The Cypherpunk Guild -a group of advocates for the use of cryptography to enhance privacy and self-sovereignty- is pleased to announce an open application for funding the Future of Social Networks on NEAR Protocol.
The most popular social networks leave their users vulnerable to a variety of threats, such as identity theft, data mining, and the stealing and exploitation of personal information. As we increasingly rely on social networks for communication, we need solutions that guarantee users’ privacy, data, and safety.
Being committed to enhancing privacy and self-sovereignty through the use of cryptography, the Cypherpunk Guild is looking to award funds to projects that will work toward the realisation of social networks respectful of users’ privacy and safety built on NEAR Protocol.
Grant Amounts: Each project can be awarded up to 20k $NEAR
Requirements for Applicants:
Projects should have:
Complete documentation and roadmap (or a well planned development timeline)
Aa clear and well thought-out product architecture
The Cypherpunk Guild -a group of advocates for the use of cryptography to enhance privacy and self-sovereignty- is pleased to announce an open application for funding projects related to Future of Privacy DeFi Infrastructure on NEAR Protocol.
DeFi is currently one of the most well-funded market segments, and as the demand for DeFi applications grows, so does the need to guarantee users’ privacy and safety in order to secure scalability.
The Cypherpunk Guild is then looking to fund projects aiming at implementing privacy solutions and strong protection mechanisms for DeFi that will help DeFi’s smooth ascent. Examples of such projects might include privacy related solutions encompassing:
– Distributed financial infrastructure *
– Prediction Markets
– Identity and KYC
– General Marketplaces
– Derivatives
– Insurance
– Lending
– Asset Tokenization
– Stablecoins
– Exchanges
Grant Amounts: Each project is awarded up to 20k $NEAR
Requirements for Applicants:
Projects should have:
Complete documentation and roadmap (or a well planned development timeline)
Aa clear and well thought-out product architecture
The Cypherpunk Guild- a group of advocates for the use of cryptography to enhance privacy and self-sovereignty- is pleased to announce an open application for funding projects related to the Future of Privacy for Sputnik DAOs on NEAR Protocol.
DAOs are emerging in the crypto space as a new form of on-chain governance that allows for decentralised and democratic management of organisations. Sputnik DAO has already launched on NEAR Protocol with V2 fast approaching! Since DAOs are run according to member consensus, privacy is essential in order to guarantee an environment free of corruption and pressure for the people engaging in voting, proposal resolutions, and funds allocations.
The Cypherpunk Guild is looking to fund projects that enhance the privacy solutions for Sputnik DAOs, empower its users, and strengthen the processes of on-chain governance on NEAR Protocol.
Grant Amounts: Each project is awarded up to 20k $NEAR
Requirements for Applicants:
Projects should have:
– Complete documentation and roadmap (or a well planned development timeline)
– A clear and well thought-out product architecture
The 4NTs research team recently began a series of events dedicated to the future of the Open-Web and crypto. The second live stream about the future of corporate governance in the Open Web era featured blockchain expert and business transformation leader Yei Sung Kim. Yei has worked for many years in Accenture and Oliver Wayman as a senior manager and principal respectively.
During our discussion, Yei shared her experiences working as a consultant for big corporations and gave us a clear picture of the challenges and reservations that big corporations display towards DLT solutions.
https://youtu.be/XUO_KyhzyAo
DLT’s Advantages are Clear But there is Still Skepticism around it
In the past few years, DLT adoptions have been rapidly growing across industries and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by big corporations. Most of the big companies currently rely on outdated, cumbersome, and expensive methods to deal with data and transactions, they could thus greatly benefit from the adoption of DLT. Nonetheless, they are confronted with particular challenges and worries that prevent them from keeping up with technological innovation:
“What I’ve heard the sentiment a lot from our clients is that they love the idea of the efficiency, the transparency it brings. And bringing traditional players that usually do not trust each other into a single source of truth. But the sentiment that I do hear a lot is that they are waiting for a leader or the gorilla in the room in the industry to take it on first and then they would like to be a follower to see what the adoption was like, what was some of the pitfalls, what were some of the successes, and what’s the infrastructure they can follow. So, some of these giant corporations, one of my clients is even an oil and gas supermajor, they said they wouldn’t even be a fast follower in the space, they would be a slow follower in the space. Getting traditional players who are competitors or who are even working with other parties who might be competitors with each other and having them use a single source of truth without figuring out the actual owner of the data and who gets to manipulate these data that’s been a big hurdle that I’ve seen so far”.
