitely not something that one person can just own, it’s something that i think many tech companies can use moving forward to create more beneficial experiences for people in the future.”

— Clarian.

Vandal, founder of DAO Records, a virtual record label that mints audio NFTs and hosts virtual music events on NEAR, also added to this point.

“One component that really kind of defines the metaverse in my mind is the implementation of blockchain or decentralized technology…web3 is really the defining factor in my mind behind the the meaning of the metaverse”

— Vandal.

What is important is not only what the metaverse is from a users perspective, but what it is built on from a structural perspective. Web3 metaverse platforms offer more forward thinking structures for the various components that they are built on. If this is something we care about, from a data privacy point of view, then we should care about what platforms the metaverse is built on.

Pandu, from Decentricity, the builder of Myriad.Social, DeBio, and RealityChain, is fascinated by the socially immersive impact that a web3 metaverse will have.

“The difference between the metaverse, normal video games and other types of virtual experiences is that first of all it’s persistent, and secondly it is focused on social immersion like the ability to basically have conversations within these worlds.”

— Pandu.

One of the directions the web3 metaverse has taken off in the NEAR ecosystem is in the music industry.

What about the opportunities for the music industry?

Vandal began the discussion of the metaverse and the music industry with a reality check: the pandemic of the last two years and its impact on the live music industry.

“Due to the the pandemic and the inability to do events in the real world — which is what i’ve been doing for the past 20 plus years or so — we kind of manoeuvred into the metaverse using Cryptovoxels, incorporating music and NFTs, and just like a virtual location for anybody anywhere to come and join in these musical experiences.”

— Vandal.

The closing of borders and venues has been a great threat to the live music industry, not only by eliminating the public’s exposure to it, but also by hindering the communal union of like minded individuals. But now, the metaverse is posing as a virtual solution to the continual uncertainty of variants, lockdowns, and travel restrictions.

“It’s a great tool to connect people similar in my mind to what MySpace was before Facebook, where you could connect people with similar interests.”

— Vandal.

Vandal hopes that the metaverse can fulfil this role and grow a global community of music enthusiasts to keep the live music culture alive no matter the circumstances. While the metaverse opportunities for the music industry are coming into fruition, there are also other less obvious but greatly beneficial uses cases for the technology.

What is the added value of the metaverse in your specific industry?

Pandu explains that the metaverse allows better services for biological data, for example:

“Consulting your personal genetic consultant; on-chain payments; and the ability to easily transport your electronic medical records with you whilst not compromising the security of the data.”

— Pandu.

In this way, the metaverse offers a human touch in the growing custom of digital clinical interactions, whilst maintaining confidentiality and privacy as a central property.

On the other hand, Clarian points out a similar point to Vandal’s about the hit the live music industry has taken. Clarian’s app Tamago aims to bring a Soundcloud/Spotify music experience, where content and data is stored on web3 technologies using IPFS, rather than the centralised data centres that web2 companies use. Within this he hopes to reach a point where the metaverse can make ‘streaming art’ (e.g. youtube live videos) a much more rich experience, where the audience can feel more connected to their favourite artists from any location of the world.

Microchipgnu, from 3XR, a virtual gallery space provider where people can showcase their NFTs or collaborate with other artists, explains how virtual spaces such as the ones they create play a key role in the development of the metaverse.

“[The role of the metaverse] is to have an open space [for creatives], unlike Facebook, which tries to present itself as such, but actually taxes the users.”

— Microchipgnu.

The exposition of medical data, music, and art cover just some of the use cases of the metaverse. The rest are for us to figure out, using these great projects as inspiration. But apart from these specific use cases, what will the metaverse do to society more generally?

What about the social impact this technology will have?

In Sasha’s view, the metaverse could have beneficial cross-context application, such as information sharing across platforms, which will benefit individuals in a variety of potential social scenarios.

“Social profiles — that could be social graphs … interest graphs…those pieces of information about individual users — they’ll be living in different contexts between different open web applications. For example if you did help somebody in the context of a hackathon and you earn some kind of reputation there. You can redeem it in the context of online invite-only events in the metaverse. So you’ll have the transition of your individual information across different contexts — that’s not how the internet works today unfortunately.”

— Sasha.

But as Vandal rightfully points out, this sensitive social and political territory:

“You could see a situation where regulators and those who control your access to the internet could base their decisions upon such information. Where our decentralised utopian vision could become our own prison if it’s controlled by centralised entities who want to take advantage of people — and i think that that is something we should be aware of.’’

This is why we must aim to create a metaverse that is as minimally controlled by single points of decision-making bodies as possible.

The future of the metaverse becomes even more unknown and exciting if we consider, as Sasha points out, that out of thousands of years of social, cultural and technological development, the world is only now witnessing the first internet native generations — a transition that is both fascinating but still normatively uncertain. What direction will the collective unconscious of an internet native generation look like, or rather, what direction should we aim to steer it toward?

