Back in October, we announced the upcoming integration with Aurora. We are thrilled not only to deliver on our promise but to expand upon it by launching Aurora together with the highly anticipated Terra Protocol bridge.

Terra Protocol is an open-source stablecoin network, controlled by its stakeholders. It is currently estimated at $13 billion TVL according to the DeFi Llama aggregator. Pairing it up with Aurora establishes a very unique connection between these two networks and brings sizeable Terra liquidity to their ecosystem.

Terra’s cross-chain partnership with NearPad and Rose is a great place for users to bridge their Terra assets across to put them to use. NearPad aims to be a DeFi hub of Aurora with a product suite offering an intuitive DEX AMM, launchpad, and incubator. Users will be able to provide Terra assets in the DEX in incentivized pools to earn yield. Rose is a liquidity layer for Aurora, which will support a UST/USDC/USDT/DAI pool where users will be able to earn yield on entirely stable assets.

In addition, on December 21 we will bridge vastly popular LUNA and UST tokens to Aurora - the EVM scaling environment on NEAR Protocol. With the help of Aurora’s AMM DEX at TriSolaris, users will be able to participate in the NEAR - LUNA and NEAR - UST farms. TriSolaris’ high-speed trading and convenient UI make it a perfect DEX to interact with the Terra tokens.

“NEAR and Aurora have been built for simplicity, security, and scalability. Stablecoins like UST provide a simple interface to store value and interact with apps that need to use a stable unit of account. Connecting NEAR, Aurora and Terra ecosystems via Allbridge allows apps like Rose and NearPad to offer new ways to use stablecoins to both communities“ - Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol.

Allbridge continues bridging more networks together, and the addition of both Aurora and Terra marks a significant milestone for us. Visit our social links to be the first to learn about the latest Allbridge integrations!

Connecting NEAR Protocol, Aurora, and Terra via Allbridge.

Allbridge Launches the First Bridge Between Aurora and Terra

We’re excited to announce that developers working in the NEAR ecosystem will now be able to use KYVE as a storage and validation solution for their data streams starting today.

KYVE bridges data from NEAR, taking a snapshot of the complete NEAR chain, including both blocks and transactions, and stores it permanently on Arweave, the decentralized storage network that offers Web3 projects a platform for the indefinite storage of data.

By leveraging Arweave, the network provides a secure, scalable, and immutable solution that can grow over time.

## How does the integration work?

Decentralized uploaders and validators power KYVE’s network. Validators ensure that the uploaded data is correct. If the data is incorrect, the stake of the uploader gets slashed. This mechanism ensures that only valid data is uploaded from the NEAR chain to Arweave.

![NEAR Partners With KYVE To Bring Permanent Storage to Ecosystem](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/articles/near-partners-with-kyve-2.jpg)

KYVE’s architecture supports multiple blockchains, making it easier for users to interact with different chains. Additionally, the uploaded data is available and reliable as the network’s uploaders and validators are incentivized to keep the system healthy.

“At NEAR, we’ve always believed the future success of blockchain technology will be built on collaboration. Partnering with KYVE to provide simple, reliable access to Arweave, enabling developers on NEAR to use this class-leading data storage solution is part of that vision,” comments Erik Trautman, NEAR Foundation CEO.

To learn more about running an incentivized validator and help grow the KYVE x NEAR community, join the NEAR pool!

MoonPay has announced customers in 150 countries worldwide will be able to buy $NEAR directly through its platform.

NEAR Partners With KYVE To Bring Permanent Storage to Ecosystem

MoonPay, the Swiss-based crypto payments infrastructure company used by more than 5 million people, has announced customers in 150 countries worldwide will be able to buy $NEAR directly through its platform.

While MoonPay already allows users in Europe and elsewhere to buy $NEAR using a debit or credit card, this is the first time users in 150 countries, including the United States, will be able to use MoonPay’s quick, simple service.

“By providing a direct on-ramp to NEAR, we’re giving more people exposure to this exciting and dynamic ecosystem,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and CEO at MoonPay.

“We’ll be watching eagerly as NEAR develops and new projects emerge as the community expands. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for it next.”

MoonPay has made the buy flow significantly faster for users, with the creation of fixed quotes that guarantee the amount of crypto users will receive once they purchase.

The full list of countries $NEAR is available in can be found here. While $NEAR is now available to buy in the US, there are still a number of states where purchasing has not yet been activated. The states where citizens cannot buy $NEAR at launch are Louisiana, Texas, New York, and Hawaii.

Users in the remaining 46 states and 150 other countries will be able to buy $NEAR on MoonPay from today.

