Welcome to the 4NTS November Newsletter! November has been a huge month for most crypto projects, and NEAR Protocol is no exception. New projects prepare to launch on the protocol, the NEAR – ETH Rainbow Bridge Marches towards public deployment, and the Open Web Collective is open for its second round of applications! Here’s the latest news from within the NEAR Ecosystem this month:
An Exceptional NEAR Townhall: 17 Projects In the Pipeline
Among other topics, Sasha announced that there were 17 projects preparing to launch on NEAR in between November and February of the coming year! For a complete update on the current state of Business Development on NEAR check out this video here.
Open Web Collective Applications Are Open Until December 11th:
The second round of Open Web Collective applications is Open for another 15 projects! Applications remain open until December 11th. For more information on the Open Web Collective, stick around for a December 3rd, NEAR Without the Noise Episode at 4pm CET with OWC Manager Mildred Adada! Applications can be made Here.
CreateBase Guild Is Live! The NEAR NFT Hub Continues to Grow
As one of the fastest growing Guilds on NEAR, CreateBase has carved out a niche as a home for NFT’s. From Mintbase to Plantary, Non-Fungible Tokens have started to take off on NEAR thanks to low transaction fees and user-friendly account models! If you are interested in building NFT solutions on NEAR and are looking for discussion partners and funding opportunities, check out the CreateBase Guild Telegram Channel for the latest news and updates!
NEAR Without the Noise Episode 2: The NEAR – ETH Bridge
In one of the most comprehensive discussions to date on the NEAR – ETH Bridge, Dr. Alex Schevchenko joined 4NTS Guild for a one hour live exclusive on the NEAR – ETH Bridge, the nature of decentralization, how NEAR approaches competitors, and the future for NEAR Protocol. A full recap of the episode can be found here. Don’t want to bother with a full video, but got 60 seconds to spare? Go directly to what you’re looking for here.
The NEAR Sandbox is Live!
A community run initiative for contributors, and potential Guild leads of the future has soft-launched known as the Sandbox! As a place for ecosystem participants to collaborate and engage with different projects on the protocol the Sandbox is poised to become a hub for community members looking to make the most out of the NEAR Ecosystem: Network, Design, Build, Form a Guild – the options are open for you. Join the Discord here.
Don’t Miss the BerryClub as it Takes Off!
Berryclub.io has been a fun project brewing on NEAR for a long time created to illustrate NEAR’s capacity to handle transactions. With recent additions, community members can harvest Bananas that can be turned into cucumbers to yield NEAR. Design away and embrace Crypto!
Mintbase Raises 1 million USD to Bring NFTs to NEAR
Caroline Wend and Nate Geier were grinding hard to create the best minter and NFT marketplace out there, and they managed to do so! After raising 1 million USD in the funding round led by Sino Global, team will be moving to Lisbon to continue bringing NFTs to NEAR Protocol. 4NTS wish them success, as Mintbase is an inspiring story!
One General Thought:
The current crypto market cycle is turning bullish. However, most analysts have noted that retail traders are still on the sidelines, alongside financial institutions. When – in the coming six to twelve months – can they be expected to join the party?
How will the impending wave of NFT projects compare to the existing wave of DeFi projects? What will be different and what will be similar?
What cities are emerging as ‘Crypto’ hubs around the world, as we enter the next bull market cycle?
Is the value of blockchain-based gaming underestimated? What segment of Web3 will gaming carve out for itself in the coming years?
How do you get new people involved in crypto communities, when the learning curve is so high?
4NTS November Highlight – Flux Protocol AMA
Some of you might know Flux as the project that is building in silence – and this is true. This prediction markets protocol built on NEAR is indeed one of the most quiet ones in NEAR ecosystem. But do not confuse this silence with the lack of meaningful updates, they actually have a lot of stuff going on for them. As evident by Peter Mitchell, Flux Protocol CEO just casually popping in Flux Protocol official chat and dropping a few bombs regarding Flux current developments.