“Collective unconscious…if we see a red light we know not to cross on a very basic level. Don’t cross the street because there’s a red light chance —it shows a symbolic chance of risk of being hurt or killed”

— Clarian.

What will be the red light of an internet native generation? Where will they stop? It is an exciting time for many reasons, and the development of the metaverse is an important part of that excitement. Communication and custody of information and data is central to this discussion, and such communication between cultures, societies and generations must be mediated by a set of technologies that are appropriate for this. Web3 and the metaverse being developed within in it should be developed to be well equipped for this.

“As creators we must be very aware of the fact that the online dimension unites people of very different cultural backgrounds, education, and pop culture… this contributes to a great [but challenging] diversity…we [as creators] must lead our fellow humans toward an easy, clean, and uniting communication.”

— Microchipgnu.

Our guests helped us understand what the metaverse is, what it is being used for in the NEAR ecosystem, but also what it could be used for in society more generally. It is the beginning of a challenging but exciting period, one that will blur the lines between digital and physical reality. The way that we will chose to see it, and the words we will pick to describe it, are things yet to be determined. Conversations such as these are important for that development. We are certain that the NEAR ecosystem and blockchain more generally will value these spaces and their discussion.

All the participants at the OWS party walked away with an exclusive NFT in their pocket made by one of the creators of Bob Boom. The beautiful NFT airdropped to the participants’ Mintbase store works as a proof of participation as well as a nice souvenir from this amazing party edition.

Stay updated for future events by following us on Twitter and don’t hesitate to ask questions on our Discord. If you miss any of our events, watch them anytime on our YouTube channel.

Written by one of our writers: Jacopo Nuti.

A Roundtable With NEAR Metaheads was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On the 26th of January, Open Web Sandbox welcomed Dede and JCB from Chapter 1 foundation to our weekly AMA. During the AMA we talked about C1’s history, objectives, and future projects. For a recap on the AMA keep reading this piece and check the YouTube recording out!

What is the C1 foundation?

Chapter 1 Foundation is a guild composed of artists that with the production and selling of their art help other artists get access to the necessary means to produce, mint, and sell NFTs.

“The way for artists to get involved is just to continue to create, the whole concept behind it is that the artists who create are the ones that help other artists create. Because once we can generate the revenue from the sales of the NFTs is going to be dumped back into creating these programs provides the artists with the means to create”.

-JCB

C1 helps artists mint their work and use the 30% of the proceeds to fund more projects. By doing so they create a self reinforcing loop that benefits artists, C1, and the NEAR ecosystem.

C1 Goal

The founders of C1 are seasoned musicians and music engineers dissatisfied with the way the current music industry’s exploitative schemes:

“The entertainment industry, the music industry is a disaster of an industry. Artists are constantly taken advantage of. It takes about a month of 1 million on Spotify in order to make the equivalent to a minimum wage paying job. I know people who write platinum selling singles and they don’t get paid.”

-JCB

The current system makes it impossible for musicians and creators to make a living and to be fully independent from the industry’s wishes. C1 foundation has seen an opportunity on Web3 to change this state of affairs and help artists get what they deserve.

“So the utilization of smart contracts through Mintbase is brilliant and is an attractive feature for artists who want to get paid for creating. The fact that it’s instantaneous and the royalties splits are instantaneous is an excellent feature and is enough to draw people to the space if you are having a right opportunity to speak to them”.

-JCB

The goal of C1 is to spread the good news of Web3 among artists and help them get their way around the new opportunities offered by the NEAR ecosystem and beyond.

What’s Coming Next?

Outreach and education are the main two pillars of the foundation’s program. From February, the C1 foundation will start its evangelisation tour in Nigeria which will bring to the onboarding of new artists and the beginning of a new phase for the guild.

Chapter One Foundation ( C1 Guild ) on Twitter: "A personal invite from @Ekeyzondabeat to the C1 Guild x @nxmlive NEAR TOUR event, Sunday Feb 6th! #futureisNEAR #blockchain #NFTs #Web3 pic.twitter.com/6AjgeJf4Jg / Twitter"

A personal invite from @Ekeyzondabeat to the C1 Guild x @nxmlive NEAR TOUR event, Sunday Feb 6th! #futureisNEAR #blockchain #NFTs #Web3 pic.twitter.com/6AjgeJf4Jg

The Guild is also actively planning on becoming a full fledged NGO to further its effectiveness and will continue to plan events for engaging the community like the ‘Future of NEAR music challenge”.

Chapter One Foundation ( C1 Guild ) on Twitter: "🗣LAST WEEK to enter the Future is #NEAR music challenge! Don't miss out on your chance to win $250 USD in NEAR and get your song minted & heard by all👂🎵 Click here for rules & registration: https://t.co/Me7of2otwi pic.twitter.com/QgOpn6DIuV / Twitter"

🗣LAST WEEK to enter the Future is #NEAR music challenge! Don't miss out on your chance to win $250 USD in NEAR and get your song minted & heard by all👂🎵 Click here for rules & registration: https://t.co/Me7of2otwi pic.twitter.com/QgOpn6DIuV

How to Get Involved?