## Supercharging Sharding

The announcement coincides with the launch of sharding on NEAR, the next significant chapter in the NEAR blockchain.

NEAR’s Nightshade Sharding accelerates the speed of the network to process more transactions securely as well as increasing its capacity to run bigger and more resource-intensive Dapps, like gaming.

NEAR has more than 20 [gaming](/categories/gaming/) and [NFT projects](/categories/nft/) currently running on the blockchain that can take advantage of super-low fees, and infinite scalability.

DeFi is also set to benefit from MoonPay’s integration and the upgrades to the blockchain. Well-known DeFi projects Curve.Fi, Sushi, Dodo, Kyber, Woo, and NEAR native projects Ref, Burrow, Onomy and Trisolaris have, or are in the process of launching on NEAR’s secure and scalable blockchain, with more to follow.

MoonPay Launches NEAR Fiat On Ramp in 150 Countries Worldwide

Finally, we are really excited to announce that on December 7th we will set up the [Initial Distribution Offering on Skyward](https://app.skyward.finance/sale/73?r=awesome.near).

We are putting **28,000,000 $META tokens**, so we can give exposure to all the NEAR Ecosystem through a decentralized time-based auction which will be accessible to the general public.

If you want more information regarding the What and Why we are doing the IDO, please read [our previous post](https://medium.com/@meta_pool/decentralized-price-discovery-and-meta-distribution-event-on-skyward-4f28e7c812b).

## Detailed information on our IDO

- Presale: December 7th to December 14th
- Sale: December 15th to December 17th
- IDO Supply: 28,000,000 $META
- Token pair: stNEAR / $META

It is important to take into account that participants in this price discovery event will need to deposit stNEAR and exchange it for $META. We will describe the process on another post.

## Making the right partnership

Skyward will provide the right platform so the Meta Pool community can increase their exposure to the $META token.

We know that network effects are a key component of the growth of decentralized protocols and this collaboration will allow us to engage the community that has supported NEAR projects from its inception.

## What is next?

Keep staking in Meta Pool to earn $META! We will be announcing Stakers Week soon and it will have some great multipliers for those that choose to stake in our liquid staking solution. Also liquidity providers to the Liquidity Swap Pool will get an increase in multiplier rewards.

So stay tuned for more news regarding Stakers Week in our Discord and follow us in @Meta_Pool. For December we will see OIN Finance launch their DAO v3 platform which will enable deposits in stNEAR to mint their stablecoin called USDO.

The support from the NEAR Ecosystem and the Meta Pool community has been outstanding and the team is focusing on delivering value for $META and NEAR token holders. We are working round the clock to launch things on mainnet.

More partnership announcements will follow ;)

Keep on staking!


On December 7th Meta Pool will set up the Initial Distribution Offering on Skyward.

Meta Pool IDO Launch Details on Skyward

The Graph is the indexing and query layer of web3. The protocol’s subgraphs help facilitate the development and deployment of performant and discoverable APIs with data indexed from blockchains. Subgraph developers define which data will be indexed from the blockchain and how it will be stored and made available via an API layer.

“The Graph is one of the pillars of the modern web3 world and we’re happy that the indexed data is now available to Aurora users and developers in a familiar form,” says Alex Shevchenko, Aurora CEO.

We believe this collaboration will open the doors to numerous other integrations for Aurora and give Ethereum developers a great opportunity to scale their dapps. Access to public data from around the world is extremely important for many applications' functionality.

The collaboration between Aurora and The Graph is another step towards building a decentralized web. The Graph supports indexing data from different networks, including Ethereum.

“Layer 2’s are an important part of building a scalable web3 enabled future. Diving deeper into the NEAR ecosystem, it is exciting to see The Graph’s hosted service support Aurora, an Ethereum Scaling Layer 2 on the NEAR blockchain, continuing on The Graph’s vision of the multi-blockchain future.” says Pranav Maheshwari, Solutions Engineer at Edge & Node.

Over 24,000 subgraphs have been deployed on the hosted service, and over 200 on the decentralized network. Developers are building subgraphs for such applications as Balancer, DAOstack, Uniswap, AAVE, Decentraland, and many more.

The Graph gives an opportunity for applications to efficiently present data in the UI, and developers can use any subgraph they require. They can deploy a subgraph or query existing subgraphs. Global public information can be accessed through subgraphs, and this data can be transformed, organized, and shared across applications for anyone to query.

The news comes hot on the heels of our partnership with Consensys, our integration with Chainlink, the launch of the Aurora DAO and our first funding round where we raised $12 million.

We are happy to announce another major partnership and welcome The Graph’s deployment on Aurora.