Because of their hierarchical structure and outdated decision-making processes, big corporations are not likely to swiftly adopt DLT solutions even though they can help improving the efficiency of their operations. Organizational restructuring has both financial and emotional cost which is what prevents most of them from changing and embracing new technologies.
Another issue hindering DLT adoption is the lack of a clear understanding of what this technology is and how that can benefit them:
“A lot of times hear blockchain and the sexiness behind Bitcoin and now you have NFTs so how do you explain this technology that supports Bitcoin which is another kind of currency but isn’t ruled by a governmental entity, how do you explain how this technology also works in other areas, environments, spheres?”
A lot of corporations are often so entrenched in old ways of functioning/workingthat they struggle to keep up with the innovations around them. Their old patterns are hard to change even when the benefits and rewards for the investment are almost banally obvious, that means until some other big company shows how profitable change is.
Good Use Cases Will Lead to DLT Adoption
The blooming of good use cases will lead to faster adoption and there are encouraging trends:
“I’m hoping that Elon Musk and Tesla because he has so much Bitcoin right now and he’s going to accept Bitcoin for purchasing Tesla. […] But I think that these big magnitude, high publicity kind of cases will make it more acceptable. But you also need to think that if you are a disruptor, there are a lot of cool advantages behind Bitcoin, you are kind of off the grid a little bit. You don’t have to worry about the government, and how does it transfer from bank to bank. It’s real-time, it’s a really fast transaction, but we are still operating in a world in which corporations still need to pay taxes. How do you regulate this? How do you make sure that if you do accept Bitcoin will the US treasury have to take Bitcoin as a currency when you pay your taxes? There are all these interesting implications behind it”.
As it happens with all technologies, good use cases for private-public partnership will drive a certain product mainstream since they will help to emphasise their value and reassure them of their potential to boost businesses. Along with the increase in adoption will arise legal questions, but there are good reasons to believe that governments will not try to get into the way of economic growth in a period characterised by stagnation.
Big Corporations Need People that Understand Data
Companies are confronted with a lack of talent and knowledge that hinders the fast development of tailored solutions for their businesses. There is a shortage of blockchain developers and data scientists, and that creates a lot of costs and uncertainty:
“There is a greater importance on having data-savvy people and then not only that, it’s the human + machine equation because we’ve seen so much misinformation because the algorithm AI tends to amplify certain voices, so how do we call the biases and use the human side, the empathy side and making sure that we are not inadvertently making ourselves more biases decision making entity as well? So, bringing that merge between people that understand data to the business implications, to the human and customer implications as well”.
It might still take several years for big companies to tap into the potential of DLT, partly because of a lack of successful use-cases, mainstream adoption, and lack of knowledge and regulations. But as companies such as Tesla help making crypto more popular a favourable environment will spontaneously arise.
The 4NTs research team recently began a series of events dedicated to the future of the Open-Web and crypto. The first live stream featured John Karanja, founder of BitHub Africa and Whive Protocol, an award-winning protocol for innovation in the youth and gender sector. John has been involved in the African crypto space for the past seven years. His work focuses on tackling concrete issues such as energy access, dissemination of blockchain solutions and professional skill-building.
During an hour-long talk, John has given an insightful account of the evolution of Defi and crypto in Africa as well as a clear picture of the opportunities that the continent has to offer.
Africa: The Silicon Valley of the Future?
