In crypto, constant innovation is a privilege that is easy to forget. As Bitcoin has demonstrated with peer-to-peer value transfers, and Ethereum has demonstrated with decentralized finance, new forms of tokenizing assets, building crypto-denominated protocols, and writing smart contracts results in the frequent possibility of creating something entirely new and valuable. Like Non-Fungible tokens, Social tokens are a new and quickly emerging asset class in crypto that has garnered serious attention in recent months. Many have even said that 2021 will be the year of Social Tokens. What does that exactly mean?
Define Social Tokens: The tokenization of value tied to a specific person or groups of people, and written into smart contracts.
To date, tokenization has largely encompassed assets: In DeFi this refers to certain financial assets, while for NFT’s this relates to things like content, art, music, and so forth. But with Social Tokens, what is tokenized is access to a specific person or community. Specifically Andrew Steinwald, explains the following about Social Tokens:
Personal Tokens: “Personal tokens are created by individuals and often used to exchange forms of labor. For example, a graphic designer will do one hour of work if paid 100 of their social tokens. In this example, the individual drives the token’s value by performing a service.” (Source)
Community Tokens: “Community tokens are generally used for memberships or communities. For example, creators will launch a community token that users must acquire in order to gain access to private Telegram groups, Discord servers, newsletters, etc. They are also given as rewards and thus incentivize behavior within a community. For example, a community could launch a competition where participants compete to create the best infographic and then token holders vote on the winner.” (Source)
That is to say, that social tokens, unlike other forms of tokenization, center upon the accessibility or services of a particular person or community, pre-defined in the token contract. For many, the concept may initially be somewhat difficult to wrap their minds around. But Social Tokens represent a new frontier of the gig economy, and perhaps new life for industries like media.
The Future of Freelance Work: Issue tokens for yourself that are predefined about when you are available, how many hours of work a token encompasses, and what kind of work can be traded for the token. Allow any individual to purchase your token, and thus pay for your services – either up front or as needed. As a single freelancer becomes more known, popular or valuable, the demand for the token will equally increase due to limited supply.
Access to Special Communities: Clubhouse is a new audio-based application that is invite only. Similar communities in crypto, could allow access via a social token. These communities may range from high profile newsletters, to entire media outlets, to niche groups of like minded people that want to guarantee buy in from other users. Social tokens effectively merge commitment to a group by requiring a ‘buy-in’ up front.
2021: The Year of Social Tokens?
In Forefront’s comprehensive review of Social Tokens, they ask whether 2021 will be the year that social tokens go mainstream. The creator economy or ‘passion’ economy as it was originally known, is already becoming popular:
Messari estimated in October of 2020, that Social Tokens – fully diluted – were valued at close to $200 million USD. In 2020, bigger investment names like Fabric and a16z jumped on board social token platforms like Rally or Roll. Altogether, such trends have led many to speculate about what kind of value and opportunities social tokens might unlock in the years to come – and if truly 2021 will be the year of social tokens?
Social Tokens and NEAR Protocol: A Sign of Things To Come?
In the short time since Mainnet Launch, NEAR has already garnered a reputation for being a hub for non-fungible tokens, artists, and content creators. Social tokens, in many ways, are a natural next step. MintGate is a current project in the Open Web Collective that holds the promise of incubating a home for Social Tokens on NEAR.
According to Forefront, Mintgate is described as “a platform for building tools to empower the creator economy.” With a leading vision “to reinvent value creation by giving creators an easy way to monetize their content with social tokens. We turn any online content into exclusive rewards.”
Mintgate seeks to inaugurate ‘permissioned-tokens’ as a form of accessing content, and creating new value streams for creators. Beyond only permissioned tokens, Mintgate will also offer individuals the ability to launch their own social tokens for themselves, their content or their community.
“This means if someone wants access to your blog, article, design board, video, album, website, or software they need to hold your social token or any other ERC-20, NFT or multi-asset token you specify.” (Mintgate.App)
Ultimately, social tokens are an emerging asset class with an untested frontier ahead. While expectations remain high for the year, it is still unclear exactly how much adoption social tokens will garner, and where in the niche market things might go mainstream.
“The non-custodial crowdfunding solution that’s open to anyone.”
As the NEAR Ecosystem continues to mature, new projects continue to build and onboard to the protocol. While many of these projects represent a new frontier of innovative Web3 solutions, others are hard at work re-imagining existing solutions in new and more accessible ways. In this context, the NEAR Team is pleased to welcome Common Fund to the NEAR Ecosystem.
Common Fund is one of the world’s first non-custodial crowdfunding platforms. Similar to popular crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Common Fund is a place where startups, individuals, and passionate creators can get funding for their projects. However, unlike these legacy funding models, Common Fund is fully smart-contract based: Pledged funds are transferred directly between funders and campaigns, without any intermediary involved.
As an innovative model for crowdfunding that is positioned to scale into the future, Common Fund inverts traditional practice by placing value in auditable and transparent smart contracts so that different stakeholders can interact with one another in a fully decentralized manner. As Kieran Mesquita, CEO of Common Fund states:
“The vision of Common.Fund is to be a platform where projects are able to raise the support they need to bring forth wonderful ideas and initiatives into the world through decentralized cryptocurrencies. This way, projects can garner support from anyone from anywhere in the world.”
Not only is the platform accessible to anyone around the world, it also allows for payments to be made in global cryptocurrencies—making it usable in any particular country. Common Fund is the blueprint for the future of both supporting and bootstrapping projects. It facilitates cryptocurrency-based funding in combination with a platform that is non-custodial and decentralized, while simultaneously providing a stellar user-experience.