Flux Protocol has 5 million USD already committed for liquidity provision from its partners and investors
Flux Protocol started testing the prediction markets feature with real money on November 13th
Project completed a Quantstamp security review
Peter said that lack of community updates nowadays is done on purpose – as soon as Flux goes live, everything that the team was working on will be unveiled
Flux is actively hiring new people to work on their product
Protocol already has layer 2 apps building on top of it, and they intend to take over the esports betting market – stake.gg and ARterra
Overall, it was pure hype! And what made it even more exciting was the nonchalant nature of it. So if you don’t want to miss Peter giving another impromptu AMA in the channel, join their official Telegram group.
Disclaimer: None of the insights or facts explained below should be taken as investing advice. Please consult a financial professional when investing in utility tokens and other financial products. 4NTS Guild does hold NEAR.
A Hosted PDF Version of the Thesis can be found here.
This is a macro-level overview for prospective crypto investors and entrepreneurs interested in better understanding the position of NEAR protocol in the larger crypto- and emerging technology marketplace. For an introduction to NEAR, readers can review The Long Term Value Proposition for NEAR Protocol. In this short paper, a thesis is put forward for NEAR protocol that explains the position of the protocol in the larger crypto – and Web3 space. As an argument, we argue that NEAR is extremely well positioned to sustainably grow in the coming decade, based upon its technical design, developer incentive structure, focus on usability, and global business development approach.
Before we explain our reasons for this thesis, we start by explaining the context of NEAR in the larger Web3 space. This context centers upon an impending crypto bull run, growth of peer-to-contract applications (encompassing decentralized finance, but also much more), as well as the larger infrastructure inversion that Web3 presents and the development opportunities contained therein.
Argument 1: We Are On The Precipice of a Web3 Revolution
Define – Web3: The standardization of value built as a protocol layer of the internet. Peer-to-Peer and Peer-to-Contract network infrastructure from which data and value is handled in a decentralized, public, and permissionless manner using token-based incentive models.
Overview: After three previous market cycles, the cryptocurrency space is positioned for a fourth cycle at a time when smart money, institutional acceptance, and private interest in Web3 is on the rise. Similar to previous technology revolutions, this fourth cycle marks the beginning of a fundamental infrastructure inversion for many of our digital and physical systems. As a result of this inversion, a host of new opportunities and business models will be born in the coming decade plus. NEAR protocol is the platform that is optimally positioned for handling these opportunities.
Premise 1: Demand Factors
Smart Money Before the Masses: After 2 years in a bear market, interest in cryptocurrency and digital tokens is on the rise once again, signalling for many the start of the next bull market. Notably, at the current stage of this cycle, it is predominantly wealthy zip codes in Silicon Valley and New York indicating the entrance of smart money – interested in the value proposition of the underlying technology, and hedging against a weakening dollar. Bitcoin as a whole remains at well below 1/10th of the market cap of gold.
In context, the majority of mainstream finance across the global economy, remains on the sidelines for not only Bitcoin but all of crypto. The trickle-down logic is as follows: If Bitcoin is validated as a serious investment by mainstream investors, private companies, and institutions, interest in other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum will follow closely. Demand for the more encompassing value proposition of Layer 1 blockchain protocols arrives: As Bitcoin rises to prominence, other cryptocurrencies as a whole rise as well.
Institutional Acceptance of Both Crypto and Blockchain: News about Microstrategy, to Grayscale, to Paypal, to even AirBnB and Venmo are clear indicators of the integration of cryptocurrency payment systems with legacy internet payment systems. Institutional adoption validates the usability of cryptographic tokens – an early stage signal of what the future will look like. This signal is further complemented by numerous central banks planning to launch digital currencies in the coming years. In short, institutional acceptance of cryptocurrencies and the underlying distributed ledger technology (be it private or public), validates the long-term interest in token-based economies and the innovative benefits of blockchain.
The Maturation of Web3: Beyond demand factors coming from traditional finance and institutions, demand for crypto-based products, marketplaces and verticals continues to grow in its own right inside of Web3 itself: The future of blockchain-based gaming, non-fungible tokens, decentralized protocols for music and art, as well as DeFi continue to attract capital and interest. As many protocols have launched, future value in the solutions built on top is only just starting to be created. Demand for these solutions is only starting to develop as they become tangible and usable.