There is a growing awareness among investors and entrepreneurs that Africa presents a huge potential for becoming the crypto hub of the future. Human capital, resources, coupled with the desire for economic development and lack of financial structures are some of the ingredients that make the African continent particularly suited for a swift adoption of DLT solutions. African people are confronted with a lack of basic infrastructures and have a huge need for new solutions able to provide financial inclusion, access to opportunities and education, electricity and more. It is no surprise then that Bitcoin’s adoption is rising across the continent and that solutions like M-Pesa saw a rapid acceptance:
“What makes the African continent unique is that there is a huge need. We have people living in rural areas, they leave their mothers and grandmothers behind and their cousins behind and they come to the cities to look for work. And the people back home in their villages need access to money because they are not financially included, so what MPesa did was allowing people for the first time to send money digitally through a network. I remember I used to send money to the village I put money in an envelope, gave it to my cousin, and then my cousin removed a few notes and gave the money to my grandmother. We had something called cousin tax. Now with MPesa, that problem was solved you could send money directly. The problem with MPesa is that is not really scalable beyond the Kenyan border, yet at the same time we have this problem in other parts of Africa that are sort of lagging behind, so, this is where we see bitcoin and cryptocurrencies picking up slack of what physical money cannot do” – John Karanja
The African continent has a population of 1.2 billion people, 60% of it being below 25 years of age and in dire need to access things that other people around the world already have access to. This is a huge market to tap into:
“If you ask me what’s going to happen in the next 5 years, is we are entering a place where industries worth billions of dollars will be entering Africa and reach the lives of African people, making them wealthier and a seat on the table and trade with their fellow counterparts in Europe, in China, in the US, and the rest of the world. We have a lot to offer we have a rich and vast culture that has not been tapped into, in terms of innovation that can come from that […] there are huge market opportunities here but we need people to begin to realise the need to invest in education and we need partners to come in and create value that we can all share instead of the old extractive model in which Africa is just seen as a place where you get resources and then you leave” – John Karanja
For a long time Africa has been at the outskirts of technological development, however, the African population is showing to be much more receptive to the potential of crypto and is growing more eager by the day to further experiment with it to satisfy its necessities and fill their infrastructural gaps. These trends made entrepreneurs of the calibre of Charles Hoskinson identify Africa as the most promising economic environment in the next ten years (Charles Hoskinson, 2021). And it is precisely in these early days that investors and interpreters should not hesitate to jump into a venture that will give them access to a market worth trillions.
Uniting the African Continent Through the Open Web
To take advantage of Africa’s full market potential, Africans need to pull countries together and figure out solutions to boost cooperation. Cryptocurrencies are already allowing for an increase in international trading, however, more solutions need to be built to address other impairments to collaboration:
“One huge challenge we have here is the language barrier [..]. A lot of the problems we have here are the same in Katanga in Congo, Mali, which is access to resources that these countries have in abundance. We now need to create open communities using the Open Web where we have people that can translate content and share this content with each other” – John Karanja
The development of the Open Web will be critical to facilitate the exchange of information and cooperation. For that, scalable and user-friendly applications need to be created to stir engagement:
“The barrier remains a problem at the user interface or the user experience level. When we talk about payments and transactions you now have global monetary networks like bitcoin, you now have platforms that allow global CPU mining, we have protocols where people can build web solutions like for example the NEAR Protocol. These protocols have a common language which is digital. The digital problem has been solved […] so now we need to build applications where I can be able to translate what somebody is saying in a certain language to another language layered on top of blockchain technology. And I think when people begin to see those technologies including governments they will begin to appreciate the power of blockchain as one of the technologies that can unite the African continent and connect it intercontinentally. For me, it’s just a user experience issue where you create interoperability using applications”. – John Karanja
The necessary structures and tools to facilitate interactions and cooperation still need to be put in place. In this regard, there are plenty of opportunities for developers to unleash their creativity to build something useful and accessible.
Education and Cooperation are Key to the Open Web’s Success in Africa
The Open Web is still in its early days, and for it to succeed people will need to understand what it is and the opportunities that it offers:
“For the Open Web to succeed we do not only need innovation, but we also need education, training, and investment in youth potential. Africa is a very young continent, 60% of the people are under the age of 25 so that’s a huge resource we need to tap into to see these technologies get adopted”
– John Karanja
Investment in educational programs and training will be essential to the fast adoption of DLT and economic growth. To contribute to that John has created Melanin Academy, a project aiming to train 2000 engineers in the next 4 years. More educational programs and training have been launched in the past years but more investment is definitely needed to speed up change.
