Month: October 2020

NEAR Without Noise Episode 1: The Future of Open Markets with Flux Protocol CEO Peter Mitchell and CTO Jasper Gooijer

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Recently the NEAR Without The Noise series was launched for the NEAR community, future entrepreneurs, developers and investors. We kicked off the first episode with the two founding members of FLUX Protocol: CEO Peter Mitchell and CTO Jasper Gooijer. In this first-of-a-kind livestream, the 4NTS Guild interviewed the Flux team about the current state of prediction markets in general, Flux, and its position within the industry. Topics discussed ranged, from the nature of open-markets, to the unique protocol design of Flux, to the NEAR sponsored Open-Web Collective Program and the incentives for building on the right blockchain! 

Main Takeaway #1: The NEAR Blockchain Had a Unique Appeal to Peter and Jasper:

The largest competitors at the time, or a next generation blockchain, when we had to choose a new Layer 1 protocol: we’d either wait for Ethereum 2.0, try to do something on Cosmos or Polkadot, and Solana wasn’t really an option yet at the time. NEAR is the only one of these protocols that actually resembles the way you build smart contracts on Ethereum due to dynamic sharding, and NEAR has infinite linear scaling. Basically 200 times the amount of shards live on the network, which allows you to load balances and transactions.

Main Takeaway #2: In Spite of Being Actively Recruited By Other Protocols, Peter and Jasper Stuck With NEAR.

Flux CEO Peter Mitchell explained how the core team at Flux was approached by numerous different L1 protocol’s and offered large sums of money to migrate off of NEAR to another platform. Peter’s advice was especially telling: Consider why a protocol is offering those sums, and what that says about their design. Peter and Jasper then both went on to discuss the value of the Open-Web collective in helping get them off the ground, and connected to key talent pools and investors. 

Main Takeaway #3: Flux is Built To Inspire Developers, and Entrepreneurs to Scale the Open-Markets of the Future.

Both Jasper and Peter emphasized how Flux operates as a protocol to equip the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs building open-markets: Be it through connecting to twitch, a real-time sporting event, or a geopolitical event, Flux is built as a scalable infrastructure for reliably managing large markets that are both decentralized and permissionless. 

“So what we want to basically become, is this open-source infrastructure that all markets in the future are running on, and interacting with, and we really supply this plumbing for this liquidity to move through.” – Flux CEO Peter Mitchell, at 34:11

Main Takeaway #4: Flux is Approaching Mainnet Launch Around Q1 of 2021.

Last but not least, Peter and Jasper went on to explain the upcoming roadmap of Flux: Including a Quantstamp Audit, a community vote, and then the launch of Flux protocol with real tokens, Peter and Jasper expect Flux to be primed for business as early as Quarter 1 of 2021! 

Don’t Miss Near With Noise Episode 2: November 5th with Alex Shevchenko!

Next week, 4NTS guild will host Dr. Alex Shevchenko on Episode Two of NEAR without the Noise: Join us to discuss the NEAR-ETH Bridge, the roadmap for two of NEAR’s largest technical projects in the coming months, and much more! 

4NTS October Newsletter

Posted on by nearguildsadmin

Foreword by 4NTS Team: Welcome to the first 4NTS newsletter, where we cut through the noise, uncover the hidden gems and provide cross-industry insight. This is the best newsletter you’ll find on the NEAR ecosystem. Plain and simple.

The most exciting things that happened in October within the NEAR Ecosystem:

The NEAR ←→ ETH Bridge Hackathon Is Over: What Comes Next? 400 participants and 80 projects were submitted on the most important ongoing blockchain infrastructure development. 

Phase II is here! Voting has advanced NEAR Protocol into Phase II. Check out the most recent NEAR blog post for more details!

Get Ready to Build In The Sandbox: Contributors, Prospective Guild Leaders, and anyone interested in following the rapid-development of the NEAR Ecosystem are invited to start building in the NEAR Sandbox – exclusive ecosystem rewards, long-term growth opportunities, and networking with the fastest growing community in Crypto. 

Balancer Partners with NEAR: Balancer, a protocol for programmable liquidity, or Automated Market Maker, if we are talking in fancy DeFi terms, is building a bridge on NEAR. Even though Balancer is focusing mainly on Ethereum, they are very curious what can be done with AMMs using NEAR latency. Something’s brewing. 