Aurora partners with The Graph to bring superior data indexing

deadmau5, the DJ and Producer has teamed up with rockband Portugal. the Man, Mintbase, and NEAR to release a single as an NFT.

The song, titled “this is fine” is being sold exclusively as a collection of 1 million NFTs on the Mintbase NFT marketplace, which runs on the NEAR blockchain, with tokens [now on sale](https://www.mintbase.io/thing/nb0-oBR379DzoFYeYv-LesjVNmrVlDs5IqQ8hfDfnMU:deadmau5.mintbase1.near).

The announcement took place in Miami during the Art Basel art fair, which takes place every year in the American city.

Roughly three quarters of the 1 million NFTs, are being sold at Miami’s Art Basel festival for $1.29 a piece. The remaining NFTs will be sold as part of a collection of additional awards.

In the “Ultimate Bundle,” some 50,000 NFTs will include artwork, a limited edition NFT, merchadise pack and a spot on the guestlist of a forthcming DeadMau5’s concert.

At the time of writing, nearly 500,000 of the [NFTs have already been sold](https://www.mintbase.io/thing/nb0-oBR379DzoFYeYv-LesjVNmrVlDs5IqQ8hfDfnMU:deadmau5.mintbase1.near).

“It’s about adoption. It’s about adopting this way of doing things for artists, and it’s also about public adoption and companies working together to adopt technology that’s going to make this easier for everyone,” said deadmau5.

The announcement forms part of a wider series NEAR has lauched to help people get to grips with Web3 technology across America.

For most people, buying NFTs has been a complex experience, involving additional fees, delays and multiple wallets. With NEAR and Mintbase, users will be able to buy NFTs using fiat cash instantly, with super low fees, thanks to an integration with payment rail provider, Stripe.

NEAR will be visiting a number of key cities over the coming months. Starting in Miami, NEAR and the NEAR bus will be traveling to New York and San Francisco over the coming months.

![Deadmau5 Launches NFT Partnership with Mintbase and NEAR](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/articles/near-bus-hero.jpg)

NEAR is on a mission to make blockchain and crypto a simpler experience that anyone can take part in. From buying NFTs, creating a DAO or joining a Guild, at NEAR it’s a simple as clicking a mouse. [Find out how](https://near.org/).

deadmau5, the DJ and Producer has teamed up with rockband Portugal. the Man, Mintbase, and NEAR to release a single as an NFT.

Deadmau5 Launches NFT Partnership with Mintbase and NEAR

NEAR is thrilled to announce that [Flux](/flux), the first cross-chain oracle for economically secured data feeds, is now live on the NEAR mainnet!

With its cross-chain oracle platform, which features support for other networks like [Aurora](/aurora-dev), Flux brings secured data feeds to any and all high-throughput data apps — like trading platforms that need access to lots of reliable data — on the NEAR blockchain. To facilitate their mainnet launch, the Flux team is also releasing the $FLX token, which will be vital in helping to power its oracles.

“We were one of the first teams from Ethereum to make the jump to a new layer-one, NEAR, back in January 2019,” said Peter Mitchell, co-founder of Flux. “Jasper De Gooijer, co-founder of Flux, and I started building on NEAR before testnet was live and have worked closely with the team to design a best in class oracle to make NEAR the go-to layer one for economically secured DeFi.”

Earlier this year, Flux raised $10.3m in seed round funding from leading investors like Distributed Global, Coinbase Ventures, Coinfund, Figment Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures.

Flux’s unique feature set will bring a next generation oracle capable of powering mainstream use cases like derivatives, lending, stablecoins, dynamic NFTs, yield farming, reserve currencies, insurance, asset bridging, off-chain computation, and more to NEAR.

Crucially, Flux’s oracles can power all of these use cases with economic guarantees. By utilizing Flux, protocols on NEAR now have access to the most secure source of data in the crypto space.

## Flux’s Two Oracles

The Flux team currently offers two oracle products. Their First Party Oracle allows trusted data sources like Coinbase, AmberData, Kaiko, and others to post data directly on-chain to protocols. By contrast, Flux’s Economically Secured Oracle enables protocols to request crowdsourced, API, and Price Feed Data from any on or off-chain sources.

The Economically Secured Oracle consists of a robust validator network with professional validators like Figment, which runs the Flux Validator Infrastructure. The Flux Validator Node is so lightweight that it can run in a browser and with no minimum stake. The service is open to all community members that wish to secure the network.

Unlike existing oracles such as Chainlink, which features whitelisted node operators, on Flux any community member can participate in securing off-chain data brought to the blockchain. This creates a decentralized environment that is magnitudes ahead of competitors.