Having been involved in the African crypto scene since the very early days, John has witnessed its rapid evolution and also shortcomings:
“Today because of our effort the community is so huge that we now have what we call silos, we have people who are exclusive on one platform, some are exclusive on Bitcoin, others on Ethereum etc…What we need to do now is to interconnect these communities because we are not fighting each other we are trying to solve these huge problems which are access to opportunities, access to resources using blockchain technology. Now that we have grown we need to identify real problems and then collaborate because collaboration is key. We do not want to have a situation where different groups are trying to do the same thing while we could work through synergy to become more cost-efficient and successful”
– John Karanja
The advancement of crypto has given rise to different entrenched cultures that are at times more focused on surpassing each other than in keeping building meaningful projects for the community. Collaboration and exchanges among different platforms, however, is what is going to determine their value and success in the long haul.
The NEAR – Ethereum Rainbow Bridge recently launched, led by NEAR Team Lead Dr. Alex Shevchenko. While the bridge providers seamless interoperability between assets and contracts on NEAR and Ethereum respectively, it also signifies a larger shift in the crypto space:
(1) DeFi takes a step towards becoming more affordable,
(2) A new landscape in crypto has emerged for Layer 2 protocols looking to build across Layer 1 chains,
(3) A precedent is set for building open and permissionless bridges between all L1 chains in the future.
Breaking down these three points reveals that the successful launch of the Rainbow Bridge, coupled with the impending launch of the NEAR EVM has the potential to dramatically and permanently alter the landscape of crypto.
Affordable DeFi + Ref.Finance Launches!
The first point that cannot be emphasized enough, is that the Bridge creates a channel for projects to migrate assets onto NEAR so as to make them more affordable to transact and utilize. nDAI (NEAR DAI) is thus capable of being used on Flux Protocol, with minimal transaction costs (especially as compared to Ethereum).
With the launch of ONLY the Rainbow bridge, assets on Ethereum can migrate across to NEAR to be utilized in Native NEAR solutions like Flux or Octopus Network. This is the basis for powering a native NEAR community AMM known as Ref.Finance. In the early days of interoperability between NEAR and ETH this AMM will allow for the exchange of assets and wrapped NEAR assets on NEAR protocol.
With the launch of Aurora and the NEAR EVM, affordable DeFi will become a reality for all of crypto. As Dr. Alex Shevchenko explains in detail, any existing Ethereum DeFi project will be able to scalably migrate over to NEAR in an afternoon, and instantly enjoy low transaction costs and fast network speeds for their native ETH products. This equally applies to NFT’s from NEAR going onto ETH marketplaces, as well as visa-versa.
All in all, this signifies a new era for scalability in the crypto-verse. For the first time, dozens of Dapps on Ethereum that have struggled to scale and grow due to high gas fees, now have a simple, cost-effective, and user-friendly alternative: NEAR Protocol.
Development of Crypto Across Chains
An important second implication of the launch of the Rainbow Bridge is the significance it holds for current and existing Layer 2 solutions built on Ethereum. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is with the DEX Aggregator 1inch Exchange: 1inch building its aggregator and AMM across Layer 1 chains: Ethereum, NEAR, Binance Smart Chain, and Tron. More details are explained below by 1inch Co-Founder Sergej Kunz:
1inch is a new project — launched in late 2019 — that is familiar with the rapidly changing crypto environment. The trend that 1inch embraces – of working across Layer 1 Protocols – is a trend that the Rainbow Bridge will help accelerate into the future. In short, the future of Layer 2 Protocols are going to be across chains.
Note: This makes the usability facet of NEAR, including its unique account model, especially unique.
A New Bridge Precedent: The Future is Permissionless and Interoperable
Third and finally, the launch of the Rainbow Bridge is something that should be understood as the start of a trend: Bridging between Layer 1s in a truly permissionless and open fashion. While the NEAR team itself has not commented on any future plans to build further decentralized and permissionless bridges between L1 networks, it would only make sense to replicate the existing bridge development strategy with different ecosystems. Connecting L1 ecosystems in a permissionless and decentralized manner provides (1) a basis for creating positive network effects between protocols, (2) reducing transaction costs, (3) streamlining products and services, and (4) expanding access to different users.
About eight months ago, NEAR Protocol launched its mainnet to a small community of token holders, and a number of reputable VCs — a16z, Pantera, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures. Since then it has largely flown under the radar for most of crypto in spite of exceptional fundamentals and a strong focus on user-experience.
A New Phase For NEAR Has Arrived:
Feels like @NEARProtocol is one yield farm away from taking off — interesting to see the infra puzzle pieces come together over the past few months.