NEAR has ~20% APY at the moment: Staking was enabled in October, so you have a chance to stake your tokens and get some nice returns on your NEAR. Oh, and you can do that in the native wallet.

One General Thought: Mintbase a Sign of Things To Come?

The NFT Revolution is only getting started, and Mintbase has moved to NEAR for affordability and usability purposes. Meanwhile,  Pantera Capital CEO predicted a $400 billion dollar DeFi market in the coming years. High gas fees on Ethereum, coupled with NEAR’s Usability proposition: a sign of things to come for NEAR protocol? .

4NTS Exclusive: An Interview with Ethan Chiasson, WeatherDEX and Stake.gg sole developer

Ethan is a mastermind behind WeatherDEX, a weather derivatives platform, and stake.gg, an esports betting app, that are based on Flux Protocol. We talked to him about his projects, Open Web and what are his plans for the future.
👉Check out the full interview

4NTS have successfully launched a new initiative – talks with brilliant people in the crypto industry. This time we talked to Peter and Jasper, two masterminds behind Flux Protocol, a prediction market platform that is being built on NEAR. We talked to them about their project, why they chose NEAR and whether they are looking forward to betting on the prediction markets themselves. Check it out as well!
👉 NEAR without the Noise Episode 1: The Future of Open Markets

What We’re Reading And Watching: 

Some of the Questions We Are Asking: 

  • Are we at a deficit of Blockchain Entrepreneurs in light of all of the open-source protocols being built, and solutions being proposed? 
  • What does Square and MicroStrategies tell us about the future of enterprise investment in Bitcoin? 
  • How can we introduce the parallel universe of cryptocurrencies to normies, beyond the financial incentives? 
  • In the first industrial revolution, “social savings” due to steam engine improvements remained stagnant at 0.3% per year between 1830 and 1850. It took more than 20 years for widespread adoption to occur across the most important commercial facets of society. Is blockchain a 21st century parallel?

The Flux Ecosystem: Core Components and Protocol Architecture

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Flux Protocol is the first open-source protocol to launch in the NEAR Ecosystem. Its promise? Cheap, Efficient, and Scalable open-markets with a number of unique features for users, developers, and liquidity providers. In its current stage of development, Flux is on the brink of transitioning to Phase 2.0 of its launch. The Flux token will launch, including with governance contracts, while dispute thresholds are increased from one to five rounds. Phase 3.0  looms large on the horizon, with rapid development from the Flux team and a community vote, that’s soon to be introduced.

What Tools and Components Make Up The Flux Ecosystem? 

As Flux prepares to launch, it’s important to note a couple of interesting characteristics about how Flux has been designed – for all of the different stakeholders involved!

Flux is a Protocol: First things first, Flux is an open-source protocol. What that means, is that much like NEAR protocol, Flux is building an Ecosystem of active and engaged stakeholders: Liquidity Providers, Validators, Users, and Developers who will govern Flux in a decentralized and permissionless manner. 

Flux Protocol Is Equipped With A Number of Useful Tools: As an open-source protocol, the Flux team has built a number of very useful tools into the protocol for anyone to make use of!

The Flux Open-Source Application: For trading open-markets on Flux. 

The Flux Software Developer Kit: For developers to quickly and easily create new markets, tools, and notifiers on Flux.

The Flux Oracle: For pulling data from other areas of the internet, to resolve markets in a permissionless and valid manner. 

The Flux Automated Market Mirror: To seamlessly clone odds on any other betting or market platform into a Flux Market. 

Open Order Books and Automatic Market Makers: Easily track predictions across markets, or partake in providing liquidity with unique incentives!

How Do All of These Tools Fit Together? Flux Protocol is a Layer 2 protocol solution built on the NEAR Blockchain. In context, the Flux Solutions stack is multi-layered: Not only is Flux built on a dynamically sharded blockchain Ecosystem, but it also operates as a foundation for startups and developers to offer their own open-market solutions! 

Who Uses Flux? 

USERS — FORECASTERS — TRADERS —- DEVELOPERS — FOUNDERS — ENTERPRISES

Getting Involved: Here’s What You Can Do On Flux 

🚀 100 – 80,000 Transactions per Second: Built on the NEAR Blockchain

👨‍💻 Apps in 3 Lines of Code: For creating, managing, disputing, and closing open-markets! 

💸 Liquidity Provider Opportunities: 250M $FLUX in total, to be airdropped to liquidity providers through the Flux AMM.