## $FLX Token Launch

To coincide with Flux’s launch on the NEAR mainnet, the team is also releasing its own utility token. Flux views the $FLX token as the bedrock of its ecosystem, which will be entirely governed by the Flux DAO and secured by validators. $FLX is capped at a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens.

“$FLX tokens secure and strengthen the network, serving as collateral for nodes for select data requests and validation,” writes the team on the Flux Medium page. “Depending on the sensitivity of data requested, data requesters can specify the collateral amount for nodes to stake up to process their request. In addition, $FLX tokens serve as collateral for disputing data outcomes and challenging their conclusions”

The Flux DAO enables token holders to vote on upgrades and design changes across the Layer One platforms that Flux supports.

NEAR is thrilled to announce that Flux, the first cross-chain oracle for economically secured data feeds, is now live on the NEAR mainnet!

Flux, World’s First Fully Decentralized Oracle and Oracle Aggregator Launches on NEAR

Aurora, the Ethereum scaling solution that allows projects built on Ethereum to utilize the cutting-edge technology of the NEAR Protocol, is partnering with ConsenSys, the enterprise blockchain company to provide access to its suite of developer tools.

The partnership aims to empower both the NEAR and Ethereum ecosystems by improving developer facilities - through the availability of the product suite - with the goal of increasing cross-chain interoperability.

The product suite features projects including [MetaMask](https://awesomenear.com/metamask), [Infura](https://awesomenear.com/infura), ConsenSys Quorum, Truffle, Codefi, and Diligence. MetaMask is the primary way a global user base of over 21 million monthly active users interact with applications on Web3. Over 350,000 developers use Infura to access Ethereum, IPFS and Layer 2 networks. In addition, 4.7 million developers create and deploy smart contracts using Truffle and ConsenSys Diligence has secured more than $25 billion in smart contracts with its hands-on dapp audits and testing tools.

“We are thrilled to join forces with ConsenSys on our shared mission of empowering the Ethereum ecosystem and extending its economy,” said Alex Shevchenko, the CEO of Aurora Labs.

The partnership means ConsenSys will now have official participation in the ongoing development of the AuroraDAO.

“We are excited to be partnering with the talented Aurora and NEAR protocol teams. Developer interest in EVM-compatible scaling solutions continues to grow at the same pace as the rapid expansion of the Web3 ecosystem, says E.G. Galano, Co-Founder and Head of Engineering at Infura.

“We believe developers will benefit from the addition of Aurora to the Infura product suite by enabling them to utilize the NEAR network with the EVM tooling they are already familiar with.”

Infura is directly involved in the AuroraDAO, which hands over key decision making to its community as a part of its vision to create a scaling solution that is as decentralized as possible.

Aurora is partnering with ConsenSys to provide access to its suite of developer tools.

Aurora partners with ConsenSys, Bringing MetaMask, Infura and more Ethereum Tools to NEAR

NEAR Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to Electron Labs, a project that helps blockchains seamlessly communicate with each other, to improve cross-chain security.

Electron Labs’ unique technology allows NEAR’s super fast and secure sharded blockchain to communicate more efficiently with the Ethereum network. The grant will help Electron deploy a new way of validating and securing transactions between NEAR and Ethereum.

Electron will use ZK-SNARKS — a cryptographic proof that allows one party to prove it possesses certain information without revealing that information — to compress the gas expenses of running the NEAR light client on Ethereum.

“At NEAR, we’ve always believed the future of blockchain is multi-chain. But in order for that future to become a reality, security needs to be maintained. Electron’s high security, high-efficiency product helps information move freely, but securely between NEAR and Ethereum. We’re thrilled to help support Electron,” said Erik Trautman, NEAR Foundation CEO.

The reduction in gas expenses will enable Validity Proofs — a super secure way of validating transactions — to be added to all Rainbow Bridge transactions,— providing even more security when sending data cross chain.

Currently, NEAR’s Rainbow Bridge follows a Fraud Proofs approach. As a result, transactions from NEAR to Ethereum currently take up to 3 to 5 hours to complete. This is due to the high gas expenses associated with verifying NEAR’s ED25519 signature on Ethereum.

Electron provides a zero-knowledge-based approach to verification, where ED25519 signatures can be verified succinctly on Ethereum. Electron achieves this by batching a large number of signatures into a single snark proof, similar to zk-rollups on Ethereum. This technology enables the cheap verification of thousands of NEAR’s validator signatures, allowing all Rainbow Bridge transactions to be confirmed using the light client.

NEAR and Electron look forward to building a deep and lasting partnership.