With the launch of the Rainbow Bridge, Open Market Protocol Flux and Pulse, Decentralized exchange Ref.Finance, as well as the upcoming launch of the NEAR EVM and Mintbase on NEAR, NEAR is entering a new phase. Now before you make an instant comparison to another L1 and everything that L1 has going for it, consider the following characteristics that NEAR is positioned to dominate within crypto:
Scalability
NEAR is going to be able to scalably handle Ethereum and NEAR applications at affordable rates and with quick transaction speeds with streamlined storage and predictable fees. Once the EVM is launched, NEAR becomes a proper ‘World of dApps Protocol’ that will not only handle congested DeFi dApps on ETH, but also future Open Web solutions relating to Gaming, NFTs, Social Tokens, and the next wave of decentralized finance.
12/ The Rainbow Bridge is also about more than just Ethereum. It is a general purpose protocol where 80% of the work for integrating other chains is done. You might see integrations coming soon with #celo#dot#sol or any other chain where a dev group wants to build an adapter.
— Erik Trautman | erik.near (@ErikTrautman) April 6, 2021
The Multi-chain Interoperability of the Future
The Rainbow Bridge was the first product that utilizes Rainbow Protocol. Rainbow Protocol provides 80% of the needed infrastructure for replicating the rainbow bridge with other L1 Chains, such as Cosmos and Polkadot. This means, effectively, that NEAR is actually building fully permissionless and decentralized bridges to a network of other protocols. In the game of castles, that means that while other L1s might have bridges to 1 or 2 other protocols (and bridges that are not permissionless or decentralized at that), NEAR will be the hub for interoperability.
“Derivatives might go to a chain that specializes in that. NFTs might go to a chain that specializes in that. Interchain operability will be a big thing. Where assets can be indexed and referenced, even if they are remote – to a particular chain. Bitcoin had no knowledge of other chains. And nowadays chains do have knowledge of other chains.“
With the blossoming Sputnik DAO infrastructure on NEAR, NEAR’s focus on interoperability is extremely encouraging for streamlining the next generation of on-chain, community governed organizations that can call contracts and move assets between a universe of chains.
Remember everything about how community and DAOs are the future of crypto? Well NEAR is building a world of dApps that will be the hub of a universe of chains. It’s happening on NEAR – Yes both, the World of dApps and the Universe of Chains.
User Experience and the NEAR Account Model
Jumping off from these two points above, we can add the final knock-out punch with the NEAR account model. SO many projects in crypto today are entirely inaccessible for most non-crypto people. There are too many new processes, transfers, and addresses that have to be made, a process that is messy and not user-friendly. NEAR is built from the ground up to fix that problem. That is what the NEAR Account model does so well that other projects either have to try to build into their protocol at a later point, or simply ignore it altogether and limit their scope to crypto-natives. NEAR will scale to entirely new users – the next generation of gamers, existing Fintech, artists, creators, you name it.
NEAR is Future Proof:
14/ Now, #NEAR is the center of the growing multi-chain data and finance economies while remaining the best place to launch a consumer-facing app because of UX, low fees and high scalability. It is also now the most future-proof place to build b/c of that backwards compatibility.
— Erik Trautman | erik.near (@ErikTrautman) April 6, 2021
Why does being future proof matter? Because the tempo of innovation into the future is increasing extremely quickly. Existing projects today should enjoy the moment, but anyone interested in the future of the space needs to be asking themselves about the future in an honest manner.
How will interoperability across chains roll out in the coming years? Will that be decentralized and permissionless? Will it have to be?
How will crypto appeal to the masses or those looking for alternatives to the existing system? Is friendly UX and easy onboarding a means of accelerating that process?
What type of governance structure will not only be streamlined on a single Layer 1, but also across Layer 1s? How does community-based governance play out in the coming years, with existing infrastructure and silos?
4NTS Guild is excited to release it’s latest publication! Learn about the Cypherpunk movement, Crypto-Anarchism, and the fight for privacy in our latest research paper.
The final appearance of the NEAR Team at ETH Denver featured NEAR Co-Founder Illia Polosukhin as well as NEAR’s Head of Ecosystem, NiMA Asghari. The focus of the discussion was on the nature of DAO’s and the value of DAO’s in the context of the development of crypto. A full PDF Transcript of the talk can be found here, while a YouTube video of the event can be found here.