Premise 2: Infrastructure Inversion
Define Infrastructure Inversion – Change that occurs when new infrastructure is laid on top of old, pre-existing infrastructure – and how that creates a conflict
Overview: Serial entrepreneurs and technology investors look beyond the financial market value of cryptocurrency, and focus on the underlying value proposition inherent to its core technology: blockchain. Blockchain has the capacity to re-create digital systems such that self-executing software can operate without human interference in an open and permissionless manner. These recreated digital systems that are self-executing have the potential to not only handle data as currently used on the internet, but also data from other emerging technologies such as sensors, satellites, drones, and autonomous and artificially-intelligent machines. Inverting and digitizing much of our digital or institutional infrastructure thus has the opportunity to offer more inclusive and open systems that in turn can scale with emerging technologies to create new and previously untapped value.
Mike Novogratz on Ethereum: Mike Novogratz is a legendary crypto investor who has been actively involved in both Bitcoin and Ethereum from their early days. His understanding of the coming infrastructure inversion is explained when he discusses the real future of value in crypto over the next five years: “In a lot of ways the real revolution, which is coming in five or ten years, is when we rebuild the whole architecture of the financial system. That is the Ethereum revolution, or maybe it’s the Ethereum plus whatever – some of these level two’s or someone else a part of the level one.” (21:42)
“For the first time what we have is a potentially digitally native store of value where the bits in the computer are the money, which is very different from the existing financial system where you do have a ledger and the bank has an entry that says you have such and such money. But it is really just an IOU from the bank – if you go to the bank they will give you some cash. It’s not that the bits in the computer are the money. So if you take that one step further and say, if the bits in the computer are the money, why is that interesting? Well it is interesting because now what that means is that computers can own money. Computers and machines and software can take custody of money. And so for the first time, a human can pay a machine without another human in the loop. Or a machine can pay another machine without a human even being involved. And if you play that forward, one step forward, you say, well, ‘why is that interesting?’ Well it is interesting because there is a set of stuff that computers are better than humans at – and strictly speaking there is only one thing that computers are better than humans at – and that is that computers are better than humans at deterministically executing some set of instructions on some future time horizon. That is literally what computer code is: Do this and the same thing happens every time. If you think about the world, a lot of the world is ‘here is a huge pile of money’ and ‘here are a bunch of rules about that money’ – who has access to that money, and when that money can move and on some future time horizon I need you to execute some set of instructions: That’s a will, that’s a trust, that’s an escrow, that’s a mortgage, that’s a heloc, that’s an options contract, it’s a securities contract, like literally a hundred trillion dollars of the world is ‘here is a pile of money and here is a bunch of rules around that money and how that money can move around.’ So now what you have is an infrastructure where money is digital, computers can take ownership of money, and since computers are strictly better at executing instructions, it is such a perfect match for this hundred trillion dollar slice of the world that has previously been untouched because software couldn’t actually solve those problems natively that we think over the next 20 to 30 years this programmable money stack is just going to eat up that 100 trillion dollars of the world. It feels to us a lot like the early 1990s…” (14:10)
Danny Zuckerman On the Limits of What Can Be Built: One final, and important note on the nature of a comprehensive digital infrastructure inversion is the new opportunities created therein that might have been previously unimaginable or impractical. Danny Zuckerman, Co-Founder of 3Box explains this when he says:
“Basically anything that you can think of is buildable now. There are types of experiences that were just completely impossible a few years ago, but with the speed of what people are building in the blockchain ecosystem and in the web3 ecosystem more broadly, it’s basically possible to piece together any set of experience that you have seen online into a much more interoperable holistic experience, and whether that’s through some of the app building platforms that are gaining steam…through assets and NFTs on blockchains, through composable data, you can start to design things that are maybe not complete yet, but show the future, and I think are going to come very fast. So if you are curious about it, just start building and if you can think about it, start poking around in fun ways to build it.” (35:53)
Overview: The history of innovation and technological development contains many lessons for understanding current innovations launching today. What technologies from the steam engine, to the automobile, to the original internet demonstrate is that: (1) New technologies require time to diffuse into the mainstream; (2) They often must be refined and simplified for mass appeal; And (3) the speed with which they can diffuse is often correlated with how easy it is for someone to access and engage with the technology itself.
