DeFi on NEAR is Here
DeFi, or decentralized finance, is a critical element of building a truly Open Web. The rise of DeFi over the past year has driven much of the recent success on Ethereum, supercharging experimentation with blockchain-based financial instruments and incentives. Actions that could take weeks in the traditional financial system are possible in seconds thanks to the composable primitives of DeFi, and the crypto economy has offered an alternative to unreliable local currencies and the whims of banks for many around the world.
Yet the same surge of interest and experimentation that has provided so many opportunities for DeFi users has also made it much harder for new potential earners to gain entry. From network congestion, to skyrocketing gas costs, to the rising prices of many popular tokens, the barrier to entry is now significantly higher for builders and creators just starting to explore the crypto space.
Now, NEAR is making DeFi more accessible to everyone. With the launch of the Rainbow Bridge, DeFi is officially live on NEAR and unlocked for all creators and users around the world. All assets originating in Ethereum — now counting in the tens of billions — are now fully usable in NEAR applications.
Since launch, over $1 million worth of ETH, DAI, USDT, and other popular tokens have crossed the Bridge and are being used in native NEAR applications including Pulse and Ref. Thousands of users have already started exploring these NEAR apps, enjoying the network’s Web2-like transaction times (about a second) and low transaction fees (fractions of a cent).
Combined with the upcoming release of SputnikDAO v2, DeFi developers will have the tools to enable decentralized governance, issue their own incentives, and create vibrant contributor communities with minimal effort. Developers will also have a choice between native NEAR and the soon-to-be-released Aurora: the EVM on NEAR.
The Emerging Native NEAR Ecosystem
Over the next several weeks, many more core building blocks and components of DeFi on NEAR will go live. Each of the following projects uses the native WebAssembly-runtime on NEAR.
Core Components
Rainbow Bridge
The Rainbow Bridge is already live between NEAR <> Ethereum, and the same infrastructure can be easily repurposed with minimal changes to connect NEAR to all EVM-compatible chains, including Polygon/Matic, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and eventually new L2s like Optimism and Arbitrum. Additionally, the Bridge team is planning to extend the infrastructure to support non-EVM chains including Bitcoin, the Cosmos IBC, and any other chains with valuable assets and data.
SputnikDAO
DAOs are an important component of nearly every protocol’s decentralized governance strategy. SputnikDAO, the infrastructure for DAOs on NEAR, makes it simple for projects or individuals to launch DAOs, configure governance for their treasury management, and upgrade their protocol’s smart contracts. Projects can either set up multi-signature governance, issue and distribute governance tokens (all through Sputnik), or use a combination of the two.
BoringDAO
BoringDAO is a decentralized asset bridge that will connect NEAR assets to Ethereum and other blockchains, and bring PoW based assets like Bitcoin to NEAR. BoringDAO bridges assets using a DAO-operated “tunnel,” which manages the minting and burning of tokens moving across chains.
DEXs/Swaps
Ref Finance
Ref is the first DeFi platform on NEAR. The first version of Ref shares some similarities with Uniswap V2, with support for more pool types, multi-hop pools (all pools are in a single contract), configurable fees, and it is entirely community-owned. Explore the Ref beta here, and join the Discord or follow the team on Twitter for updates.
Liquality
Liquality is a non-custodial, multi-chain wallet with support for atomic transfers between Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEAR, and more. Using Liquality, users can custody NEAR assets alongside assets from other chains in a single wallet account.
Oracles
Flux
The Flux Protocol team is launching a new oracle aggregator that will power DeFi on NEAR. The Flux Oracle is optimized for API, arbitrary, and price feed data, secured by economic guarantees. In addition to organic data, the Flux Oracle can leverage existing oracles and price feeds (Chainlink, Band, Uniswap), to provide a safe, tailored data feed to developers. You can learn more about Flux and the Flux Token here.
Band Protocol
Band brings their robust set of price and data feeds natively to the NEAR blockchain. With Band, developers can utilize data on real-world events, sports, weather, random numbers, and more in their applications and protocols.
Prediction Markets
Pulse
Pulse, a community-owned and operated application, is the first to be powered by the Flux Oracle. Using Pulse, users can forecast and submit predictions on a variety of events (including whether or not a vulnerability will be discovered in the NEAR Rainbow Bridge!). Pulse is live, and already has thousands of users and hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity. Follow the team on Twitter for updates.
Liquid Staking
Metapool
Staking derivatives and DAO-based staking distributions are crucial to the decentralization of Proof-of-Stake networks. Metapool is both. Users can stake their NEAR through Metapool, which will distribute NEAR to a whitelist of validators, and return $stNEAR. stNEAR is redeemable 1–1 with NEAR, and holders will receive staking rewards on their stNEAR in the form of more stNEAR. This stNEAR can be used in DeFi, supercharging yields with an additional 10% APY for staked NEAR. Try out Metapool here.
Oysterpack
Oysterpack is building several tools to further unlock liquidity for DeFi on NEAR. Oysterpack’s first product is STAKE, a fungible token representing staked NEAR. STAKE will offer NEAR holders the opportunity to earn yield on their staked NEAR tokens by locking them in other DeFi products, to rapidly unstake their NEAR, and to pay a single staking fee, rather than a fee every epoch. Learn more about Oysterpack.
Synthetic Assets/Lending
OIN Finance
OIN is a decentralized stablecoin issuance platform. OIN enables projects to issue their own, branded stablecoins, rather than needing to apply to have their collateral whitelisted on other earlier platforms. OIN will launch a NEAR-collateralized stablecoin, which will allow NEAR holders to unlock liquidity without selling their NEAR. Additionally, OIN has plans for off-ramps and use cases such as swapping for other mainstream stablecoins, adding leverage, hedging, lending, and a plethora of ecosystem-specific utilities.
Loyalty Token
Cheddar
Cheddar is a loyalty token that rewards users of dApps in the NEAR ecosystem through its partnerships/integrations with other projects. The project is under development, and will have updates on its yield farm, AMM, and DAO soon. Follow them on Twitter to keep up with the latest news.
Build the Next Generation of DeFi on NEAR
The projects mentioned here are just the start for NEAR DeFi: the ecosystem is full of opportunities for new protocols, applications, and experiments to explore and further decentralize.
If you’re interested in building on NEAR, consider applying for an equity-free grant from the NEAR Foundation to help fund your DeFi project. To get involved in the NEAR community, join us on Telegram, Discord, Reddit, or follow on Twitter.