The easiest way to get involved with C1 is to join their Discord channel, or get in touch with them through any other social media platform. Here you will find a link to all their contacts.

Open Web Sandbox AMA Recap: Chapter 1 Foundation was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A series on humans currently and previously involved with OWS.

Anastasiia has been around the Open Web Sandbox since its first months. She is an integral part of the OWS team, single-handedly managing all of their project relations. However Anastasiia’s background is not what you expect.

Setting up for the unknown.

Ana is from Moscow, Russia. Her interests are in cinematography and literature. But she doesn’t mind a bit of yoga and sewing. Her favourite era is 90s cinema: La Haine, Trainspotting, and all those other neo-noir, black comedy crime films that came out that decade.

Apart from her cultural interests, Ana completed a Bachelor of Philosophy in Moscow to absorb all those philosophical cognitive attributes that they tell you ‘teach you how to think’.

From Corporate to Web3.

She used those skills at a digital advertising company for a few years, making banners, videos, and digital content for medical, business, and fashion brands. But the clients and corporate structure did not really excite her.

She needed a new divergence, one that would help her apply those philosophical attributes to something less cognitive, pragmatic, but equally stimulating. Her move was to move to Italy to study political science, read Italian literature and watch every Fellini film. This was more of a ‘do now ask questions later’ move, but thats what somehow gets the ball rolling, right?

From one thing to another, Anastasiia got to know Valentina — OWS’s IT Wizard — during her time in Italy. Valentina urged Ana to look into blockchain, past the financial and computer scientific part, and into a career path toward Web3 technologies. This certainly got the ball rolling.

She became passionate about the social and political applications of Web3, finally making sense of her broad background: philosophical concerns against big corporations, applied to a geo-political reality of oligopolies and political misconduct, require pragmatic structural solutions, and Web3 seemed to her like the most promising candidate.

While these are big picture concerns for Ana, she still decided to turn her full professional attention to Web3, leading her into landing a job with OWS during its early incubation period.

The OWS story begins.

OWS began as a team of people looking for others to join the Web3 space by offering blockchain related opportunities within the NEAR ecosystem. A large part of that is to try and match the perfect person with the perfect opportunity. Her position is just that — project manager for OWS. Her experience in digital media and management is a valuable asset for OWS.

This is how she helps with project management; implementing timelines, structure and processes, and be effective at project relations. She highlights how the team is wonderful to work with, and the tens of people she meets through the projects excite her about the future of the ecosystem. Within the broader sphere you can reach out to anybody and anybody can reach out to you.

The future is NEAR, or OWS.

Her plan for the year is to help develop and build a new OWS Career Path so that contributors are clear on how to participate for all parts of the process: education, training, and opportunity. OWS is an important bumper zone for new comers and must be developed as such as the audience increases. She imagines the unknowingness of stepping into the NEAR ecosystem and hopes to make this easier for new comers.

After university (but not only) people struggle to find work and to gain work experience, the classic experience-without-experience loop. Companies like NEAR and OWS can aid this transition, by creating and assisting with educational content in conjunction to vocational opportunities.

On one hand, Ana passively hopes others in the Web3 space will move away from its narcissistic financial side and toward a more altruistic one.

On the other hand, Ana actively hopes to find a Web3 topic worth of intellectual analysis for her politics thesis, as she nevertheless remains adamant and bullish about its revolutionary potential.

She highlights her close relationship to her mother and the continual struggle of explaining to her what it is that she does.

Stay updated for future events by following us on Twitter and don’t hesitate to ask questions on our Discord. If you miss any of our events, watch them anytime on our YouTube channel.

Written by Jacopo Nuti, a proponent of a Philosophy of Blockchain.

Humans of the Open Web Sandbox: Anastasiia was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Web Sandbox AMA Recap: NEAR HUB — An Immersive Social Portal To Everything NEAR

On the 19th of January, the Open Web Sandbox welcomed Jeff Gold, co-founder of NEAR Hub to our weekly AMAs. During the AMA we talked about the difference between centralized and decentralized metaverses, how NEAR Hub came to be, future developments and more. For a recap on the AMA keep reading this piece and check the YouTube recording out!

What is NEAR Hub?

NEAR Hub is a community-driven initiative that aims to build the first metaverse for the NEAR community. It has recently received funding from the Human Guild, the NEAR guild dedicated to supporting the next generation of Web3 games built on NEAR. In the next few months, NEAR Hub will build the first portal to the NEARverse that will allow users to experience the NEAR ecosystem in an engaging and meaningful way while retaining full ownership of their data.

“We wanted to create a portal where people could just find anything about NEAR. So anyone, newcomers and veterans, can just come in and have a DeFi, NFT, gaming infrastructure, education area, so they can just walk in and find different projects, and access to the web of knowledge being created.”

