Hey everyone! I hope y’all had a great week! I officially wrapped up my first city as I left Tampa Bay as part of the 12 Cities in 12 Months journey. Before going to the next destination (Charleston) I am taking a week-long detour to stay with a friend of mine from college who flies planes. I’ll have a city review of Tampa coming out next week, so stay tuned for that.
Yesterday, I officially started my position that makes this whole “12 Cities in 12 Months” thing even possible as a Business Development Intern at the Near Foundation (finally not jobless). For readers who are not crypto-native, I don’t expect you to know what that is, and for those who are crypto-native, you probably have heard of NEAR, but have no idea where to start with it. To be honest, I have a lot to learn myself about the network.
Thus, as with many other of my previous blogs, I figured it would be a great idea to write about NEAR to not only educate those interested in the protocol (or for those interested in wondering, “what is this struggling blogger up to this time?”), but to also help educate me before I begin working. Let’s dig in!
Origins
Before getting into the founding of NEAR, it is important to look at the history of the Founders to help explain why they designed the NEAR protocol the way they did.
Alexander Skidanov earned a master’s degree in computer science from the Ishevsk State Technical University before working as a software developer at Microsoft and MemSQL, where he became the Director of Engineering for 3 years.
Illia Polosukhin earned a master’s degree in applied math and computer science at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine before moving to the US where he worked at Salford Systems as a Software Engineer and at Google as an Engineering Manager.
If none of that means anything to you (I as well don’t truly understand if these backgrounds are insane or not), all you need to know is that these guys are extremely technical, pretty dang smart, and understand what it’s like being a Web 2.0 developer.
The two got together in 2017, officially created the vision of the Near protocol in 2018, established the NEAR Foundation (where I am working) in 2019, and after receiving funding from investors such as a16z, the NEAR blockchain launched in 2020.
Throughout two funding rounds in 2022 (January & April), NEAR received over $500 million in funding to accelerate the decentralization of its ecosystem and incentivize more builders to join the protocol. Despite the collapse of major firms like 3AC, FTX, and more, the NEAR Foundation still has 5+ years of runway, allowing them to be well-positioned to weather the storm of this bear market.
What makes NEAR special?
For those who are crypto natives, you may think, “Oh, here’s just another alternative L1 blockchain receiving all this funding from VCs to be the next ‘Ethereum Killer.’” Most of the time, I tend to agree with this take. Although I am a big fan of Ethereum, I do believe NEAR has some key differences that help separate it from other L1s.
Easy Onboarding
One of the biggest advantages I’ve seen with the NEAR protocol is its ease of onboarding for new users and developers alike.
On most other chains, you need to download a wallet chrome extension such as Metamask or Phantom, take multiple steps to set up those accounts, and end up with a wallet with an ID comprised of a bunch of random letters & numbers (ex: 0qy5U8…). On NEAR, users can create a browser wallet that only takes a few steps to set up and allows you to have what they call a “readable” (ex: willreynoir.near). This makes it incredibly easy to onboard the billions of new users that will enter the industry if the crypto adoption curve keeps up with the internet adoption curve.
On the developer side, one big problem in the blockchain industry is that many L1 blockchain protocols have different programming languages that developers must use to create dapps. For instance, Ethereum devs must use the Solidity language, Solana devs must use the Rust language, etc. Thus, if a dev who is new to Web 3.0 is looking to join the industry, they possibly need to learn a whole new programming language to get started. However, NEAR makes onboarding new devs easy by allowing devs to write smart contracts in JavaScript, the most popular programming language used by nearly 14 million developers worldwide. With new developers entering the scene every day (as outlined by Electric Capital’s 2022 Developer Report) this ease of onboarding will only help NEAR grow.
Scalability and Speed
Blockchain technology itself is a revolutionary technology in terms of security, transparency, immutability, and more it provides. However, while the first version of the technology (i.e. Bitcoin) was a revolutionary tech at its inception, its technological limits have few practical use cases in today’s day and age. The network is not scalable (only about 4 per second) is extremely costly, and is incredibly slow (new block every 10 minutes).
