Jumpstarting the NEAR Ecosystem with Amos Zhang and Rune Bentien
NEAR Asia Amos Zhang and the head of Sharp-Darts and co-collaborator of Move Capital Rune Bentien joined 4NTs Guild for discussing the growth and trajectory of the NEAR Ecosystem. During the discussion, Amos and Rune touched upon the different projects that are emerging from the NEAR ecosystem, discussed the upcoming updates as well as the investment landscape on the NEAR ecosystem.
NEAR: A Chain Focus on Usability and Purposefulness
What distinguishes NEAR from other chains in the crypto space is its relentless work to make the protocol as usable and user-friendly as possible:
“NEAR has always been a chain focused on usability, so since we launched officially on mainnet in October last year, the main focus of the team has been to build new components and supporting developers getting ready to ship on mainnet because we do have high standards in regards to decentralisation and usability.” -Amos Zhang
NEAR’s focus on usability comes from the desire to be as accessible to users from as many different backgrounds as possible. NEAR wants to remove the obstacles that prevent traditional companies and Web2 developers from entering the Web3 space and take advantage of its benefits.
NEAR is the perfect space for DeFi and for the Creator Economy
The NEAR ecosystem is witnessing the flourishing of DeFi projects, but is also demonstrating of being a favourable environment for the creator economy:
“Our approach can be divided into two parts, so one is more about crypto native which is mostly DeFi, there are of course other things like DAO and NFT. So people can expect DeFi to really grow on NEAR, both native based DeFi and EVM DeFi. We also have a lot of cool NFT projects coming in the next few weeks”. — Amos Zhang
At the moment there are about 15 to 20 projects to be launched and many of them are actually focused on developing NFTs on NEAR:
“The past six months have been extremely interesting. NEAR has really tried to capture the creator economy space. What we are proving with Mintbase and Paras as well is that the technology is very good at supporting such use cases as well. So NEAR can definitely play a big role in developing the creator economy.” — Rune Bentien
NEAR’s user-friendly and interoperable infrastructure is proving to be particularly attractive for developers and creators:
“For any company that wants to issue their own NFT product on NEAR as a developer all they need is one or two web developers, maybe you don’t know how to build on blockchain, you don’t even know how to code in RUST, and you can launch in two weeks, that is amazing!” — Rune Bentien
NEAR’s New Milestones
NEAR is continuously birthing cutting edge applications that are going to become a paradigm shift in the crypto space, the most recent ones being the Rainbow Bridge, Aurora, and Octopus Network. All these projects are focused at allowing and improving interoperability and composability essential features for the future of DeFi. The NEAR-ETH Rainbow Bridge was the first step towards full interoperability, but much more has yet to come:
“ What we are trying to do with Aurora is to get existing contracts to be deployed on NEAR with no cost so that you can bring those DeFi activities to NEAR as well. In a way, you borrow Ethereum stake infra because Rainbow Bridge is the only decentralised bridge on the market yet, and one of the fastest. So, you can borrow these assets, whether it is EVM native application or NEAR application, and whether it is in DeFi or in NFT, they can all benefit from them. There is a really big window of opportunities in moving ETH solutions to NEAR, and as well as to build native NEAR solutions, and at the same time there is the opportunity to build the next generation of DeFi solutions as well, related to securitisation and traunching, fixed interest loans etc. So, if you are a crypto native or a developer you’d probably want to pay attention to NEAR because of these opportunities that are swirling up”. — Amos Zhang
The Rainbow Bridge and Aurora are the two big enablers of DeFi on NEAR, but with their continuous update and evolution as well the birth of new projects will be essential in order to bring DeFi to the next level. Exciting updates for the Rainbow bridge are soon coming to fruition:
“As far as what concerns the Rainbow Bridge, they will want to speed up the transactions between NEAR and ETH and try to incorporate an NFT connector. Yes, you heard it right, the Rainbow Bridge is actually the only bridge that can move NFTs from NEAR to ETH in a safe and decentralised manner. And we also plan a support system for sending NEAR tokens to Ethereum.” -Amos Zhang
“Rainbow Bridge is actually the only bridge that can move NFTs from NEAR to ETH in a safe and decentralised manner.”
On top of these additional features coming to life on the Rainbow bridge the Rainbow Protocol is going to be expanded:
“As you know, the Rainbow Bridge is multichain, the same infrastructure can be applied to multiple other chains so the two ones that are probably interesting beside Ethereum are Cosmos and Polkadot. Both chains have very interesting dApp chain projects” -Amos Zhang
So in the coming months new bridges are going to be built connecting NEAR to other chains, Cosmos likely being the first one.
The new partnership with Octopus Network Relay is also another milestone that NEAR brought home in the past quarter. Octopus Network together with NEAR will enable entrepreneurs and developers to launch their own blockchain with tailored crypto-economic and governance parameters. This is going to be unprecedented in the world of crypto.
MOVE Capital is Opening New Funding Opportunities
In the governance front too there are interesting developments for developers and creators. MOVE Capital (formerly Angel DAO) is looking for new projects to fund:
“MOVE is about helping to find more opportunities on NEAR. We try to focus on projects that are investable, in the sense that they can be backed and create financial returns for companies or investors in the future. Or if you have an existing project already we can help you bring it into NEAR, or maybe you have an idea but you don’t know where to start with, we can help you direct you to the right people or next step. Or maybe you already have a project in the pipeline and we can help with speeding up the process”. -Rune Bentien
The Web 3 is way easier and faster but takes some getting used to for people that come from different experiences and are not familiar with the space. Move Capital’s aim is to facilitate this transition by providing expert advice and guidance, as well as to connect projects in their early stages with funders, venture capitals, and boost their development:
“A thing that we want to do is to help companies and people in the Web 2 space move into Web 3 and start building bridges between these two worlds” -Rune Bentien
MOVE Capital is going to be extremely useful for the NEAR community in China, one of the largest NEAR communities, as Amos remarks:
“I think that Move Capital will definitely represent interesting opportunities because in China or the broader East Asia the crypto space is so large and so competitive that it’s hard for first hand entrepreneurs to get attention from the right investors. So, Move Capital can definitely help people to find the right opportunities and grow along the way”. -Amos Zhang
For more information on Move Capital and its funding opportunities visit move.capital. For checking out Aurora’s roadmap visit Aurora.dev.