⚙️ Flux Beta Program for Devs and Founders: $50k FLUX to projects launching with us on MainNet. 

🎉 Flux Social Incentive Program for Committed Community Members and NEAR Guilds.

🧙‍♂️ Unique Facets of Flux? 

Public Permissionless Open Markets: Create a Market on Anything, with no limits and no gatekeepers.

No Loss Market Dynamics: Use open-interest as collateral to predict outcomes in markets with no loss on the underlying stake! 

Fast Setup, Scale-Up and Resolution Dynamics: Build your market in three lines of code, define the timeframe, and expect resolutions to be finalized in between 30 minutes and 24 hours. 

Less than 0.01 Cent Fees! Trading on Flux means miniscule fees, and fast transaction times – plain and simple.   

To get started on Flux, don’t hesitate to get in touch on Telegram, or sign up for the Social Incentive, Beta, or Liquidity provider incentive Programs! Open-Markets are only just getting started – There has never been a better time to get started.

Introducing NEAR Without the Noise!

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NEAR Without The Noise is a Community-Run Ecosystem initiative developed and supported by the NEAR Team and 4NTS Guild. Once a week on Thursday at 4pm CET time, 4NTS will host a 45min to 1 hour discussion with a person or project building on or involved in the NEAR Ecosystem. 

These talks are meant to be informal and substantive. Community members are able to actively participate – ask questions, share their point of view, or passively listen as different speakers and topics catch-up with the community on where they are at, how their project is developing, what they have been focused on recently, and more. Talks might involve AMA’s, Product Demos, Workshops on Onboarding to a Particular App or simply a casual conversation. 

The goal of these talks is to cut through the noise and deliver quality information and personal insight from the NEAR Ecosystem to the larger cryptocurrency community. Prepare to ask questions, hear about what is actually happening, and get an idea about what is in the pipeline across the NEAR Ecosystem! 

First Launch: 

  • Peter and Jasper: Building Flux, The Vision and Opportunity of Open Markets – Thursday October 22nd.

Future Topics in the Pipeline Include: Dates TBD!

  • The Rainbow Bridge in Context: Why Does It Matter? 
  • Validating on NEAR: The Details For Token Holders and Validators with Dokia and Stardust
  • What’s Building on NEAR? 
  • Introducing GooGuild with Rune: Why Build on NEAR as a Dev Team?
  • NFT’s and their future on NEAR: With Mintbase and Nate Geier 
  • Designing Web3: With The NEAR Design Guild and NEAR’s Jake Stutzman 
  • NEAR Crypto-Economics Made Simple. 

Be sure to follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest NEAR ecosystem news!

NEAR Post-Launch Update: October 2020

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NEAR Mainnet launched just over 3 weeks ago. Since that time, the NEAR Ecosystem has been actively developing on multiple fronts with priorities spanning technical, community, and business development. Here is the 4NTS Guild, end of October Update on the most important initiatives happening in the NEAR Ecosystem since the launch of Mainnet: 

In line with the infographic illustrated above, the NEAR team has launched mainnet at a time when a number of different initiatives continue to roll forward in the NEAR Ecosystem. Most importantly, these initiatives include: 

Announcement of Balancer Building on NEAR: This is a huge business development milestone. Balancer is a seminal DeFi project on Ethereum that will now offer services to the NEAR Ecosystem. Programmable liquidity means that DeFi meets the usability and scalability benefits of NEAR protocol. It also, as recently written, is a sign of things to come for both NEAR and DeFi. 

NEAR Without the Noise Launches: A community run series about people, communities, and projects building on NEAR, recently launched its first episode with Flux CEO and CTO’s Peter and Jasper. As an organic initiative for promoting entrepreneurial, crypto, and team development on NEAR, this initiative will continue every two weeks for the indefinite future as more teams and entrepreneurs are given space to share their projects with the NEAR community. 

Technical Updates On NEAR Continue At Hyper-Speed:  In the days following the launch of Mainnet, the NEAR team announced new updates to Staking (locked) tokens from the NEAR wallet, updates on creating accounts, and allowing community members and users the opportunity to create a wallet on NEAR. 

In the coming month, more community opportunities, Guild outreach programs, and events focused on genuinely approaching the development of NEAR are already moving through the pipeline in preparation for launch! If you are an interested community member, possible Guild Lead, or team of developers looking to start building on the most usable and developer friendly platform in crypto—these next announcements are geared directly towards you!