NEAR solves lots of these issues and can handle over 100,000 transactions per second, has incredibly cheap transaction fees, and creates a new block roughly every second. Here are a few of the technologies that separate NEAR from other L1 blockchains:
If you want to look more into each of these, I added links where you can read more. If you don’t want to spend 30 minutes to an hour reading all of them, the fantastic team at Messari wrote a great summary of each here.
Sustainability
Ever since ESG criteria were required to be incorporated in the financial evaluations of companies in 2006, more and more people have made it a priority to focus on when evaluating companies, investments, and more. Cryptocurrencies and blockchains have routinely been attacked by major media outlets for their potentially negative environmental impact (primarily Bitcoin and its proof-of-work consensus mechanism).
NEAR, on the other hand, has a much lower carbon footprint than most other chains, generating a footprint of 174 tons of CO2 per year. This makes NEAR more than 200,000 times more efficient than Bitcoin. Furthermore, NEAR itself is taking initiative by asking the South Pole, a global climate solutions provider, to audit NEAR’s carbon footprint. With more and more enterprise and institutional organizations looking to integrate Web 3.0 technologies, NEAR’s sustainability commitment will be an attractive option for them, especially in the press.
Plans for the Future
With ample funding providing NEAR over five years of runway (a rarity in today’s crypto ecosystem), NEAR has exciting and ambitious plans for the future (both long & short-term). I was told about the long-term outlook when I was initially interviewed for this position when the NEAR representative told me they have a goal of getting to one billion users in the next five years! This goal shocked me initially but now makes me incredibly excited to get to work. I guess this gives a whole new meaning to shooting for the moon in a crypto sense.
In the short term, the NEAR Foundation published its 2023 target metrics, going along with the openness and transparent values of crypto. Here are the business development team’s goals for 2023:
5M+ MAAs added to NEAR through a minimum of 3 major partnerships
12+ landmark partnership agreements
24+ tier-2 partnership agreements
To accomplish these goals, NEAR is looking to onboard the best Web 2.0 projects onto its blockchain. For example, Sweatcoin, one of the most popular mobile applications in the world that rewards users for their daily steps, partnered with the NEAR Foundation in 2022 to create the SWEAT token. This partnership alone created millions of new NEAR wallets, and NEAR is looking to replicate successful partnerships with Web 2.0 companies in 2023 (Sounds like I have a lot of work ahead of me, lol).
Does it fit with my career blog?
Earlier in my blogging career, I took a 10-rule list of career advice from Marc Andreessen and explained how working in a Web 3.0 role would fit his criteria. Although I won’t list all 10, I wanted to see how this position at NEAR fit with a few of the points I outlined:
Rule 1: Don’t plan your career
Given that this is only a 6-month position, I am definitely leaving a lot of questions at the end of those 6 months (probably alarmingly so, lol).
Rule 2: Don’t join a startup right out of college
100 employees is not a big corporation, but given the small size of many companies in the industry and the insane amount of funding NEAR has, I believe I am checking this box.
Rule 4: Forget about avoiding all risk
Working in Web 3.0 after everything that has happened in the industry in 2022? I am not avoiding all risks, lol.
Rule 5: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry are still alive and well
Illia and Alex, the founders of NEAR, are still with us today as well as most founding fathers in the industry given that the industry is only 14 years old.
Rule 6: Maximize opportunities to maximize luck
With many companies in Web 3.0 and traditional tech having a massive wave of layoffs, I feel very fortunate to have any kind of position at a reputable Web 3.0 company right now. My goal is to use these next six months to learn and grow as much as possible in order to set myself up for the best potential outcome. Maybe I’ll get lucky, who knows?
Conclusion
As I am writing this paragraph, I have concluded my first day on the job. Let me tell you, I couldn’t be more excited about the work I have ahead of me. The team at NEAR is incredibly smart, nice, and ready/willing to put in the work necessary to become the top L1 chain. This will be a great opportunity for me to learn a lot and meet a lot of great people in the ecosystem all across the world (I met with someone from Vienna today). I will try and separate my personal blog and work like the US separated Church & State moving forward to avoid any potential conflicts, but if you’re interested in learning more about NEAR, please let me know!
Thanks for reading! Next week, I will write my first city review blog where I’ll give my rating of Tampa & Melbourne based on a variety of metrics. See you then!
Here are my links if you feel inclined: