Month: December 2020

NEAR Without the Noise Episode 4: The Open Web Collective and OP Games

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At our core, we believe that the future of blockchain is not a zero sum game. The future is one network and many chains. The future is a positive-sum game – it is a multichain world, where founders will build on  NEAR for pieces of their tech stack and leverage others as well” – Mildred Idada

4NTS Guild sat down with Mildred Idada from the NEAR team and Chase Freo from OP Games to talk about one of the most unique and exciting accelerator programs in all of crypto: The Open Web Collective. 

A full link to the talk can be found here. 

The Open Web Collective Is A 3-Month Silicon Valley Based Crypto Accelerator, For Early Stage Crypto Startups

At the beginning of the discussion, Mildred explained the importance of the Open Web Collective in the context of gaining traction for new products based upon where the cryptocurrency space is today:  

I think in crypto, traction kind of starts off with who believes in your vision of the future, well before you have a product to market. That’s actually a really new concept. So how do we test and think about this new way of looking at traction? 

The best solution put forward by the NEAR team is a blockchain agnostic, 3 month, cryptocurrency incubator known as the Open Web Collective, that accepts founders and teams at all stages of product development into their program! 

The Vision Of The Open Web Collective Is To Help Build Out New Crypto Solutions Across Chains

Crucial to the understanding of what the OWC is, is their vision for participation in the new crypto economy. In essence, the OWC is trying to get more developers from Web2, and founders from the traditional startup space into building crypto-based solutions that help advance the ownership economy as well as decentralized infrastructure. 

Batch 1 of the accelerator was much more focused on teams that already understand the space. Going forward our vision is that we can pull more Web2s in. Including those that are already dabbling and those who are less technical (i.e., crypto enthusiasts).

What Does The Open Web Collective Include? 

As a 3 month accelerator, the OWC collective puts teams in touch with mentors, industry experts, and other founders all looking to build a better and more open internet of value. Crucial to advancing this vision, the OWC provides any company with the following help and services during the 3 month adventure:

Funding opportunities. 

Launching a Token and the Considerations Therein (When is the right time to launch a token?). 

Understanding Traction and Product Market Fit: What does traction look like? 

Traction and Crypto Communities: How To Build A Community Around Your Product? 

New Economies and New Ideas Being Spun up (Thinking Through A New Product in the Ownership or Passion Economy). 

As Mildred explained in discussion, crypto-based product models actually have the potential to not just build more open and accessible services, but they can also be funded in new and creative ways: 

What crypto does is literally allow them to remove VC’s altogether, and enable their communities and spectators and that is really awesome and powerful. In the Open Web Collective we focus on these new forms of deal structuring. 

The OWC Includes Group Meetings, Mentor Trainings, and a Network of Experts

During the 3 month accelerator, teams and individuals can expect to have group meetings with other teams, specific mentor trainings based upon the industry or niche that a product fits into, and a lasting network of contacts in the Web3 space. Teams are able to join any event remotely, making the Collective a truly global opportunity for companies from around the world. 

What is good about my experience with OWC is that they really take time to pair you up with mentors that really make sense for your specific business. So it’s not like, okay you are in gaming, someone here knows games’ lets pair you up – that’s not how it works at the very least for the first cohort. It is really them taking the time to understand what inventors have done in the past and what it can do for you, and what you can do as well. 

OP Games: An Open Web Collective Case Study 

OP Games is a Canadian – Filipino team of gamers and developers interested in building crypto-based monetization models for small and medium size game developers who may normally struggle to catch any market share at all because of the size of the Gaming giants. OP Games allows such companies to plug into the crypto economy to host tournaments, and increase the stakes on their games as an alternative revenue stream to advertising. 

Chase went through the first cycle of the Open Web Collective, during which time he refined the idea behind OP Games, to make it more market focused, and sustainable in the long term.  

In terms of the experience that I have and we have with the Open Web Collective and what we have gone through so far on phase 1 of that, it was a really Amazing experience in terms of the support that they provided for the founders. I can elaborate more on that as we go along. Essentially giving us a much more broader understanding of how crypto works in relation to the product that we are building. 

Most importantly, the experience helped him not only refine his product to find a better fit within the existing market, but it also equipped him with the tools he needed to understand the state of his industry in the context of Web3 Adoption: 

In crypto in general, and blockchain, it’s really hard to catch up. Even on the gaming side of things, the new technologies and standards that are emerging you have to keep yourself abreast. Otherwise if you sleep for one week you wake up with a new world altogether. That is probably something that is going to happen continuously. 