Why Build On NEAR?
Common Fund initially started development on Bitcoin Cash before deciding to make the switch to NEAR. According to CEO of Common Fund Kieran Mesquita, Common Fund is looking for a larger ecosystem and community interested in helping early crowdfunds get off the ground faster. NEAR, while young and still under development, offers the best of both worlds: bridging over to ETH, cheap transactions, and an easily accessible and user-friendly wallet for getting connected to the platform. In addition to these benefits the Common Fund team has also found NEAR to be quick and easy for their developers to launch smart contracts —making the platforms’ pathway to market much faster.
“Obviously NEAR transaction fees are a lot, lot cheaper than ETH. It just doesn’t make sense if we are going out and saying that we are able to provide you a platform that has much lower costs than kickstarter and Indiegogo and have someone pledge 10$ in transaction fees.”
Common Fund Future Developments: What To Expect?
“It is our goal to fully decentralize Common.Fund in the years to come.”
In its current form, Common Fund represents an initial foray into a future of decentralized applications and open-source collaboration. In the coming months to years Common Fund will be growing their team—currently at roughly five full time people—and work to fully decentralize the platform so that anyone from anywhere can easily start a campaign or fund a new initiative with their cryptocurrency of choice. More immediately, stable coin integration and pledge routing through a DEX are at the top of the agenda for the Team.
From a broader perspective Common Fund sees its mission as one piece of a much larger process of democratizing access to finance around the world. Through Bitcoin, other Cryptocurrencies and DeFi, finance and money have become systems that are now Open for anyone to participate in. Common Fund represents the next generation of solutions that embodies that same spirit, but for crowdfunding and supporting new projects, companies, and passions.
“I view the whole movement of crypto’s as a way to even the playing field – we give everyone equal opportunity and equal access to world wide finance. So I certainly take the optimistic role and hope that Common Fund can be a component in that process.”
Be sure to follow the development of Common Fund in the coming months, as more campaigns launch on the platform and new crypto’s become compatible for fundraisers and projects alike! To get in touch with the Common Fund Team you can find them on Telegram or visit their website.
Since its launch to mainnet in Quarter 3 of 2020, the NEAR Ecosystem has expanded rapidly across multiple avenues of development. As startup and crypto veterans alike will say, product development very much foreshadows business development: A well-built and well-designed core product that fits a clear market need lays a foundation for robust user engagement, protocol adoption, and ultimately, value into the product.
The NEAR Ecosystem is very much in the early stages of breaking out as a leading L1 Protocol: The protocol has launched with unique developer incentives, the wallet – while still being tweaked – is built upon an innovative account model that promises to be more user-friendly, and developers can start building their own dApps in common programming languages like Rust. How have these developments affected business development on NEAR? And what can we expect from the protocol in the future?
DragonFly Joins NEAR Validator Advisory Board
Image from near.org
This was one announcement that was slightly overlooked, especially in terms of its implications for NEAR. DragonFly Capital is a predominantly China – USA focused Crypto-Asset Investment firm that has invested in a number of different crypto projects. In this announcement, Haseeb explains how DragonFly now runs the 3rd largest validator on the protocol with a Validator Stake of 17.4 Million NEAR.
This is important for two primary reasons: First, it shows that at its current stage of development NEAR remains a very attractive investment to large investment firms that specialize in making highly technical investments. Second, the long-term value proposition of NEAR as being developer friendly as well as more scalable and affordable than ETH has been validated by the DragonFly Investment: It’s not only the NEAR team that realizes or believes in the product that they are building.
First, that NEAR is not out there to kill Ethereum. It’s very much a second city in the crypto space:
“The third path is what NEAR is taking: building a whole new well-governed and compatible layer-1 that can bridge back to Ethereum. In this metaphor, NEAR is trying to build a second city: the Chicago of smart contracts.”
Second, that technically-speaking, NEAR is already available as a massively more cost-efficient and accessible Layer 1 than what newcomers can expect to get from Ethereum:
“To give you a sense for the sheer scalability improvements NEAR offers, each shard on the NEAR blockchain can process 10x more transactions individually than Ethereum 1.0. The NEAR blockchain will eventually have over 100 shards. This means that NEAR will eventually be able to process over 1000 times more transactions per second than Ethereum 1.0. Full sharding is not yet on mainnet, but even the current design is massively more scalable than Ethereum.”
The Open Web Collective Launches Its Second Batch Of Projects!
Image from Open Web Collective
If NEAR is very much in its early stages of breaking out, then the second batch of projects launched in the Open Web Collective stand as a clear signal of what is in store for the protocol in the months to ahead. More concretely, these projects hold the promise of building out the foundational infrastructure of the Open Web across key areas of development: Privacy, Accessibility, Data Management, and Identity.
Here are the projects incubating right now on NEAR:
. @sarcophagusio is a decentralized and autonomous dead man's switch application
Use cases include but not limited to:
👉Will and Trust 👉Password Recovery 👉Political Activism 👉Key Material Backup 👉Credential Passdown 👉Emergency Communication pic.twitter.com/awL0erG48x
. @wific0in is creating a decentralized carrier that transforms voice, cellular, and wifi networks into tradable resources.
Currently, Wificoin has a partnership with 37 airlines for in-flight internet and more than 68 million hotspots which serves. pic.twitter.com/99FRDP0u9H
Since it's release, Paras has managed to release 77 minted cards with a transaction as big as 6000 NEAR ($14400 as of 1/20/21). #NFTspic.twitter.com/7CtvNoupQt
A more comprehensive analysis of this batch of the OWC and its implications for NEAR will be released in the near future. For now, the resounding conclusion is that there is a plethora of solutions being built for NEAR – across some of the most important areas of development in crypto to date. Time will tell how these projects mature, but for the moment it is a very strong signal that NEAR has a lot of development coming down the pipeline.
Project Updates on NEAR: Mintbase, Common Fund, Flux and 1inch!
In light of the other two announcements there are many more updates about business development inside of the Ecosystem:
For starters, Common Fund has announced that they will be building on NEAR to launch a project that pioneers the future of non-custodial crowdfunding.
Mintbase recently had a business update from CEO Nate Geier on the bi-weekly Createbase call. He explained that development to test net is moving along quickly and that Mintbase has added in a number of new features including:
– Voting mechanics
– Follow other users and manage/customize your profile page.
– In the future you will be able to have multiple tethered NEAR accounts to your profile
– Option to flag for NSFW
– Dark and Light mode for the webpage
– Transfer tokens (and airdrop to multiple addresses at once) with verification badge showing it is a legit NEAR account.
– Languages for the website: Chinese, Portuguese and English
Flux Protocol continues to build out its core protocol infrastructure in what is expected to be a Main Net launch in the coming months! While a lot of internal development is taking place on Flux, they have started to attract serious attention from DeFi veterans as well.
Finally, in late November of 2020, the NEAR Team announced that Mooniswap is bringing its next generation AMM by 1inch to NEAR. This announcement while largely overlooked, has contained within it the promise of creating the world’s first sharded decentralized exchange:
“To start, Mooniswap will migrate their protocol to NEAR’s virtual machine along with establishing a native liquidity protocol on NEAR. The NEAR Rainbow Bridge and EVM integration create a seamless path to market on NEAR in the short term while they architect long term solutions for even more scalability. Eventually, the team will rebuild their core protocol native to NEAR, based on a sharded architecture, and become the first sharded decentralized exchange.”
Image from near.org
Altogether, the clear takeaway is that NEAR is growing. Projects are developing quickly within the NEAR Ecosystem, a class of new projects is being incubated through the Open Web Collective, and the Protocol itself remains an attractive investment for crypto veterans interested in making a long-term play on the future of the space.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest NEAR Ecosystem news and content.
Today, 4NTS Guild is excited to announce the launch of a New 2021 Initiative that will see NEAR enter the classrooms, campuses, and universities of the world. The 4NTS Vector Strategy.
The 4NTS Vector Strategy refers to our approach to bridging the gap between the confusing and oftentimes maddening world of crypto, with the larger intellectual and business communities that work across industries: Finance, Political Science, Economic History, Entrepreneurship, Emerging Technologies, and Education (among others).
This is very much the beginning of our outreach strategy, but it is one that will snowball over time to bring new minds, ideas, and events to the NEAR Ecosystem from a community of curious and creative intellectuals. To kick off that initiative, 4NTS is pleased to public The Starters Guide To The Open Web. This introduction is meant for those interested in the paradigm shift that crypto-currencies represent, from a Macro perspective.
This Starters Guide Kicks off the 4NTS 2021 Vector strategy. In the coming months 4NTS will be reaching out to academics, business leaders, and innovation experts – and welcoming them into the NEAR Ecosystem so as to create value at the intersection of different fields of expertise. This may include livestreamed conversations: Interviews: Publications, and Events such as Symposiums and Conferences.
Are you currently studying at a University – What areas that you are studying could be enhanced or complimented by the value proposition of the Open Web?
Do you have an old professor or business partner who would be interested in the Open Web and the value proposition of NEAR?
What topics or research do you believe is important to bridge the gap between crypto and existing industries?
The NEAR Protocol Main Net Launched in Quarter 3 of 2020, roughly two years after initial development began. In tandem, on March 1st, 2019 (while NEAR was Building) Melon Protocol, now known as Enzyme Finance, launched it’s Version 1 on Ethereum.
Since that time, both protocols have been developing at breakneck speed: NEAR, for its part, is finalizing the NEAR – ETH Rainbow Bridge, has onboarded a number of new projects, and is also finalizing updates to its wallet. Enzyme meanwhile, has gone through a rebranding, has more than 435 active funds on its network, and continues to recruit fund managers onto its protocol.
In The Case for NEAR Episode 1, we put forward an argument for why Enzyme would benefit from bridging onto NEAR, so as to allow future fund managers to operate funds on either NEAR or Ethereum. This starts, in Section 1, with an overview of what Enzyme is and where it stands in its development. Section 2, explains how Enzyme currently works on Ethereum. Sections 3 and 4 explain the value added by NEAR Protocol, and puts forward a thesis specifying why Enzyme should consider migrating onto NEAR.
What is Enzyme? (Previously Melon)
“Melon is an Ethereum-based protocol for decentralized on-chain asset management. It is a protocol for people or entities to manage their wealth & the wealth of others within a customizable and safe environment. Melon empowers anyone to set up, manage and invest in customized on-chain investment vehicles.” – https://melonprotocol.com/
As described on its website, Enzyme is an open-source protocol that allows fund managers to create and manage a pooled asset vehicle on chain at “a fraction of the cost” of a traditional fund. In short, Enzyme is a decentralized solution for financial asset management: Whereas traditional funds are complex, riddled with fees, intermediaries, and legal documents, Enzyme embeds all of the rules for managing a fund between a portfolio manager and different stakeholders on a smart contract level – making it more cost-effective and straightforward, while still maintaining trust, asset custody for investors, and security.
As summarized on the Enzyme Documentation page, Enzyme provides the following to prospective investors and fund managers:
Rules and Parameters Up Front: Requires fund managers to define the key rules and parameters of the fund which are in turn deployed to the blockchain and enforced by smart contracts – no more need for fund administrators.
Transparent and Immutable Transactions: All transactions are recorded (transparently and immutably) on the blockchain – no more need for complex auditing.
Investors Maintain Custody of Assets: All assets remain in the custody of investors themselves and can be redeemed at any time – no more need for custodians.
Fund Performance is Transparent: All data about fund performance is on-chain thus transparent, enabling investors and managers alike to compare fund allocation and performance. Transactions on the blockchain are near instantaneous, and unlike transactions in the traditional world which can take several days, do not require clearing and settlement services.
Reduced Fraud and Malicious Behavior: By enabling investors to retain custody of their assets and enforcing fund parameters on the blockchain via smart contracts, Enzyme dramatically reduces the ability of fund managers to act fraudulently or malevolently.
Save Time and Money: By automating so many back office and intermediary functions, Enzyme drastically cuts the operating cost of managing a fund – thereby enabling managers to pass on these savings to investors.
Enzyme is a place to create, manage, and invest in investment funds. In this sense, it epitomizes the transition from traditional, centralized finance, to innovative, decentralized finance. Concretely, Enzyme works in the following manner:
As an investor, you head over to Melon Terminal and can browse from existing funds to invest into. DAI, wBTC, wETH, and USDC are all available to invest into a fund. Once you have decided you would like to invest in a specific fund, you simply have to: (1) Approve the smart contract to transfer tokens into the fund (and Pay the Gas Fee). (2) Read the investment request. (3) From which the request is executed by anyone with access to the contracts.
As a fund manager, with meta-mask connected, you can log into Melon Terminal, name your fund, set your fees, agree to the rules of your jurisdiction and then create a fund. Once your fund is created it becomes listed on the Melon Terminal, and if it is made public, it is open to investment from any prospective investors.
Enzyme explains its goal as providing a “Platform for decentralized asset management.” As one of the first projects to build such a solution as a Layer 2 Protocol, Melon has the opportunity to revolutionize and democratize how assets (and future crypto / digital assets) are managed in an open, permissionless and secure manner.
To date, Enzyme boasts a total of 432 funds with more than 4.6 million USD in assets under management. An overview of existing funds can be found at:https://melon.avantgarde.finance/.
What Does NEAR Offer Enzyme?
$16 for an ERC 20 transfer, neat neat neat, this is fine.
While Enzyme has built an exceptional protocol on top of Ethereum, it stands to gain much more from bridging onto NEAR. The two main reasons have to do with (1) Low transaction fees on NEAR, as well as (2) the long term usability value proposition. Both are outlined in detail below:
(1) Low Transaction Fees on NEAR
Enzyme is designed for either investment managers or investors to interact with the protocol. However, in its current form this becomes difficult, time consuming and costly due to high fees on the Ethereum Network. As it currently stands, it takes 9 Transactions to deploy a customized Enzyme smart contract when setting up a fund. Gas Fees can fluctuate depending on usage on ETH as well as the amount of time.
1. Begin Setup
2. Accounting Contract
3. Fee Manager Contract
4. Participation Contract
5. Policy Manager Contract
6. Shares Contract
7. Trading Contract
8. Vault Contract
9. Setup Complete
Each of these transactions are costly and time consuming for initial setup. This is also the case when it comes to investing in a fund, as every investor must approve the smart contract to transfer tokens into the fund (and thus pay a gas fee when moving funds into or out of a fund).
On NEAR, transactions are extremely cheap and designed to remain low, regardless of how active the network becomes over time (hence the idea behind dynamically resharding the network as more transactions accrue). While Enzyme currently estimates that it costs a couple hundreds of dollars for setting up a fund on Ethereum, it is estimated on NEAR that all required transactions would cost less than $10 US dollars to get started, with almost no wait time either.
Note: Contracts also return 30% of the transaction fee back to the application / developer. In this sense Enzyme would actually stand to earn additional revenue as their platform grows over time, simply from taking a very small percentage of the NEAR used in starting and managing funds.
“For example, the maximum fee change per block in Ethereum is 12.5%, and the block time is 12-13 seconds. In NEAR, the maximum change is 1% at 1 second block time.” – Deribit Insights
(2) Usability for Long Term Protocol Engagement
The second point that should be considered relates to the long-term usability proposition that NEAR offers Enzyme: Enzyme exists as a place for investors to invest in crypto mutual funds (and hopefully other assets in the future) while managers can handle those funds without actually owning the capital. One question that might be worth asking, is What kind of people would want to invest in a crypto mutual fund?
If any segment (now or in the future) of Enzymes’ audience includes new crypto users, or those unfamiliar with handling the in’s and out’s of wallets, private keys, and alphanumerical addresses, then it would be beneficial for Enzyme to bridge over to NEAR: On NEAR, users are able to handle crypto using more familiar Account ID’s, simple login functionality, and one-click access to their wallet or an application on the protocol.
For the long-term usability of Enzyme, managers from traditional finance and investors new to crypto would benefit (and be more likely to use Enzyme) by having a more streamlined and user-friendly management system than what Ethereum currently offers via MetaMask. For more on this see Alex’s post here.
The Main Takeaway: If Enzyme were to bridge over to NEAR they would be able to keep their current service offering on Ethereum, but would be making a smart long-term investment in offering a more user-friendly and cost-effective service on NEAR.
Why Should Enzyme Migrate to NEAR?
Given these two major benefits, there are ultimately 4 reasons why Enzyme would do well to migrate or bridge across to NEAR: (1) Cost for Users, (2) Time For Onboarding, (3) Usability For Protocol Development, and (4) Support from NEAR.
Cost For Users: On NEAR, Enzyme will be cheap to use for both managers and investors. Starting a fund will not be cost-prohibitive, nor will investing in a fund of your choice.
Time For Onboarding: Setting up a fund will take minutes instead of hours. Sending money between funds is equally fast and will remain so thanks to NEAR’s sharding design.
Usability for Development: Enzyme hopes to re-imagine asset management under the guise of building an open, permissionless, and accessible protocol for future investors and fund managers. When taken in context, this means that Enzyme should be accessible to current fund managers interested in moving into crypto, as well as current investors looking to put crypto in the hands of more experienced traders. Both demands are handled by NEAR with their user-first design, easy account setup, and progressive security models.
Support From NEAR: The NEAR Foundation is currently in the process of finalizing it’s grants program. In parallel, the Melon Council (i.e. Enzyme Council) has stated that they are happy to fund research into initiatives that include “Research on Integration with Interoperability Protocols” as well as “Research on Integration with DeFi Protocols”. Together, the two projects are strong enough to start funding initial research into helping Enzyme bridge across onto NEAR.
Let’s Make It Happen
The Future of Crypto is collaborative, positive sum, and cross-protocol in nature. Bridging Enzyme to NEAR will not only improve traction and engagement for both protocols, but it will also make decentralized asset management more accessible to the world of mainstream finance at a time when Crypto is only starting to become known. As a long-term play for the next 5 years, bridging onto NEAR offers Enzyme an additional opportunity to engage with users and managers in a cost-effective, time-conscious, and user-friendly manner. Let’s make it happen.
Welcome to 2021. Lots of people have said this is going to be a big year for Crypto: Social Tokens, L1 Protocols, NFT’s, Gaming, you name it. Things certainly seem to be trending in that direction, and there is undoubtedly a plethora of opportunities in front of us.
On NEAR Protocol, this year is also shaping up to be a big one: The NEAR – ETH Bridge should open as fully decentralized and permissionless, Flux will launch, Mintbase will continue to build, and the Ecosystem as a whole is well positioned to expand significantly on multiple fronts.
In light of these projections, 4NTS Guild believes that it is important to not forget about the basics: That is to say, the simple things that make all of the difference amidst the noise, euphoria, and innovation. For the NEAR Ecosystem those basics are rooted in the design of the protocol as being scalable, developer-first, and user-friendly. That’s why we are announcing The Case For Building on NEAR Series.
In Crypto there are hundreds of projects – and hundreds of protocols to choose from. More often than not, decisions are made not because all information has been consulted, weighed, and calculated, but because development, and business timelines force founders to move ahead. Our bet is that there are a lot of projects in the crypto space that don’t even know what they are missing out on by not building on NEAR Protocol.
In The Case for Building on NEAR series, we want to go through a selection of crypto projects and protocols; Pick the projects that stand out to us the most in the crypto space, and break down how their solution could work on NEAR, and why that might be a good idea to make the transition NOW. It might have to do with gas fees, it might have to do with usability, and it might have to do with building future solutions in Rust.
Have a recommendation of a project to break down or make the case for? Let us know on Telegram or Twitter (@4NTSGUILD)!
How many people don’t want more control of their own money? How many people can be dependent upon themselves to own their own funds and finances? Well, enter decentralization.
Two weeks ago I was an absolute newbie to the crypto world to the extent that the only thing I was aware of was that Bitcoin existed. I knew nothing more than that. Nothing about decentralized finance, blockchain, or any of the tools embedded within those focuses. Fast forward, and entering crypto has been the best thing I’ve done for my own interest and development as a student starting a career in this space. It will give me a great opportunity to grow my knowledge in cutting edge technology as it begins to grow.
Background to Get into Crypto: What I Have Seen So Far
Guess what? In this world, nobody has a background. The “résumé” to join a Guild or participate in an open-source Ecosystem like NEAR (and the rest of the crypto universe for that matter) answers the questions:
1. Do you have some sort of skill, at all?
2. Are you willing to learn a vast number of other skills (the most important being how to teach yourself)?
3. If you’ve been in this space before, how long?
4. Are you willing to keep trying, engaging and working with others to advance the goals of the community?
Nothing else matters—not age, years of experience, whether you went to the best school, or any school at all, or how many groundbreaking applications you’ve built. You don’t have to retake college entrance exams to get a job in this cyberspace, and you surely don’t have to have every possible answer floating around. That is an exciting breath of fresh air for students and software engineers like myself, who are interested in participating in projects that we find meaningful and collaborative and that will someday have a lasting impact for the larger world.
The Basics of the Crypto World: Getting Started
The first thing I learned with respect to this cyberspace is that nothing is set in stone. Things change everyday, and the use cases to all of these tools are absolutely endless. For example, let’s imagine a world where there exists multiple currencies that are not bound by a location. These currencies belong to the world. Sure some currencies may be best for certain situations, but anything would work. With respect to that, the BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, etc. belong only to the individual when they keep it in their own wallet.