-Jeff Gold

NEAR Hub’s vision is to create a metaverse for the NEAR community where people can interact with each other, work, and build relationships in a disintermediated and privacy-respecting environment. It positions itself as the first starting contact for newcomers to discover the NEAR ecosystem but also as the playground for NEAR’s dApps, a place where work mixes with friendship and creativity is unleashed.

NEAR Hub’s Core User Experience

1. Immersive customisable 3D virtual meeting spaces : Spatial direction mic, pen function (allows to create art), in world camera, VR headsets and gloves.
2. NFT marketplace, and introduction of gated NFTs for shows
3. Avatar Options: base model, or generative NFT from NEAR Hub.

What are the Advantages of a Decentralized Metaverse?

The word Metaverse is breaking into mainstream and it seems that Web2 companies like Facebook have plans for building their centralized metaverses. These Web2 metaverses, however, are incapable of providing privacy to users as well as real ownership.

“One of the biggest advantages of a decentralized metaverse is privacy. With Facebook metaverse you have none. They know every motion you are doing, everything you are looking at, it’s kind of scary! While with NEAR Hub we don’t store the data, everything will be stored in NFTs in users’ NEAR wallets. When they come they can pull out the data from NFT, interact with the site, and use the assets as needed but when they leave, they take all the data with them.”

-Jeff Gold

NEAR Hub brings real ownership and privacy to the metaverse by empowering its users to have full control over their data and the assets they buy on the metaverse.

2022 Roadmap

Q1: NEAR Hub will bring to fruition a Human Guild Arcade, add world game mechanics, create token gated rooms, peer to peer token transfers and in World DAO voting.

Q2: Further UI improvements, avatar upgrades, deploy Beta node on IPFS and NEAR Hub auctions.

Q3: IDO launch, deploy Alpha node on IPFS, launch a NEAR Hub community loyalty program and bring to fruition the NEAR Hub Mega Park.

Q4: Public token launch and inaugurate community mining nodes to support the network.

OWS First Metaverse Party on NEAR Hub!

On the 28th of January, Open Web Sandbox is going to host its first metaverse party on NEAR Hub. We have commissioned a brand new room on NEAR Hub to welcome our guests and host a very interesting roundtable with NEAR’s most wanted metaheads!

For more information on Open Web Sandbox’ Events follow its dedicated Twitter page!

Open Web Sandbox AMA Recap: NEAR HUB — An Immersive Social Portal To Everything NEAR was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Web Sandbox Party Recap

On the third of December the Sandboxers and NEARians reunited for yet another edition of the Open Web Sandbox party. During this hour and a half long event, we discussed how to best combine Web2 tools with Web3 concepts to create innovative applications and pave the way for a better future. Here we will provide a short recap of the presentations held by our guest speakers.

Chronear: Business On NEAR

The first presentation was held by Chronear, the founder of the NEAR Intelligence Agency (NIA), and one of the members of the community. One of the latest projects that he has been working on is Business on NEAR (BoN), a guild dedicated to kickstart business on NEAR. BoN’s objective is to make it easy to learn about funding opportunities available at NEAR, to easily introduce outside projects to the NEAR ecosystem, and to incentivise referrals.

Jordan: Astro DAO

Jordan is the leader (aka DAOist) of Astro DAO, a DAO tooling on NEAR, that makes all the powerful DAO tooling on NEAR easy to use for everyday users. Astro DAO is a project that was incubated by NEAR lab, a group inside the NEAR foundation that takes internal tooling and also helps external projects turn into companies and spin out. During his presentation, Jordan talked about how Astro DAO make the creation and use of DAOs extra easy thus fostering further adoption by the community.

“DAOs help eliminate the difference between consumers and creators, it empowers people, allows for collective ownership, and distributed governance. Distributed governance is a powerful tool to overcome today’s challenges”

Jordan

Jordan concluded his presentation by touching upon his ideas about the future of on-chain governance and the integration between the Web3 space and the outside world still dominated by traditional rules.

Alejandro VB: Silicon Craftsmen Guild

The third presentation was held by Alejandro VB from the Silicon Craftsmen Guild, a community-led working group whose focus is to develop and advance Web3 Product Design and User Experience (UX) standards. During his presentation, Alejandro talked about the importance of UX in determining a product’s adoption as well as the most common misconceptions associated with Web3 UXs. According to Alejandro, UXs are key to making the transition between Web2 and Web3 happening.

“Web3 needs to provide the same seamless experience of Web2 but that does not mean that it needs to provide exactly the same experience. There are some specific challenges to Web3 that require different elaborations and different frameworks”

Alejandro

The presentation ended on a reflective note on the future of Web3’s UXs. What are the frameworks that we want to bring from Web2 and what are the things that should be abandoned for good?

Valentina: Open Web Sandbox Website Launch

The last presentation was carried out by Valentina, one of OWS’ web designers, who announced the launch of the new OWS’ website. During her presentation, Valentina did not only showcase the OWS’ website sections and designs but also talked about the process and challenges behind building it.

The event ended with a recap of the guest’s presentations which, throughout the party, arose questions and discussions among the participants. Our guests helped us shed more light on the relationship between Web2 and Web3. The most valuable insight being that Web2 is not in opposition to Web3, however, its tools cannot always be easily brought into a new space. A lot of work and reflection still needs to happen before we find the right balance between these two complementary worlds and bring to fruition the best Web3 products.

All the participants at the OWS party walked away with an exclusive NFT in their pocket made by one of the creators of Bob Boom. The beautiful NFT airdropped to the participants’ Mintbase store works as a proof of participation as well as a nice souvenir from this amazing party edition.

Stay updated for future events by following us on Twitter and don’t hesitate to ask questions on our Discord. If you miss any of our events, watch them anytime on our YouTube channel.

Written by one of our writers: La Devochka.

Family Matters: Exploring The Relationship Between Web2 and Web3 was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A series on humans currently and previously involved with OWS.

From learning to teaching.

Fritz is well familiar with cryptocurrency. His first exposure to Bitcoin was at its inception — as a computer engineer student in 2009. After a brief career divergence toward production engineering, Fritz founded a blockchain company, involved in Ethereum pool management and mining equipment sales.

Following the unexpected beginning of the last bear market, Fritz, like many others, had to call an end to his company — seeing his experience as a valuable business learning opportunity, preparing him for the yet unknown opportunities that would unfold in the future.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Fritz has had first hand experience with government issued cryptocurrencies. The Petro is a Venezuelan digital currency issued by Maduro’s government in 2017 which can be used to pay for gasoline and government issued papers. As blockchain technology popularised in Venezuela, Fritz began giving classes as a blockchain educator and enthusiast for a financial technology learning hub — ‘El Mundo del Bitcoin: blockchain, Criptomonedas y Trading’ — with over 50k followers on Instagram. The South American Spanish speaking hub teaches its students how to login, do transfers, use exchanges, and mint NFTs — among other things.

Opportunities cannot be planned.

In Venezuela it is inconvenient to use financial systems nationally and very difficult to use them internationally. Because of this Fritz became involved in the FinTech scene in Venezuela — around 2017. Through this new community he met AVB — who would become the founder of the Silicone Craftsmen Guild, as we have written about him here. It wasn’t long until he met a guy called Claudio, who offered him a casual designer position for the NEAR Hispano community. Whilst digging around this new community he had newly joint, Fritz found people taking on tasks from something called the Open Web Sandbox (OWS). From here he led a Venezuelan squad of contributors who took on translation and content creation tasks from the list of OWS opportunities. For this he is grateful for the opportunity OWS has given him and humbly recalls his forum post thanking Sofia for her support:

Solutions turn heads.

Fritz has remained fundamentally bullish on NEAR for a simple reason: in his opinion, there are not too many application choices within general blockchain ecosystems out there — Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Binance are all high market cap blockchains that still have limited or inefficient application options for their size.

Fritz is enthusiastic about the fact that NEAR has offered a few important solutions for issues that Ethereum — for example — currently has. However, he does not see it as a competitive matter, but a collaborative one. He looks forward to a multi-chain and interoperable future, where all players will play their strongest card. Analogically, he highlights a similarity to the array of financial players that co-exist, such as Visa and Mastercard. But it’s also important to remember, he accentuates, that blockchains have the ability to disrupt more than finance, but democracy too.

As a software engineer, Fritz is ambitious about developing a P2P DEX Dapp with the aim of avoiding withdrawal blocks such as the current Binance-NEAR network suspension — with an underlying drive to facilitate financial services in Venezuela. This is due to limited financial services and growing national inflation.

He wants NEAR to become carbon negative, not neutral, with a focus on human heritage — through UNESCO. For this, DAO infrastructures are what should be promoted — and AstroDAO should be the model to promote.

Fritz also has plans to start a NEAR Equador, Colombia, Argentina, and many more central and South American countries. He encourages all new comers to not be shy, but to ask, talk, investigate, and ask questions — people will be there to teach you and support you. Motivation will get you far — as he has learnt from first hand experience. The NEAR community will be there for you.
What makes a protocol survive is the community around it and the ease to which that community can utilise the tools provided by the underlying protocol.

Humans of the Open Web Sandbox: Fritz was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A series on humans currently and previously involved with OWS.

Gregory is from a small town is Russia, Ulyanovsk, but has always been interested in technology.

He began gaming as a child on an 8-bit game console, then a Sega Mega Drive, and finally got his hands on a computer.

After studying IT at Ulyanovsk State Universite, Gregory worked in the rescue services of a hospital. More specifically, he was the on-scene IT assistance, monitoring the equipment used upon rescue.

Being experienced in quick, responsive technology, Gregory is most excited about how the medical industry will adopt blockchain technology. But Gregory’s interests are certainly not limited to digital content.

Documenting the world

It was not long after entering the working world that Gregory decided to take some time off to travel beyond his home town. Him and his brother decided to hit the road and drive 2,500km south, to Georgia.

Their first trip only prepared them to go even further. The following year the duo hitchhiked across India with nothing more than $50 in their pocket — crossing the Himalayas and arriving on the ocean. Busking on their ukulele was what kept them financially afloat.

With too many following trips to keep track of here, Gregory highlights the countless positivity he encountered from locals on his trip between Thailand and Hong Kong.

Gregory makes us wonder what sorts of views he has seen in his time. Thankfully, he is also passionate about photography and has been running social media profiles dedicated to visual travel documentation.

He is now based in what some would consider the edge of a vast Russian forest, far from the city — but nevertheless remotely connected to the blockchain world. He has taken a break from the fast pace of remote working, setting up a more stable work environment by returning to his home town.

On that note, let’s look into how Gregory got involved in the crypto space in the first place.

Community leader and

Moderating at OWS has been the first formal role Gregory has had within the blockchain industry. He found OWS through NEAR media channels. Appreciating their vision to expand and proliferate a community mindset, Gregory contacted OWS to offer help, and soon became team graphic designer and content creator.

To add to Gregory’s responsibilities, he was consul of the Degen project where he worked on social media management, graphic content, script writing and general operations.

With a passion for NEAR, IT, and graphic images, after a few months at OWS Gregory started his own project with a few friends: the NEAR Degen Syndicate. This community based project focuses on news and tutorials, YouTube video content, and real-life meet-ups in Russia. Check out their articles here. The project is expanding, and the team has begun establishing a work studio in Ulyanovsk.

But not only, with OWS’s release of the language channels, Gregory has taken up the Russian channel to help Russian speaking sandboxes with understanding content and moderating conversation.

Gregory is excited for OWS and the years that come ahead, urging an attention to scalability and development to an ever changing environment.

OWS has a unique position in giving exposure to projects working on NEAR. Opportunities on OWS bring out a lot of contributors that create wonderful media content — fostering a community based system.

Gregory is excited to witness the future development of Web3.0 technologies and is grateful to be a part of it — even though sometimes developments in the space can be a little fast!

So stay up to date and keep up with the crypto information flow!

Here are some channels to stay in the loop:

NEAR Syndicate:

• Twitter
• Telegram
• YouTube

OWS:

• Twitter
• Discord
• YouTube

Humans of the Open Web Sandbox: Gregory was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Web Sandbox Part Recap: October

At the end of September the Open Web Sandbox (OWS) hosted their monthly OWS Party: this month it was DeFi on NEAR Debunked. The event was a roundtable with industry experts from the NEAR ecosystem (developers using the NEAR Protocol). The main topic of the event was DeFi on NEAR: what DeFi, what services are available on NEAR, what the future looks like, and various other questions asked by the audience. Check out the YouTube video here.

In this article we will reiterate what questions were asked in the event and how they were answered — expanding a little where needed. This will start with an introduction to DeFi, going through each question as they appear most relevant. Then, we will talk about what investing in the NEAR DeFi ecosystem looks like and end it with a few questions on regulation, NFTs, and social tokens.

First thing’s first.

What is DeFi?

DeFi stands for decentralised finance. In contrast to centralised finance, the kind of finance we are used to in everyday life like banking, exchanges, and financial service providers, which utilise centralised software and servers, DeFi utilises decentralised smart contracts which function on a decentralised blockchain data structure.

Smart contracts provide immutably coded instructions on how the program should run without any intermediary involvement. Additionally, oracles like Flux, Band and Chainlink provide smart contracts access to off-chain, real world data to ensure truthful, smooth operations.

What does DeFi achieve?

DeFi eliminates the requirement of trusting centralised entities with investments and fund custody, allowing a user of DeFi to directly interact with investment tools and services using a simple digital wallet (with minimal to no fees). Users which have funds in these wallets on blockchain networks such as NEAR can use DApps (Decentralised Applications) to invest, trade, lend, borrow, stake, liquid stake, or farm cryptocurrencies. So, let’s begin with the first question asked during the event:

What is the difference between staking, liquid staking, and farming?

• Staking is when a user delegates tokens to a validator node part of a blockchain that uses a Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol, receiving rewards as a return.

• Liquid staking is when a user delegates tokens to a liquid staker which strategically distributes tokens to a selection of validator nodes to maximise returns.

• Farming is when a user delegates tokens to a yield farmer which strategises a maximally profitable scheme amongst different DeFi protocols: such as staking, liquidity pools, lending, and borrowing.

Staking on NEAR (with NEAR Wallet)

NEAR Protocol uses a proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm to validate transactions. Validators on the NEAR network earn $NEAR by validating transactions and producing new blocks. To be a validator there is a minimum amount of $NEAR the node must stake, which is deducted if they validate false transactions — similarly to an insurance deposit. Token holders not interested in becoming a validator can delegate their $NEAR to NEAR validators through the NEAR Wallet application. These delegated tokens are used by validators to stake in the network and earn rewards, giving the token holders who contributed to the staking a return on investment directly into their NEAR wallets.

Liquid staking on NEAR (with MetaPool)

A token holder can send an amount of $NEAR to a liquid staking provider such as MetaPool, the provider distributes the tokens to a chosen group of top performing validators, maximising the return on investment. Liquidity stakers can use funds from a liquidity pool to have access to more funds.

What is a liquidity pool and what are the advantages and disadvantages of providing liquidity?

Liquidity pools on NEAR (with Ref.finance)

Markets create a space where supply and demand meet, every market has its own rules to make that happen. One type of market space is an order book, which can be seen as peer-to-peer trading, as trades happen directly between users. Another type of market is composed of a collection of funds locked in smart contracts, called liquidity pools. Pools are most commonly composed of pairs of tokens filled by users. These pools of funds are managed by an automated market maker (AMM) algorithm, which can be seen as creating peer-to-contract trading. The benefit for users of providing funds for liquidity pools is to gain swap fees when the funds are traded. Ref.finance is the first platform that offers access to liquidity pools on NEAR, giving users the ability to provide liquidity and earn swap fee rewards.

Liquidity pools are used to facilitate other DeFi activities that require access to liquidity. Their use-value is varied and complex, and innovative, rewarding applications are common. However, if a user provides liquidity to an AMM, they will be exposed to the risk of impermanent loss.

What is impermanent loss?

Impermanent loss is the negative difference in dollar value of a token a user has put in a liquidity pool compared to its dollar value if they had simply HODLed it. Because a user most commonly provides liquidity in pairs of tokens, the larger the difference in volatility between the tokens is, the larger the difference in dollar value can become. So, impermanent loss is most likely for pairs that are more volatile themselves, or against each other. The important thing to remember is that if the funds are not withdrawn from the pool, the loss is impermanent, and permanent if they are withdrawn.

If you are not a pro, should you just choose the most stable pair?

Because a liquidity provider can have an inventory to manage with potentially very volatile tokens, a way to mitigate that is to provide liquidity to an AMM with less volatile tokens. For example, if a user provides DAI with USDT, then they wont have this volatility problem to manage in their inventory. So, if they want to provide liquidity but can only do minimum risk monitoring, then a stable pair of tokens is the less risky choice. Some liquidity pools such as Bancor have bypassed this risk by offering impermanent loss (IL) protection: liquidity providers are protected from realising a permanent loss on their initial investment.

Bancor protocol has IL protection, is this planned for Ref.finance?

Bancor is one of the most innovative AMMs within the industry. Currently there is no defined plan for Ref.finance to get IL protection, but it is planning to do so once it is more established amongst its competitors.

Does Ref.finance plan to integrate NarWallets on its platform?

Ref.finance will have a feature called InstantSwap which will allow users to swap tokens using its platform all within the NEAR Wallet, so you wont have to deposit on Ref.finance, swap and then withdraw. Apart from that, it currently has no plan to integrate NarWallets on its platform.

Farming on NEAR (with Cheddar Farm)

Yield farming aims to maximise a rate of return on capital by leveraging different DeFi protocols using complex strategies. Yield farmers try to chase the highest yield by switching between multiple strategies dynamically. Being flexible amongst different DeFi protocols (such as staking, liquidity pools, lending and borrowing) is central to obtain the most profitable strategy. Apart from the farms offered on Ref.finance, Cheddar farm is an up and coming yield farming service on NEAR.

Can Cheddar be used to farm $STNEAR

$STNEAR is the liquid $NEAR users on MetaPool receive for staking $NEAR (which can be exchanged at any time). Cheddar wont be used to farm $STNEAR but you will be able to farm $Cheddar with $STNEAR.

Yield aggregators: do they make yield farms safer or riskier?

Yield aggregators are an important part of the ecosystem. They utilise automated protocols to strategise and implement the most profitable yield farming technique across DeFi protocols. Because they are a layer 2 solution, it does add complexity and increase fallibility; they are managing risk and a user must put trust in them to manage it.

Risks/reward for DeFi

DeFi gives individuals the opportunity to access financial tools and applications that have not been typically available to the public — as they are usually mediated by banks and exchanges. This shifts the power completely to the individual. Due to this, there can be a high level of risk in self-governed DeFi. Correct management of funds is important and is not easy for all DeFi investment options. Because of this, The Wizard Guild in the NEAR ecosystem exists to guide users into the self-management of all NEAR DeFi services.

The risk of using financial services with no intermediaries is that there is limited insurance from hacks, smart contract errors, user errors, unbalanced pools, and depreciative token values. So, centralised finance is in some sense safer, but returns on investments are mostly lower. On the other hand, DeFi allows users to control their funds, disabling the ability of intermediaries to freeze or close accounts, and be secretive about the technical structure of their services.