Chase Freo, CEO of OP Games

Applications For Round Two Are Open Until December 11th!

Applications for the second round of the Open Web Collective are Open until December 11th. A Submission form can be found here. Remote teams, solo founders, and those just starting to get an idea of their product are all welcome to apply! 

For a full overview of the episode check out the full Youtube video here. 

New Team Members on NEAR: A Strong Team is Getting Stronger

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In crypto the team behind a project is as important, if not more important, than the technical goals and larger vision that the project puts forward. As the 2017 bubble has demonstrated, being able to execute as a team and bring to life the goals of a particular crypto-ecosystem, is very much dependent upon the personalities involved in that ecosystem day-in-and-day out. 

The NEAR Team has been known for being exceptionally strong, with serial entrepreneurs, gold medalist coders (6 Gold Medals at ACM ICPC), and decades of combined experience at top Silicon Valley Tech companies (5 ex-Googlers). Nevertheless, there are a couple of noticeable recent hires that should continue to inspire confidence in the development of NEAR as it becomes more widespread, known, and used across the crypto space: 

“Some hubs are located in Switzerland, Germany, Russia, the US and China. Regardless of where you work, this is a high performance culture that values ownership, execution and professionalism but pairs it with curiosity and experimentation. The vision is big but the right team is behind it.” 

– The Global NEAR Team

Point 1: Alexandra Tinsman Joins NEAR as a Vice President of Marketing 

Alexandra Tinsman brings decades of experience to NEAR. She has worked on Xbox, Pokemon International, and Riot Games. She has been front and center on marketing the world’s first digital assets from League of Legends, Magic: The Gathering Online, and Pokemon Go. What’s interesting is that her background is focused on driving results “by cultivating customer-centered cultures”. In short, she will play a prime role in making sure that usability remains the first priority of NEAR Protocol as it continues to expand for developers and users. 

Note: She will be livestream on YouTube today, December 2nd here. 

Point 2: NEAR’s Content Team is Gearing Up Alongside It’s Community Team 

Mally Anderson recently joined the NEAR team about 2 months ago to take over as ‘Head of Content’. Her background is diverse and well rounded: She was an associate editor for Penguin Press, a writer and editor at ConsenSys, and well published across mainstream journals including Decrypt, Devcon, and Quartz. 

In parallel to Mally’s hire, James  (@jwaup) and Eunice (@eunicecyl) have joined the NEAR Community Team to focus specifically on Community development in the context of the Guild Program, as well as NEAR Validators. 

When one takes all three hires together, it becomes clear that NEAR is investing in not only the technical and social elements of their ecosystem but also the more creative and community based parts as well. It will be interesting to see in the coming months how new content, planning, and community engagement lead to new initiatives and communities within the ecosystem. 

Point 3: Business Development and Recruitment Rounds Out The Final Group of Hires 

Cameron Dennis and Austin Harshberger join NEAR as recent hires, but this time with a focus on the business and recruitment side of things: Cameron is previously president and founder of the blockchain acceleration foundation based out of California. He Joins NEAR as a Business Development Analyst. Austin meanwhile, is a software engineer by training who is looking to recruit developers into the NEAR ecosystem – he brings experience from Apple, Coinbase, and Github. Last but not least Ashley Tyson, Co-Founder of the Web3 Foundation, is also listed on the NEAR Team Page (although the full extent of her role isn’t clear). 

Point 4: Dr. Alex Shevchenko The Joins Rainbow Bridge Team 

Dr. Alex Shevchenko joined the NEAR team four months ago. While not a super recent hire, he is an important point in the development of the NEAR Team, especially as it relates to the NEAR – ETH Bridge. With experience from Bitfury, and a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics, Alex brings deep experience in high performance computing – perfect for handling massive macro challenges like the NEAR – ETH Bridge, and the implementation of EVM on NEAR. 

Taking Stock: New Hires For Growth 

The most recent set of hires for the NEAR team brings together more talented individual to execute the NEAR Team’s ambitious vision of Building the Open Web. Team members come from the likes of Pokemon Go, Academia, Apple, Coinbase, ConsenSys and much more. 

Most importantly, the hires reflect a balanced engagement with the different pillars of the NEAR Ecosystem: Marketing, Business Development,  Community Development, Content, Recruiting, and Ecosystem Growth. 