Deployment Time and Productivity Gains: Economic History has demonstrated at length that innovation and deployment of new technologies takes time to diffuse and become valued within a society or context. For the Steam Engine,“social savings” due to steam engine improvements remained stagnant at 0.3% per year between 1830 and 1850. It took more than 50 years for widespread adoption to occur across the most important commercial facets of society. The incremental adoption indicates that any technology needs to be able to ‘fit’ into the world in which it has been created – and this process takes considerable amounts of time.
Usability and Mass Appeal: In the case of the automobile, it is evident that usability and mass-appeal were necessary for the technology to start its diffusion process into the world. While the automobile was credited as being invented in 1886 by Carl Benz, most economic historians consider the creation of the Ford Motor Company in 1904 as the first major development in the commercialization of the technology. Notably, Ford built his company to “To create a reliable, low-cost, easy-to-operate and easier-to-fix device for the masses.” By 1927, Ford had sold more than 15 million cars.
The Acceleration of Technological Development: On the brink of what has been coined a ‘4th Industrial Revolution’, it is important to understand that technological innovation is developing and diffusing more rapidly than at any other time in history. Open source, crypto-economic protocols are prime candidates for facilitating this diffusion as they very often operate as a base layer for more complex and integrated solutions or applications (say, for instance, with the Internet of Things, AI, or automated robotics). Blockchain-based cloud platforms are very much the general purpose technology that has the capacity to be applied widely and in tandem with other technologies as this fourth industrial revolution accelerates.
“We are so early in the development of this, that just because the first 30 or 50 million did a thing, doesn’t necessarily mean that the next two billion people will do that thing. And history of technology tells us that over and over again…I tend to think as an investor, probabilistically speaking, the term profiles are such that it makes sense to have a lot of exposure to things that are running at those same objectives, but are not Bitcoin or Ethereum. So in the case of DeFi, yes, I think it is entirely possible that we don’t know what the killer Apps are yet, or that the killer apps have scaling challenges when it comes to Ethereum, and actually some other platform is able to bootstrap enough network security that they can build those sorts of applications, and because it is so much easier to get money in the door that the liquidity feedback loop ends up being faster and faster on a new platform. And ends up eclipsing Ethereum in the next three to five years.” – Avichal Garg, Building the Open Web Podcast Episode 7.
Argument 2: NEAR Protocol is Uniquely Positioned To Lead This Revolution
Define NEAR Protocol – A dynamically sharded layer one blockchain-based cloud platform, built with usability and scalability in mind.
Overview: NEAR is a dynamically sharded blockchain-based cloud platform that is designed to scale according to demand, with low transaction costs, and built-in incentives for developers. NEAR emphasizes usability first, in both its account model design and in offering developers the ability to build dApps on NEAR in both AssemblyScript and Rust. As such NEAR has been built to be easily understood by existing Web2 developers, as well as users familiar with existing internet permission models.
In addition, NEAR Protocol has been launched with an accompanying Business Engine: The Open Web Collective Incubator, and a global development focus. In the context of Argument 1, NEAR approaches Web3 solutions with a win-win mentality, the capacity to easily scale, and with unrivalled incentive models to developers looking to build on top of it. NEAR in this context, is positioned to power the Open Web over the next 10 years and beyond as a truly permissionless cloud platform.
Premise 1: Protocol Design
Overview: NEAR is designed such that it can scale, at a low cost, and with low risk for users and developers. Most notably, the protocol has been built and launched in the full spirit of decentralization, to such an extent that a fully interoperable and permissionless bridge between NEAR and ETH is on the brink of public launch in the coming months. This is the first major consideration to keep in mind when evaluating the long-term potential of any blockchain protocol: How does the technical design facilitate durability and growth over time?
Dynamic Sharding: NEAR Protocol handles transaction loads via asynchronous sharding on its network. The nightshade consensus mechanism is designed to scale a single blockchain known as the Mainchain through consecutively adding shards in proportion to increased transaction loads. This model is one approach proposed to creating a robust and scalable blockchain infrastructure, that is capable of handling a high throughput of transactions at a low cost (less than 1 cent per transaction). The value in the context of making an argument for the viability of NEAR Protocol, is that in itself, it has been designed to scale – the technical design of the protocol is such that it is capable of handling a global capacity load on par with existing centralized financial infrastructure: NEAR has been built to last.
Low Transaction Fees / No Overpaying: Transaction fees on NEAR are priced in a predictable manner, that does not inflate with increased usage. The protocol has also been designed such that it is not possible to overpay a gas fee: anything paid beyond the required amount is returned to the account of the payer. Such a model for transaction fees makes NEAR optimal for usage and attractive to developers. This is especially the case for the nascent yet fast growing NFT market as well as other core Web3 verticals including gaming and DeFi.
NEAR – ETH Decentralized Interoperability: The NEAR team has built and is in the process of finalizing the launch of a fully decentralized NEAR – ETH Bridge from which tokens between platforms can be independently moved by developers, users, and projects. This bridge is significant insofar as it: 1) Provides a pathway for projects (NFT’s, DeFi, etc.) to migrate value from Ethereum onto NEAR in the event of unreasonable gas fees on the former and 2) Pioneers one of the industry’s first fully decentralized bridges from which interoperability between platforms can be established and scaled into the future.
Premise 2: Usability and Incentives
Overview: Making it easy for existing developers to build on NEAR has been a major consideration of the NEAR team in their design of the protocol. As they explain it, NEAR puts usability first. This is not only for developers, but also for users. Similar to parallel enhancements that made the internet more consumer-friendly, NEAR brings a number of first-time enhancements to Web3 that make it more developer and user friendly.
Account Models and Function-Call Limited Permissions: NEAR puts usability first. This is manifested in a number of ways, but the most notable pertain to the account model structure as well as built-in advanced permissions that allow users to call contracts directly. Unlike other blockchain protocols, accounts on NEAR are denominated in names as opposed to hashes of alphanumeric characters. Sub-accounts can be created by master accounts, while standard Single Sign-On login options make handling an account more natural to existing Web2 users. Function-Call Limited Permissions allow developers to call contracts on sub-accounts, such that gas can be automatically pre-paid from dApps ahead of time. Technicalities aside, these features illustrate the thoughtful design that has gone into making NEAR protocol Usabile for Web2 developers as well as the future mass users interested in different solutions built on top of the protocol.
Developers Take 30% From Their Contracts: The NEAR website explains this feature most clearly: “Contracts are rewarded with 30% of the gas fees they generate, giving developers an immediate business model for apps and infrastructure.” This is a unique feature from all other existing layer 1 protocols: Developers, Entrepreneurs, and new projects that migrate to NEAR have a direct incentive to build on the protocol – built into the core design – due to the fact that they will be rewarded 30% of the fees that cross their contracts.
Program in Rust and AssemblyScript: Making it easy to build blockchain-dApps is a key emphasis of NEAR Protocol. Developers from Web2 can quickly and easily code in Rust or AssemblyScript as opposed to a separate blockchain-specific language such as Solidity. In context of the macro transition discussed above, this is another key factor that makes NEAR usable for developers looking to easily transition from Web2 to Web3.
Premise 3 – Business Engine:
Overview: NEAR compliments its robust technical design and usability-first features with a strong focus on the global business landscape for Web3 applications. The Open Web Collective – an early stage incubator for future blockchain solutions – combined with the global focus of the NEAR team, notably in Asia as well as Silicon Valley, is a strong basis for the NEAR Business Engine.
The Open Web Collective: The Open Web Collective is a blockchain-agnostic incubator for early stage crypto projects. It is operated by core NEAR team members and takes applications on a rolling basis. In context of the development of the protocol, the Web Collective is an extremely unique business engine: It provides NEAR (as well as the general blockchain space) with a means by which new projects and ideas can be grown to scale from ideation with input along the way from experienced entrepreneurs in the space. The value here is that NEAR is able to reliably facilitate new projects, games, and startups in the coming future as the protocol and its community continues to grow. As the Web3 space matures, the OWC allows NEAR to harvest the next major trend.