If a user feels comfortable in the NEAR DeFi space, what are some options to getting started?

Investing in the NEAR DeFi ecosystem

Where and how should someone start investing in the NEAR DeFi ecosystem?

As always, this article exists to provide financial information, not advice. Financial information describes the state of a financial system, such as DeFi on NEAR in this case, whereas advice is when an article tells you how to behave within that financial system, which is in no way the aim of this piece. As we have mentioned, DeFi is complex and takes time to learn. Getting involved in DeFi on NEAR should be done after appropriate research. On a positive note, it is still early, and getting in early can be rewarding. Joining NEAR guilds communication channels like Merchants of NEAR (and their Telegram), and becoming a part of Twitter communities such as NEAR Week and NEAR Daily will set you up to learn and stay up to date with the ecosystem (Oh, and keep an eye out for non-english guilds like NEAR Hispano coming up in the near future). So, once you feel comfortable, what investment options are there and where would one start?

• The first investment option is to set up a NEAR wallet, which can be used to deposit or purchase $NEAR. Once a user has $NEAR in their wallet (or any wallet or exchange), their funds are subject to market price fluctuations. This is the simplest way to invest in the NEAR ecosystem and is a requirement for all other investment options.
• Once a user holds $NEAR, staking their tokens through a validator is another option. This involves delegating your tokens to a validator on the network — all done through the NEAR Wallet application (under ‘staking’). See this article for more detailed instructions. Picking a validator will be subject to one’s own research, as different validators have different returns for different reasons.
• If a token holder wants to go to the next level, delegating their tokens to a staking provider like MetaPool will increase returns by letting the provider delegate to a group of best performing validators.
• Another, more difficult option which increases returns is to delegate tokens to a yield farmer such as Cheddar Farm, or any farm found on Ref.finance — letting them deal with strategising and fund management.
• The most advanced (and most difficult) way to invest in the NEAR DeFI ecosystem is providing liquidity for liquidity pools — as can be done on Ref.finance.

DeFi on NEAR offers various options for investment. It is the responsibility of the user to make their own decisions, and such decisions should always follow thorough research and rational hesitation. With innovative financial systems comes novel regulation. How should a DeFi user integrate regulation into their activity?

What about regulation on DeFi?

As a community we need to take what is best from regulation — as regulation plays a positive role, not only a negative one. Regulation can be split into two different forms. The first is taxation, which has to a large part already been implemented. It is central to independently research the tax regulation of ones residence and act accordingly to what is specified. The second is a blockchain company’s compliance to legal requirements. An example of this is how some blockchain companies have complied with KYC requirements for anti money laundering and traceability efforts. There is an opportunity for the industry to stay ahead of both the positives and negatives of regulation, attend and contribute to their legal development and technological application, and take the opportunity to understand the fundamental (not its politicised) use-value of regulation: protecting the users. As a minimum standard, it is reasonable for anyone in the space to align with these conditions: how do we protect users, how do we create awareness for the users so they are aware of what product they are using, and what are the risks for the users individually and as part of a community?

Once DeFi projects migrate from Ethereum to NEAR using Aurora, what is the strategy to manage competition?

First of all, competition can be seen as a validation point that the ecosystem is taking off. The native DApps will have an advantage due to ecosystem and community support and sustained use-value provided to NEAR users. However, competition is healthy. DeFi projects on NEAR look forward to the push competition will bring to existing native projects. If projects cannot sustain use-value under competitive pressure, then other projects will rightly be in a better position to do so.

What are the use cases for DeFi when it comes to NFTs?

Within the NEAR ecosystem, the Wizard Guild is planning to make NFTs on Paras for beginner spells (tips on how to use DeFi on NEAR) and advanced spells, which will offer information on how to better leverage funds on different platforms to maximise returns. Other non-NEAR ways to use NFTs is if there is a deposit fee for liquidity pools, NFTs can be used to reduce it. Similarly, they can be used to boost farming rewards. Also, farms can be gamified, so you can stake NFTs for farming rewards or various other in-game features that involve tokens.

Why would someone create their own social tokens and what is the role of DeFi in this?

Tokens should have utility or they wont hold value for long. If a NEAR project wants to have gated content restricted for members of its community, then social tokens are a method to structure this access for users. DeFi has a role in this if the social tokens are used in the peripheral DeFi space or if the project that uses them also uses DeFi protocols.

The ‘OWS Party: Defi on NEAR Debunked’ held by the Open Web Sandbox on behalf of the NEAR team aimed to give an overview of DeFi on NEAR. This article outlined the event and discussed the questions asked by the audience. The OWS team hopes the event answered everyones questions and is looking forward to more engagement within the NEAR ecosystem.

Stay updated for future events by following us on Twitter and don’t hesitate to ask questions on our Discord. If you miss any of our events, watch them anytime on our YouTube channel.

DeFi on NEAR Debunked. was originally published in Open Web Sandbox NEAR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.