Our trip to NEAR|CON Alpha
So NEAR|CON Alpha is in the books, if you did not get a chance to see our DeFi panel discussion or Illia Polosukhin’s talking about the NEAR Ecosystem, with a nice mention of Meta Pool, you know that it was a celebration worth being part of IRL or on the Metaverse.
Why Lisbon was important for the NEARverse.
If you are part of any crypto ecosystem, this past October was the month to be in Lisbon and see what it is all about; the city, the people, the community forming around the Portuguese capital, the different platforms setting up operations around the city and for us NEARians it was an opportunity to meet our fellow ecosystem partners in a great location.
There was never a day we did not meet someone new that we have crossed paths with on the TG groups. So it was fun and selfies, taking it to a whole new level. More importantly is to find alignment outside the metaverse.
Plenty of events from LISCON overlapped with NEARCON which was a great opportunity to view and chat with fellow crypto enthusiasts. Even a rAAVE was organized in the city, so there were plenty of social gatherings around the port city.
Sun, food and community
There is no denying that the weather in Lisbon is great, even for autumn you have plenty of sunlight and the terraces are open for everyone to enjoy the atmosphere of the city. Taking into consideration that thousands of people flew into to be part of the different conferences and it was a very energetic vibe.
For us it was the first global meetup of crypto in Europe and we were in the center of it. Plenty of discussions around protocols, governance, investments and shilling around every bar and restaurant in town.
Many communities organized their formal and informal meetups, so we got a chance to meet new folks around other protocols and we had a chance to receive feedback in a face to face manner which felt really good.
From North, South, East and West.
We met each other in person, it was a blast. Just by the conversations it made the trip 1000x worth it. Thank you very much to the Sankore 2.0, 4NTS and Corpsmen Guild, who we got to hangout with during the event. Also the fine folks from Ref Finance, Swagger DAO and NEAR Week who got to know through some great discussions around the potential of the NEAR Ecosystem.
NEARCON showed us how global the ecosystem is and the level of engagement the community has with the protocol and also the DApps being created around it. We felt at home and everyone was cheering for us. We still have a long way to go, but with this level of support makes all the difference.
Every angle on the Ecosystem was there, there was a mad auction of NFT (so they say, we did not make it), lots of dev face to face discussions, talking to node operators and also the Guilds, who I cannot say enough about. They are the reason we built Meta Pool, straight from itching our own needs.
Shoutout to Blaze from the Open Shards Alliance who introduced us to some great projects and the people behind them. We definitely will not be here without the support from the validator node guilds.
Plenty of investors were at hand during the two day conference and it was great meeting them to discuss what are the strategies for long term NEAR token holders, how a liquid staking solution could be part of their services to their portfolio companies. For us it was an opportunity to view what are the challenges that custodial service providers have and what we could do to allow that capital to flow into the ecosystem. We look forward to collaborating more with this type of organizations.
Build value for NEAR token holders
Everything was in high spirits after the initial increase in value for the NEAR token, but as many of you know what goes up must come down. True value is not on the price of a digital asset, but on the usage and value it creates for it’s users.
We discussed what it will take to onboard the next 1 billion users to NEAR and many of us in the ecosystem know that it means that we need to showcase the value of decentralized technologies to those that have never been exposed to it. This cannot be done just by cheer force, it needs to be done through a land and expand strategy and education will play a very critical role.
Educating about Decentralized Finance is key, so we are kickstarting our Staking Pods program with our partners from Coineasy to launch a pilot in the Korean region. Wait for more news on that in the mean time please join us on our regional Korean channel on Discord.
Overall NEAR|CON Alpha was a huge success and we are waiting for the announcement of the NEAR|CON Beta. Make sure you do not miss it!
See ya in beta and keep on staking!