The Big Picture Value of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAOs)
Illia’s contribution to the panel was largely focused on explaining the value of DAO’s in the context of future business models for open source protocols:
“I think, at the highest level, you know, the kind of original discussion of DAOs is about how people can self organize in new ways, and share resources and build something and be aligned…I think it unlocks a lot of on-chain, resources and other things like governance, management, and investment and stuff like this. So it kind of solves this problem right now, while we’re still figuring out just a kind of future pathway that tries to understand how we build companies in the new world?”
As he explains, DAO’s are new governance vehicles for open-source protocols that will seek to align stakeholders around common resources, objectives, and long-term opportunities. They will also be important for handling funds and investments on and between protocols. The new world that Illia refers to, is that of self-executing code: In which protocols themselves must handle contracts and engagements with other devices and protocols, while also accommodating validator and token holder governance preferences.
The Emerging Field of DAOs
MakerDAO is one of the forefront DAOs in the DeFi space. (Source)
The substance of the panel – and the most important points pertaining to the future of DAOs – were brought up by NEAR’s Illia, as he discussed a variety of big-picture topics on how DAOs fit into new paradigms forming around crypto.
A first paradigm relates to DAOs for inter-protocol business development purposes:
“Oh, yeah, I think one of the examples that is emerging for sure is different application DAOs starting to be leveraged more for business development, and like, where either like individuals or, or other DAOs, or other organizations can pretty much apply to, for this DAO to work with some other party, right? And I actually think that’s really interesting, because like, if we imagine that each organization is, you know, operating a DAO, then well, it’s like, almost they are, you know, requesting work or requesting some kind of collaboration from each other. And so that’s kind of already happening through some types of proposals and things like that.”
Raid Guild is a current working decentralized organization of designers and builders. (Website)
DAO’s would effectively put collaboration on-chain for all stakeholders to visualize and participate in ongoing collaborative processes. This is directly to the second paradigm of DAOs – as a common API for different stakeholders to collaborate within:
“There’s more projects launching, and then this DeFi explosion, right, where kind of everybody wants to have their own governance, kind of fits our platform, I think this just showcases the need, where the complexity of interaction between all of these parties will just keep growing. And if there is no clear “API” for them to interact with each other, right? Like, we’re kind of going from individuals interacting on the internet, right, to projects, like, you know, Balancer and 1inch, for example, now interacting with each other, they are interacting through smart contracts, but same time, both of them now have a governance layer, that can change, like, you know, a bunch of stuff about how these things work. And so, like this governance, people who are trying to make decisions, they need to find a way to interact with each other.”
DAO’s in this sense, are necessary infrastructure for the expansion and maturation of existing protocols and products running on-chain. As a common ‘API’ like tool, DAOs have the capacity to unify and coordinate governance between protocols.
Challenges for DAOs: Legalities and Membership
The DAO on Ethereum was the first foray into decentralized autonomous organization back in 2016.
As the concept of a DAO is not even 10 years old, they remain extremely young with many remaining challenges. Two of the largest challenges for DAOs revolve around legal considerations, as well as the notion of membership.
Legal considerations were explained in the panel as being constraints from two sides:
“Yeah, and I think for the LAO and people who are dealing with legal doubts, you have like these constraints from two sides, you have to formalize with respect to law, but also code and then you also have humans and communities.”
In short, DAO’s are still trying to navigate parallel worlds of legal jurisdictions, hard-coded rules, and human behavior and decision making. This ties directly into the second challenge, revolving around membership:
“I would say it’s also always a question of like, how do you define memberships? Like you could, you could imagine in certain organizations, especially as they grow that you have certain levels, like, when you think about shares in a company, you have like voting shares, non voting shares. I mean, even, even already in Moloch V2, you have this idea of shares and loot, or we have non-voting members that have a say, if they want to reach me, they can get some of the of the asset in the DAO, but they they’re not able to vote. So I think it will also be part of that, we will have to define what do we mean, when we say membership? What kind of a machine are we interested in? And things like that.”
In short, DAO’s have yet to fully compliment the complexity of human organizational behaviors and are in need of nuances and new structures in order to accommodate a larger host of interests and behaviors for different stakeholders. As the quote above details, the next wave in DAO experimentation is precisely focused on delimiting these different roles and the weight of votes per member.