The currency is never owned by a bank or any other third party—the currency takes its turn with each individual and never anybody else. With that, each person must understand that his/her money exists on the blockchain. Any action is final. Send to the wrong address, and the currency is gone. In parallel to the sense of personal ownership, the entire space is truly committed to being open sourced. So not only is value distributed independently, but data is also used openly.
Decentralization
Understanding the idea of decentralization is key to grasping the underlying value proposition of blockchain technology. This is what NEAR is working towards for their ecosystem, but with the added value of having easy to use applications and a generally scalable protocol. From what I can see to date, decentralization is all about opening up access, ownership, and power: decentralizing apps for things like finance allow for more autonomy by individuals while also removing barriers to entry. There is no central person, company, or companies to control the finances or, in the case of NEAR, the open web. From this, we could see serious advances in fields like gaming where efficiency, digitally scarce items, and cryptocurrency integrations are top priorities that may one day be seamless and standard for all games.
What Lies Ahead
Given that this new currency has no “homeland,” think about global betting markets (on Flux?) or maybe a new stock market. What about fully decentralized finance (DeFi)?Put a couple of these together and you have a fully operational stock market on a DeFi system. What about all the other applications of these things? The possibilities truly are endless. Many of these ideas only look at the intersection of finance and crypto. What if we look at something like a decentralized and open web? Here at NEAR, we are using this to solve the problems that arise when people start to scale applications that relate to data, privacy, gaming, digital assets, marketplaces of the future, and much, much more.
Using NEAR protocol, these opportunities are made possible using advanced technologies like sharding for parallel computation in unison with a user-friendly account model. Pretty cool if you ask a Gen Z’er like me looking at what the next 20 years of my life and career might look like.
Advice To Fellow Students and Developers:
Get into this world….yesterday. As companies begin to understand the advantages to blockchain, DeFi, and NFTs, they will migrate quickly. At that point, blockchain and crypto will blow up. The thing to understand is that this newfound technological journey will not be a lonely road. As I’ve experienced at NEAR and through other contacts, people are more than willing to help you through this space and answer all the questions you may have. I, for example, have accepted this world in stride and feel like I am beginning to find a grasp on the surface of crypto and the general cyberspace in only 2 weeks. The learning curve is high, but the space is never boring. Learn everything you can…the rabbit hole is very deep and growing faster than ever.
This article is fueled by excessive amounts of happy chemicals released in the brain, which is a normal human reaction that occurs after surviving 3 years of a severe bear market and seeing BTC breach an ATH. Be warned.
We’re in the middle of the financial revolution and you are the one holding the banner. No, really. If you are participating in the current state of the ecosystem, you are officially one of the early adopters that put their energy and money into this absurd and bizarre quasi-financial industry which is shaping out to be something that might save the traditional financial system. Don’t believe me? Fine, but even NASDAQ is writing about it.
Currently, the yields in the traditional economy are disappointing. 10-year Germany sovereign bonds are at -0.567%, and this is not , as there are more European countries that have a negative yield. So you are paying money to hold their bond. This is partly driven by the Covid depression, but quantitative easing (money printing, which is a common meme nowadays) is also at fault. However, if you invest enough money in ETH and set up a node, you can get 5%-20% APY (the number at the time of writing this article is still subject to change). NEAR makes you around 14% annually. Way better than paying money for holding sovereign bonds, right?
Of course, this is not an intellectually honest comparison because risks involved in holding sovereign bonds and staking some weird blockchain tokens are different, and therefore you are being paid a premium for taking on these risks. Fair enough. However, the space matures, good projects emerge out of the entropy and tech gets refined. And as tech gets refined and the risks diminish, new opportunities appear. For example, Circle is offering a waitlist for their new feature – a dollar deposit account that offers you 10.75% fixed term annually. And this happens in an economic environment where you essentially have to pay for holding some sovereign bonds. Circle can do this through different DeFi strategies that probably yield them around 15% annually, of which they give 10.75% to the depositors and leave rest as profits and as treasury in case of a crisis.
Even though this is still proof of concept and not a full-fledged feature, it allows us to take a look at the possibilities that the future might offer usAnd the most exciting thing is not even the fact that in a few years you might be able to add a few zeroes to your total portfolio – it’s that now there is an alternative to the financial system. Now you have another way of getting yield rather than banks or traditional investment – obviously, if you are bold enough and are comfortable with tech.
The paradigm is changing rapidly – more and more funds are purchasing Bitcoin and coming out about their investment (fill before shill, remember). The last addition at the moment of writing this article was One River Asset Management that claimed that they invested 600 million dollars in Bitcoin in November. And that they are planning up their stake to 1 billion dollars of Bitcoin and Ether in 2021. So what does this tell us? Institutional investors acknowledge the opportunity that Bitcoin constitutes, especially under these global economic conditions. However, they also acknowledge Ethereum, which doesn’t really fit into the digital gold narrative – but does fit into the “enabling the alternative financial system” narrative. Ethereum supply is not limited, whereas Bitcoin is limited at 21 million coins. Ethereum is not hard asset in a sense that Bitcoin is. But it has a very important quality – almost everything is being built on Ethereum, whereas Bitcoin is just an investment vehicle.
“Why did you mention entropy in the headline?” you might ask me. Because this whole thing is still a chaotic Wild West. The progress of the space will be evident in hindsight 20 years later and it would seem like blockchain, digital currencies and DeFi just came into our lives and stayed there. But only the OGs would remember the chaotic, entropic nature of the progress – rugpulls, times when it seemed like blockchain is just a gimmick, exchange hacks. And all these events shaped out something new and beautiful – with some people losing it all in the process. All hail to sacrificial lambs of the new financial frontiers.