NEAR is Hiring! 

If you are interested in joining one of the most stacked teams in the crypto space, check ou the open positions on the NEAR Website. Ecosystem Development, Engineering and Operations are looking for many hires in the coming months! 

NEAR Asia Community Update: A Roaring Start For The NEAR Chinese Community!

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4NTS Guild recently sat down with Steve Huang from the NEAR Chinese Community to get an update on the development of NEAR protocol in China and the larger Asian community. As a status update for the rest of the NEAR community, there are a number of important takeaways relating to the global development of NEAR Protocol including a link to the most recent NEAR Chinese Community AMA: 

Point 1: NEAR Has A Solid Chinese Team 

What may come as a surprise for many in Crypto from Europe and North America, is that NEAR has a well-established Chinese team based out of Shanghai and led by NEAR Co-Founder Ilia Polosukhin. 

As Joyce Yang of Global Coin Research originally explained 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.” 

Joyce Yang, Global Coin Research

In total Steve, Amos, and Ilia are all based out of Shanghai, while other team members work remotely from other parts of China. Active engagement with the Chinese community is a core part of NEAR’s China engagement strategy, and as such Ilia and Amos partake in Weekly AMA’s on WeChat. For the most recent one that has been translated see Here. 

Point 2: The Chinese Community Is Large – And Expanding Quickly 

Notably, the NEAR Chinese community is already large, and expanding rapidly. As the images below demonstrate, NEAR’s Chinese Community boasts an astounding 22 Guilds, with a WeChat community of 9,000 strong. Of the 22 Guilds, 2 are considered pure developer guilds looking to build native solutions on NEAR, or using the Rainbow Bridge (more on this below). 

A notable business development gem explained in the NEAR Chinese Community AMA: 

“Our Business Development team has actually talked to more than 300 projects thus far, spanning across a wide range of verticals, such as eSports gaming, transcoding services, p2p tournaments, social network, and various other use cases of NFT” – Chinese Community AMA. 

A further question also explains NEAR’s approach to China in particular: 

The Chinese market has become a huge emerging market that many projects concerns. Share with us some efforts have you made in rooting in the Chinese market, and what’s your plans on building the Chinese community? 

China has the largest internet user base in the world and is pretty much cashless. Applications tend to iterate and grow faster in China, and people are much more willing to try out new things. As a project aiming to make blockchain usable for every day users, we place a great strategic focus in China because it’s probably the best place for us to get a bunch of innovative entrepreneurs and a large set of users to help us with quick product iteration. 

Point 3: NEAR’s Asia Development Plan Is Just Getting Started 

The NEAR China Community officially launched in 2019, and has been growing strong. NEAR Team efforts combined with a rapid growth in NEAR guilds has NEAR Expanding across much of Asia in the coming months. Notably, expansion is already planned into Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam. In this approach, the NEAR team will be focusing on Devs and Founders who will be building solutions on top of NEAR. 

To date, many of the most active members in the NEAR Chinese Community already work in other Chinese crypto firms, and thus provide a sustainable foundation for organic development into the future. 

The long term development goals of NEAR in China and the larger Asia region are also outlined from the AMA: 

“We are already working with many local partners in China and will continue building on these relationships to get more developers, more entrepreneurs, and more users into NEAR’s ecosystem in the next a few years. I am personally super excited about NEAR’s potential in China.” – Chinese Community AMA Question 12.

Point 4: A Lot of Development Is Waiting for the Public Launch and Completion of the NEAR — ETH Rainbow Bridge 

A final important point is to understand the importance of the development of the NEAR – ETH Bridge in the context of NEAR’s Asia Development Strategy. According to Steve, half of the Developers building on NEAR in China are waiting on the EVM to be implemented in order to bring their solution onto NEAR. The other half are already actively building solutions that will launch in the coming year. 

And even though NEAR is trading on top Chinese exchanges with good support and liquidity, Steve emphasizes the focus of the NEAR team on cultivating developers to build long-term solutions that will bring value to the protocol: 

“We are planning to do some localizations and some more localized events, we are planning to experiment with some educational series, and to introduce the technology side of NEAR to more audiences right now. We are still being careful though: We won’t hold any other trading competitions so far. That is not what NEAR aims for. NEAR Will mainly focus on developers and real blockchain users for now.”

As the NEAR China community grows rapidly, it is now easy to see why NEAR Co-Founder Ilia Polosukhin is known as @Ilblackdragon!