9 Things Will Help You When You Start the Near (NCD) Journey

I’ve been joining the NEAR blockchain community for 4 months. And here I will list how I wish it had been introduced to me before:

1. What is NEAR?

NEAR is a simple, scalable, and secure blockchain platform designed to provide the best possible experience for developers and users, which is necessary to bridge the gap to mainstream adoption of decentralized applications. NEAR is completely carbon neutral, as certified by South Pole.

For developers, NEAR has three basic tools:

• The NEAR CLI is the command-line interface for NEAR to interact with the blockchain.
• The NEAR-API-JS is a JavaScript library to interact with accounts and smart contracts on NEAR.
• NEAR-SDK-RS and NEAR-SDK-AS are SDKs used for developing smart contracts in Rust and Assembly Script.

2. What makes NEAR so special compared to other blockchains?

There are lots of properties that make NEAR so special, like:

• It is considered an environment-friendly protocol.
• The speed of transactions is high compared to other blockchains. A transaction takes about 2–3 seconds to complete on average.
• It has a friendly naming account. Your account could be alice.near instead of the long numbers of characters in other blockchains.
• Low cost of gas for transactions and contracts.
• 30% of the fee from the smart contract can be gained by the developer.

3. What can I build with NEAR?

Anything you were able to build on the Web.2.Adding to that, the other possibilities come with the Web.3. You can build a Defi, DAO, NFT store, and games. To see the existing project over NEAR till now, visit the nearawesome website. You will find around 30 projects related to DAO and 120 NFT projects. One of the most famous is Paras.

4. What are the available languages to write a smart contract?

NEAR provides the ability to write smart contracts in both Assembly Script and Rust. JavaScript will be available soon. Which one to choose depends on your background. If you are a JavaScript developer, then it is easier to start with Assembly Script. If you know C++ or Python, it is easier to start with Rust.

5. What tools do I need to have?

You need to install the following tools in your environment:

• yarn.
• Version 14 or higher of Node.js
• Git.
• Code editor likes Visual studio.
• near-cli is a command-line interface that utilizes near-api-js to interact with the NEAR blockchain.

There is a documented way of installing the near-cli in your environment from this link. For Windows users, you can use it without the installation of WSL if you set the environment path correctly. But if you want to install WSL , this article will walk you through the whole process of installing WSL and other tools.

For someone who does not know git, the code editor, the command line, and so on. Why don’t you try to get this quick beginner-free course and then continue?

6. Where to start?

• If you are a person who looks for the concept first, NEAR-Doc is the right place for you where you can read and learn about each concept in the NEAR blockchain.
• If you want to see more codes, there are lots of examples to dive into. Start with the basic examples from this website. Then you can find a lot of completed projects in the Learn-NEAR repository which you can check.

In both cases don’t forget to check these examples that will help you understand the process:

✓ The Counter: You can find its code here.

✓ Sample thanks: The contract code here and the front-end here.

✓ The meme museum: you can find the contract code here.

Those examples have many functions that you will use in your projects.

You can also check out the basic To-do list example tutorial in NEAR.

After quickly exploring the above examples, you will be able to start your project. To help you with that, there is a starter kit template for Rust and Assembly Script that you can use. If you use them, you will guarantee your environment is set correctly. After cloning the template, it is time for your imagination to build what you want.

7. How can I join the NEAR programs.

All the programs in NEAR are free. You can register for any program from this page. The one I joined is NEAR-certified-developer (NCD), but there are also many programs if you are interested in applying to any of them.

8. What are the available opportunities with NEAR?

You can apply for a grant for your idea, or after getting a certification from the NCD you can apply for the NEAR developer in residence and become a member of a job board.

9. I need more resources to learn:

• If you like video content, there are demos for the NCD that contain lots of student projects and NEAR-in-minutes which explain concepts and contracts in videos.
• NEAR Tutorials has a list of tutorials you can follow and learn from.

There are more than those, but I think you will get the most from them.

Finally, I hope this article will help you to learn more about NEAR. If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.