There is a concept called the Lindy effect, which roughly means that popular things age “in reverse”. So if the book was in print for 5 years, it will most likely last around 3 more. But if it was in print for 15 years, chances are that it will be in print for 14 more years. And if the book is in print for a century, it will probably live two more at least. This is logical, because if the idea survives, it survives. You can still find a two thousand year old book in your hotel’s bed stand table.
The Lindy effect relates to our topic because Bitcoin and Ethereum are very Lindy – a piece of technology that survived long enough for us to claim that it will survive for an even longer time. One might contrast that to the ghost chains that were “Ethereum killers”. Therefore we can pretty safely assume that Ethereum is going to stay here for a while (going to be excluding Bitcoin from the conversation, because it safely went into the “store of value” category, probably for the better).
Ethereum is the lifeblood of the current crypto ecosystem as it powers the loans, the on-chain option protocols, and the Uniswap gambling. However, the main problem with Ethereum is that higher transaction speed and lower fees are urgently needed, and they aren’t going to arrive anytime soon, as ETH 2.0 has only started. At the peak of the DeFi craze, it wasn’t uncommon to spend $50+ on gas for a single Uniswap transaction. Obviously, the future of finance can not be built with that kind of fee structure.
Here is where NEAR comes into play. Like other “Ethereum killer” platforms, NEAR has an advantage of being a new network – meaning that they don’t have to design a Proof of Stake system on top of the existing one, which is the case for Ethereum – they can just build a great one from scratch. However, unlike other “Ethereum killer” platforms, the NEAR team realises that Ethereum is not going anywhere, and that projects building on top of it are unlikely to move to other platforms completely. It is almost like a DeFi Lindy effect. “If a project accrues 10 million in total value locked, it will most likely be a rugpull. But if it accrues 100 million, it will likely reach 1 billion”. And if projects won’t move completely, we can pull the same trick that DeFi devs pulled on Bitcoin – “wrap” and lock Bitcoin and put the tokenized coins on Ethereum, so-called wBTC, wrapped Bitcoin. Same thing here – NEAR “listens” to what happens on the Ethereum network (and vice versa) and wraps Ethereum assets, if needed. So all of the transaction-heavy operations can happen on NEAR, but the assets can stay on Ethereum. Win-win.
The future of DeFi is bright, and so is the future for NEAR. The project couldn’t launch its mainnet at a more perfect time – the market is booming, more and more projects are launching, venture capital is flowing, and even the institutions are going in. But what is more important – is that the NEAR’s team understands what it takes to thrive in the chaos of a nascent tech industry. And in their case, it means collaborating with Ethereum so the two networks propel each other forward rather than cannibalizing each other. And honestly, NEAR also might be a very profitable opportunity for you, regardless of your role – content creator, investor, dev. You just have to survive the entropy.
Most people have heard of Non-Fungible Tokens: Crypto-Kitties. A New Ownership Economy. Tokenized Art. Real Estate. There are plenty of different buzz words used in reference to the massive potential that this rising asset class holds whether it be for providing new value, business models, or personal credit to creators and investors alike.
In context, Non-Fungible Tokens have somewhat silently emerged in the past 6 months beneath the DeFi frenzy, with nonfungible.com registering over $8.6 million dollars in value exchanged in the past month alone – 5.9% of the total value that NFT’s have garnered since they were created.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique, digital items with blockchain-managed ownership. Examples include collectibles, game items, digital art, event tickets, domain names, and even ownership records for physical assets.
If you are not familiar with NFT’s you may have a hard time conceptualizing their value or how they can be used. Here is a general point to keep in mind:
With NFT’s, you have the opportunity to establish unique digital ownership over a specific asset, in which you alone possess that asset, and the details (or metadata) pertaining to that asset are built into the smart contract beneath it. That means that the asset can be divided and sold, value can be pushed into the asset from another contract, and changes in ownership over time are recorded in its digital mechanics.
Where is Disruption from NFT’s Going To Happen (First)?
Art, Music, and Content: According to Matty (@DCLblogger) NFT’s have the potential to bring the following to creators and artists alike: They Can be tied back to the Artist, Sales history tracked, Bought & Sold on the Marketplace, Authenticated as the ‘original’ piece. Royalties can also be built into the transfer of ownership of the piece of art, music, or content in question.
Real Estate and Land: Tokenizing houses, pieces of land, or geographical coordinates has the added benefit of better managing ownership, distributing / fractionalizing value, and increasing exposure to different markets. From being a smart real estate investor to plotting out land tenure claims in the developing world, NFT’s bring a host of value to multiple industries dealing with both physical and digital land.
Tickets and Events: Ticketing and event management is an interesting one, that assumes the future of tickets, event management and voting is going digital. In a post-covid world that idea does not seem to be too far fetched. Here is what Mintbase’ Nate Geier had to say about NFT’s for ticket management:
“NFT’s are really going to start shining when using voting and tickets with NFTs. You can buy the ticket using a decentralized currency and go to an event. But as soon as you say there is an open API anyone can interact with to create voting apps or ecosystems, then you can add things by saying, anyone who has a DAppcon ticket can cowork at our space as well – this is really exciting.” – Hack the Rainbow Session 5.
In essence, using NFT’s for ticketing, voting and events allows project managers and event hosts to digitally push value and additional perks into their audience’s pockets for services that may relate to an event (i.e. free access or claim) or even go beyond it (i.e. anyone who attended Web Summit gets a free coffee certificate to Starbucks every month for the next 12 months through their NFT).