Global Focus: Finally, what is often forgotten in Crypto is the global focus that any serious project must embrace. As Joyce Yang of Global Coin Research explains on Building the Open Web Podcast #23, “I think one of the reasons I invested in NEAR was that I knew you guys were globally minded in the first place. Illia spoke Chinese, and I see him in conferences there all of the time. To see a founder engaged with the global community regardless of geography is something worth learning from.” The NEAR team spans across the globe, while the NEAR community – including Guilds – continue to expand on all continents. Such a focus means that NEAR is well positioned and actively engaging the solutions of tomorrow and the next ten years irrespective of geographical location.
Argument Conclusion:
Many may be inclined to respond to this argument by focusing on the merits of other Layer 1 Protocols in comparison to NEAR. As stated above, NEAR is a collaborator and not a competitor of such protocols. What differentiates NEAR as a protocol is its capacity to facilitate existing Web2 adoption into a future of decentralization and self-executing software in an equitable, familiar, and mutually incentivized manner. The fundamental premise of 4NTS is that NEAR is Building the Open Web – and as such, is optimally positioned to lead the impending digital revolution and its accompanying infrastructure inversion. This premise is based on both technical and historical factors.
The context of this revolution is clear: Cryptocurrencies and open-source blockchain protocols are entering a new market cycle of interest and speculation. NEAR Protocol is uniquely positioned to handle such interest for both users and consumers, and with a global focus. As a young protocol that is capable of scaling according to demand, there is almost no better time to become a community member, stake tokens, build dApps, and generally start participating in an open and inclusive Ecosystem building the internet of value.
For comments and questions, please reach out to m@4nts.com
The most recent episode of NEAR Without the Noise dropped this past week, featuring Lenara and Mykle from a new crypto startup Plantary. Plantary offers a platform for artists and collectors to share in the management process of digital artwork. Beyond strictly financial incentives, Plantary incorporates gamified elements in the creation and harvesting of ‘digital art plants’ using AI-based algorithms. The specific topics covered on the episode went beyond Plantary, and also included the Createbase Guild, the decentralized Art marketplace, the revolution of NFT’s and key barriers of adoption when it comes to getting new players involved in the space.
Point 1: Art is Ready for Crypto – But Lots of Thinking Remains.
Towards the beginning of the discussion, Lead Plantary developer Mykle explained how the current structure of the Art industry has it well positioned for disruption by more decentralized and ‘artist first’ user models. As he explains about the traditional art industry:
“All of your efforts to make your art public has gone to gatekeepers in the past. You look at really inspiring independent artists like a street artist that does what he wants when he wants. But a lot of artists are waiting to be published by someone else…But very frequently when you put out something you lose a lot of it. Decentralization has given sort of a new ground for publishers and artists to stand on in terms of the ability to say I am going to give this to the world but I am going to hang on to it.”
At the same, however, it is clear that there remains much thinking and discovery in the movement to decentralize Art going forward:
“Everybody is asking these questions about how to merge the physical art works with the digital art works, and those are some of the more complicated questions. But what the NFT space has been doing is kind of hunting that question for the future, and let’s see what we can do with art works that are purely digital. For a lot of artists it is going to be about deciding to what degree they want their work existing in the Digital Web3 world.”
Point 2: Plantary is Gamified Art Creation and Collection for Arists and Collectors
Lenara and Mykle both explained the importance of creating a platform that is not only focused on financial value: But also as an open and creative space for users, collectors, and artists to share in more creative and imaginative value creation. This is known as Plantary – a new project building on NEAR Protocol:
“For right now what you can do on Plantary, is there are artists creating works that you can sort of – You go there, and it is all about growing and caring for plants really is the metaphor. You can mint a plant and that plant is really going to be a piece of art that is about a plant. You end up with this plant becoming part of your plant collection, and then as it is part of your collections, there are all sorts of things we are planning to do with its growth and aging. For the moment what you can do is harvest fruit off of it, and you pay a couple of tokens, and it gives you an associated work of art.”
In parallel, Plantary is one of the first projects to also include Artificial Intelligence for generating Art as a part of it’s gamification:
“The plant itself is uniquely created by an artist, several artists will create several versions of the portrait plant. The harvest will be mostly AI Generated. We Can get the AI to work much faster to have cheap and abundant harvest. They will still be unique and different from one another – but they will be uniquely mass produced by the AI.”
Pont 3: Non-Fungible Tokens Are Getting Ready to Explode
Lenara emphasized the rapid growth of NFT’s on NEAR Protocol specifically: With Mintbase and Createbase Guild, Non-Fungible Tokens are well positioned to explode in the coming months:
“I see a lot of interest in NFTs. It is really, really, like a young time for NFT’s on NEAR. Mintbase is going to be the first platform to release a working app where anyone can go and mint NFT’s so it is completely open. You just go and login and connect your NEAR account and you can just start minting right away.” – Lenara
Mykle emphasized the importance of the NEAR – ETH bridge in facilitating this revolution:
“It is going to be really interesting when collectors ownership of an NFT can flow back and forth between those two blockchains, that is going to break a lot of interest and certainly monetize some things and open up another interesting meta-area of artistic discussion, about meaning of ownership and the meaning of money, which is gain major things in the NFT art space. I am excited to see that happen – that is going to just increase the volume, awareness and interaction in the system. We are going to get just more good ideas than we already have as our user base grows, so I am looking forward to that.” – Mykle
To get started in Createbase Guild check out the Guild Telegram:
Point 4: The Move From Web2 to Web3 Has Begun and Is Poised to Accelerate
Speaking on the topic of the larger developer space, and the migration from Web2 to Web3, Mykle emphasized the importance of embracing the philosophical basis of decentralization, transparency, and open-access in Web3. He added though, that beyond such differences, the overall transition is relatively smooth, with NEAR being especially easy to build upon from a traditional software development background:
“I don’t think Web2 developers have that much to overcome. They just need to spend some time looking at the NEAR ecosystem, understanding where the gas comes in and where the gas goes out, and understand the tradeoffs of services and computation and the costs of that. But the rest of that is not SO different. I think that honestly, NEAR is just going to be a lot more approachable than Ethereum was. Everything is there to just say take your current concept of say what a client server web app is and this is where you plug the parts in over here. To me what is existing is the different types of web business – and the different economic structure – that you can fund things directly from user contributions so easily.”
Conclusion:
Plantary is the first of many NFT based projects on NEAR protocol that seek to build the internet of value, while also re-developing existing industries. In the context of decentralized art, collectors items and building Web3, Plantary is a first step in building a more open, transparent and equitable future:
“In the coming years especially as Web3 grows and there are starting to be transactional contracts between blockchains and everything is plugged together in more of building blocks, it is just going to be a matter of establishing trustworthiness in these blockchains that they are real and that they will be here for a long time.”
The Sandbox is launching as an open and permissionless Guild for anyone and everyone interested in contributing to the development of the NEAR Ecosystem in the broadest sense of the word! It is a place for solo contributors, teams, and prospective Guild leaders of the future. The Sandbox is an ecosystem hub for rolling bounties, community rewards, and ecosystem updates! Here is everything you need to know about the Sandbox:
What is the Sandbox in a nutshell?
Specifically, the Sandbox is a place—with its own discord channel—for contributors, prospective Guild leaders, and veteran members of the NEAR community to collaborate with one another in helping develop and promote the NEAR Ecosystem.
What Kind of Activities Can I Expect to Engage In?
In the Sandbox there are are number of different activities you can expect to engage in:
Rolling Opportunities from the NEAR community: Where a list of deliverables and areas of development are outlined with relevant rewards designated.
Solo Ops from a Guild interested in getting help for a specific task or project.
Projects or tasks from businesses and projects building in the NEAR Ecosystem or from the Open-Web collective, looking for specific skills, translations, designs, or content.
To meet other contributors to launch your own projects or Guild.
To build up a reputation in the NEAR community as a leader in a specific area.
Why Would I Want To Join the Sandbox?
The Sandbox is open to everyone! It’s a place where anyone can join with no previous knowledge about NEAR. On top of that, it’s also a place where individuals can contribute to different projects and opportunities in the NEAR ecosystem, while prospective Guild founders can incubate their guild plan and recruit future Guild members Joining the Sandbox is the best way to get involved in the community development of the different aspects of the NEAR Ecosystem! Above all, you’ll be part of a friendly, welcoming and open community.
How Can I Get Started?
Joining the Sandbox is pretty simple. Head over to the Sandbox Discord, join a channel that you are interested in contributing in, start sharing your ideas with other members, and start building from the list of available and rolling opportunities!
Why Now is the Time To Join the Sandbox:
The NEAR Ecosystem is young. In crypto, young projects mean opportunity and plenty of room to grow. This is especially the case with NEAR. With the NEAR – ETH Rainbow Bridge and the Open Web Collective supporting future project development on NEAR, now is the best time to learn about the Ecosystem and the many projects that are preparing to launch on top of it! Whether you are looking to hone your skills as a contributor, or launch your own Guild down the road, the Sandbox is the place to be right now!
On 11 November, 2020 Flux CEO Peter Mitchell hosted a low-profile AMA in the Flux Protocol official Telegram group. As one of the most overlooked AMAs to date a number of extremely important updates on the development of Flux were dropped by Peter: don’t sleep on this one – it is as hype as it gets! A brief overview of the most important points discussed is outlined below, while a full transcript of the AMA is included at the bottom.
Trending Prediction Markets
The AMA kicked off with Peter talking about the recent traction seen around prediction markets especially during the presidential election in the United States. He mentioned that it’s been awesome to see prediction markets take the main stage in the election. Moreover, Peter is excited for the future of markets around politics, and the strong position of Flux in this industry.
“After building in the space for a couple years it was really awesome to see prediction markets take the main stage in be featured so prominently in the US election. I think this is only the beginning and there were a lot of hindrances holding back serious usage, but I think Flux will be primed for upcoming markets around politics.”
Real Money
While categorical and binary mechanics are already live on Flux mainnet today, scalar markets (prediction markets with numerical denominators) are soon to be implemented as well. With scalar markets, one is able to start a prediction market, for example, on how much airline stocks would go up by the end of Q4 2020. With this new feature, new types of prediction markets can be set up. “Testing with actual money starts on Friday 13 November 2020” Peter casually dropped. “At the beginning it will be capped usage to ensure we can refund any funds that could be at risk”, he added.
Quantstamp Security Review
A few issues with varying levels of severity were found during the security review. These issues have been resolved in the meantime. Furthermore, the engineers at Flux are finishing up rewriting the code base. They’re doing this to include better documentation so the protocol is easier to build on, and effectively reduces the time needed for future iterations and audits. Upon completion of these fixes, Flux will be primed for public launch, and ready to scale across prediction markets!
Pressure from competition
Notably, Peter was asked if he feels any pressure from competitors in a way that makes him feel the need to move faster. To this he replied:
“At the moment the market is so young that I think all competitors have the same goal which is to bring in mainstream users. This is a net positive over all for crypto. I think competition will heat up more in roughly 6 months as usability increases and more users begin to enter into crypto. This will then center around a permissionless nature, cheap transactions and the most sticky UX.”
With their current team and roadmap in place, Flux Protocol is by any measure, well on its way to position itself nicely within this industry.
Behind the Scenes
To any Flux community member, it was apparent that the Flux team limited their engagement with the community over the course of the last couple of months. The reasoning behind this is that there were many fake Flux Tokens listed on DEX’s with legal concerns capable of interfering in project development.
Full Transcript of the AMA
When moon?
No comment lol
What are your thoughts on the traction seen around prediction markets during the election?
After building in the space for a couple years it was really awesome to see prediciton markets take the main stage in be featured so prominently in the US election. I think this is only the beginning and there were a lot of hinderences holding back serious usage, but I think Flux will be primed for upcoming markets around politics
Release date for scalar markets?
Categorical and binary mechanics are live on mainnet today and testing with real money starts on Friday. The scalar mechanics are very simple to implement so likely over the next few weeks to get that live.
Is Flux hiring developers to work on the protocol?