For example, I remember with MetaCartel, there was no way initially to upgrade the DAO - NiMA Ashgari
NEAR’s NiMA Asghari went deeper on this point specifically as it pertained to formalizing DAO Standards:
“We should probably come up with standards for DAOs, too. For example, I remember with MetaCartel, there was no way initially to upgrade the DAO. So everyone had to rage quit and then join the new DAO. So something like this should be formally defined. So if two DAOs have some kind of bond or collaboration or alliance, they know that we will have like a seven days notice period for this other DAO to get dissolved. And then like we have to return the assets and stuff. So I think that’s probably one of the reasons why we do really need to formalize DAO standards.”
One interesting area of DAO innovation is discussed in relation to using Social Tokens for DAO interactions. As the discussion goes, with a social token it is possible to limit engagement with the DAO to those willing to purchase the DAO social token in question:
“At the root of it is you need to hold a token in order to be in this chat. And that is kind of like this beginning of a membership, or, you know, I hesitate to say, identity, because that’s a huge rabbit hole. And then you go to mixing your platform username, because we allow token holders to assemble and coordinate through telegram and discord and the bot just controls. If you were to move those tokens out, the bot would just kick you out. It’s very, very simple. It’s not quite a DAO, but we’re seeing use cases of people using Snapshot, which is an off-chain voting tool, and Collab.Land and to like formalize. I think this notion of membership, and this kind of standardization, I think, will emerge regardless.”
The Tip of the Iceberg
Sputnik DAO
DAO’s are only just starting to become common as a means of handling protocol governance in and between protocols. The panel concluded with the clear point that the current state of DAO’s is very much the tip of the iceberg. NEAR’s Sputnik DAO is one representation of the constant innovation in the space, and the many high hopes for a future involving DAOs both inside Web3 and for existing Web2 applications.
“I mean, in the Web2 space, you’re actually seeing, I think it’s Stir, they, you know, raised 4 million in October to help influencers collaborate on YouTube. And I think it was just yesterday, they announced a $100 million raise. So within four and a half, five months, they went from seed to series A, because there’s demand there, like on the Web2 space. So it’s really like this collision between Web2 creator economy influencers that needs to start collabing because they’re getting demonetised from these different platforms. And then now you see them looking into crypto with the explosion, interest, mainstream adoption, and they’re just looking for another revenue stream. So I think we’re just kind of at the tip of the iceberg.”
Friday marked the launch of ETH Denver. As one of the most popular and memorable conferences of its kind, ETH Denver is a place for networking, product announcements, and community building across the crypto space. NEAR Protocol’s Peter dePaulo took the stage in the opening ceremonies to send a message to the crypto world about NEAR – it’s focus and how it is an accommodating and win-win Layer 1 / Layer 2 Hybrid solution for the space.
“Why are we at ETH Denver? There is a misconception about NEAR that has been bothering me since we started this project. The misconception is essentially that we are a competitor in some way to Ethereum. I am here to contest that.”
To kick off the presentation Peter focused on clarifying the position of NEAR in relation to Ethereum: NEAR is not a competitor of Ethereum. Rather, NEAR is focused on collaborating and bridging – not only with Ethereum but multiple other L1 blockchains. In the context of the larger crypto space, Peter explains NEAR’s role as being the Developer Usability Team:
“I see NEAR’s role in the Ecosystem as the developers usability team, think of us, as the people who, rather than spending all of our time focusing on the scaling side, we are the people thinking: How can we make the onboarding experience, how can we make the developer experience better?”
NEAR GRANTS ARE HERE!
The second most important announcement in Peter’s opening ceremonies speech was that the NEAR Grants program has officially launched with an astounding $1 Million dollars in available funding, split between NEAR and FIAT USD.
“These are for NEAR projects, but they serve 2 core categories. 1 is to extend the technology, and 2 is to reward stellar contributions within the NEAR collective, and the NEAR Ecosystem. Broadly we are really interested in these programs and these projects that are focused on adoption usability, and intuitive developer experience. That is the thing that we are really , really looking for.”
With the crypto market booming, NEAR is making a big play for bringing new developers into crypto – for the benefit of all projects. A full transcript of the talk can be found here.