Gaming: Online Gaming, predicted by some to be the home of the next trillion dollar company is another key area where NFT’s are shining. In games like Zed.run users are able to purchase scarce digital assets that have the opportunity to improve their performance or add uniqueness to their character. From horses, to weapons, to rare items, game creators can embed such objects into their gaming worlds and let them take on a life of their own on alternative markets, and among players and collectors.
Financial Instruments: Last but not least, NFT’s have the potential to revolutionize financial instruments – especially in how value can be stored, fractionalized, and traded. An easy example of this would be to use an NFT of an asset (i.e. a digital piece of art or a bottle of wine or a house) as collateral for backing a loan. The NFT is locked in return for accessing the loan. Only once the loan has been repaid, is the NFT transferred back to its owner. These functions are programmed into the smart contracts underlying the tokenized assets.
Ready for something really mind boggling? You could tie a stake on a protocol into an NFT, and then fractionalize that NFT and sell pieces of it to different users interested in accruing state interest over time. This is how it is explained in the NEAR – ETH Rainbow Hackathon:
“Mark just minted an NFT that allows you to accrue your states interest, if you are the owner of that NFT. So if you want to give that NFT to your friend for christmas, then they can start accruing the interest. The owner of the NFT is the staker – the Aave staker. The NFT offers portable stake pieces that can be shared or loaned out. DeFi NFT stuff is the next frontier.” – Hack the Rainbow Session 5
Why is NEAR the Home for NFT’s?
A lot of people underestimate the importance of accessibility and usability in the context of new technology or innovative products. Put simply, if it’s not easy for average people or niche market segments to access and use a product in question, it probably will not go mainstream anytime soon. This sentiment is echoed by dApp Radar’s Ilya Abugov when he tells Cointelegraph about the following challenges NFT’s are facing:
“Although there is a bit more engagement, there is not much ready for mainstream use in terms of UX/UI. Moreover, NFTs inherit all of the typical difficulties of a blockchain-utilizing project and some of the traditional industry challenges may cross over as well. For example, art and collectibles are not very liquid.” (CoinDesk)
NEAR is well positioned to become the home for NFT’s because NEAR provides a platform that is exceptionally user and developer friendly: Use an Account Name, Build solutions in Rust or AssemblyScript, No Network Congestion Worries, and most importantly, Community Infrastructure to support creators and projects. What this means, is that NEAR is at the forefront of making NFT’s digestible to average users, investors or collectors – without having to worry about technical terminology, alphanumeric wallet addresses, and high transaction fees. For a more comprehensive overview of NEAR Protocol and its many features, see The NEAR Investment Thesis.
NFT’s On NEAR: What’s Happening Right Now
As a protocol, NEAR recently launched their main network back in September. In the short couple of months since that time a number of different projects focused on supporting the growth and development of Non-Fungible Tokens has organically arison on the platform. At the time of writing (December, 2020) a foundation is being built for a robust NFT community on NEAR. Here are the main players involved in that community:
Mintbase: Mintbase is in many ways the Mothership of NFT’s on NEAR. It’s a base-level platform that allows anyone and everyone to easily mint their own NFT’s and collections for whatever purpose they have in mind. Original planned for Ethereum, but now building fast out of Portugal, Mintbase boasts over 980 existing stores and more than 81,000 transactions. A transcript and general overview of Nate Geier’s Session at the Hack the Rainbow Hackathon can be found here.
Createbase Guild: CreateBase is one of the fastest growing Guilds on NEAR. Managed by a community of artists and creators actively building on the platform, Createbase holds weekly calls to discuss project opportunities, funding rounds, and new ideas relating to the development of products and materials that will help promote NFT’s, Art, and other unique assets. To see the project pipeline click here.
FlamingoDAO: FlamingoDAO is in its early days but from what is known about, is that it will exclusively support the development of NFT’s with funding, NFT acquisitions, and guidance for founders and developers. A full overview of FlamingoDAO can be found here. A fill overview of NEAR’s engagement with FlamingoDAO can be found here.
Snark.Art: Snark.Art describes itself as a technology laboratory at the intersection of crypto and art, exploring the commercial value proposition behind tokenized art. To date, users are able to purchase digital and physical art on the platform, while also connecting with artists.
ARterra: ARTerra describes itself as a home for digital collectables, at the intersection of gaming, fan engagement and events. NFT’s are used as a unique bridge in value between teams and fans, to increase overall engagement in sports and provide new value diffusion mechanisms to loyal followers.
ZED / ZEST: When Digital Race horses meet NFT’s. Users are able to own, breed, and race their digital race horses. Customizations and staking coming soon. While the original platform is built on Ethereum, the Zed team has shown a deep interest in building out more on NEAR as their ecosystem continues to develop in both sophistication and adoption. For more on Zest check out NEAR Without the Noise Episode 5.
Plantary: A hackathon project developed by Mykle and Lenara working at the intersection of Art and NFT’s. For more about Plantary check out the writeup on their NEAR Without the Noise Episode.
What these many projects indicate – to future artists, musicians, developers, and entrepreneurs, is that the NEAR Ecosystem is an emerging home for NFT’s. With a robust community that is both funded and active in sharing ideas, and projects, NEAR is building out the groundwork for creators, artists, and entrepreneurs alike to take NFT’s to the masses in the coming years. This comes at a time when NFT’s are poised to break through as one of the most exciting and valued asset classes in crypto.
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.