NEAR Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to Electron Labs, a project that helps blockchains seamlessly communicate with each other, to improve cross-chain security.

Electron Labs Awarded Grant To Improve Security and Speed Between NEAR and Ethereum

The NEAR Foundation is happy to announce it has awarded a grant for WannaSwap, a new decentralized exchange (DEX). WannaSwap is one of the first DEXs to be powered by Aurora, a turn key solution for developers to operate their apps on an Ethereum compatible, high-throughput platform.

The grant, for $50,000 will be to help accelerate WannaSwap’s progress to building out its functionality and grow its userbase.

“DeFi is one of the cornerstones of any thriving blockchain ecosystem, and decentralized exchanges are vital to its success. We’re thrilled to see WannaSwap’s innovative approach being built on Aurora,” says Erik Trautman, NEAR Foundation’s CEO.

WannaSwap is one of the first DEXs to run on Aurora’s EVM, allowing fast, simple and cost-effective trading between Ethereum tokens such as Sushi, Balancer and Uniswap and those on NEAR.

The development team’s initial focus will be to create features such as Swap, Farming and Staking for users, but with a number of innovative twists:

- Transaction fees on WannaSwap will be just 0.2% — the cheapest on NEAR.
- WannaSwap will have a unique feature called Referral. Users can refer other users to join Farming and get back a reward equal to 3% of the $WANNA earned by the referrer.

In addition to the features of a DEX, WannaSwap has plans for a range of other features, as laid out in its roadmap above.

WannaSwap’s immediate goal is to become a key liquidity hub on Aurora. In future, WannaSwap aspires to be a vital onramp for new DeFi users looking for an easy to use, fast, and low-cost platform, built on NEAR.

The NEAR Foundation is happy to announce it has awarded a grant for WannaSwap, a new decentralized exchange (DEX). 

NEAR Foundation Awards Grant to WannaSwap To Build A DEX

Ardana, the first all-in-one stablecoin ecosystem built on Cardano is partnering with NEAR to build a bridge that will allow assets to flow freely between Cardano and NEAR.

By connecting Cardano and NEAR and supporting integrations between projects on both ecosystems, Ardana will enable token transfers between the NEAR and Cardano blockchains and, later on, enable cross-chain smart contract functionality. Eventually $NEAR will also be available as an asset on Cardano, and it will be usable as collateral on Ardana to mint stablecoins.

“At NEAR, we’ve always believed the future of blockchain is multi-chain. A world whereby each blockchain could seamlessly talk and exchange data between one another. Ardana shares that vision, and integrations like this help realise that goal,” said Erik Trautman, NEAR Foundation CEO.

The partnership includes a grant to assist Ardana to build the Cardano-NEAR bridge.

“Ardana is on a mission to provide the crypto community with seamless integration between different projects and ecosystems. With that in mind, we are thrilled to announce a partnership with NEAR that will bring Ardana closer to this goal. The collaboration will help both organizations explore new avenues of growth in the emerging ecosystem of blockchain technology and will prove to be a landmark in the future for blockchain scalability.” said Ryan Matovu, Ardana CEO and Founder.

There will be more updates on our progress as the partnership progresses.

Ardana, the first all-in-one stablecoin ecosystem built on Cardano is partnering with NEAR to build a bridge that will allow assets to flow freely between Cardano and NEAR.

Ardana Partners with NEAR To Build Cardano Bridge

NEAR, the leading blockchain network has announced a strategic partnership with Alchemy Pay, the hybrid crypto-fiat payment gateway solution. Through this partnership, Alchemy Pay will enable easier access to NEAR Protocol by providing fiat on-ramps across 65 countries via Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and other local payment methods, including mobile wallets and bank transfers.

In addition to the payment rails, Alchemy Pay will be integrating the NEAR token onto its crypto-fiat payment solution to support acceptance of the token across Alchemy Pay’s global merchant network. This network includes the e-commerce leader Shopify, the global marketplace Arcadier, and Hong Kong’s leading chain Pricerite.

NEAR also announced it has joined the Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance co-founded by Alchemy Pay. The Alliance connects key entities in all sectors of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. Members will incubate new projects that seek to solve industry challenges and promote cooperation between networks, dApps, crypto exchanges, DEXs, wallets, stablecoins, fiat payment rails, merchant networks, and more.

The Alliance will benefit from NEAR Protocol’s extensive network and expertise. Its Proof-of-Stake consensus provides users with a decentralised form of finance while maintaining carbon neutrality. NEAR also supports a number of ecologically-focused projects building platforms and applications on its blockchain ecosystem.

Together, Alchemy Pay and NEAR have identified a number of projects that require nurturing in order to fulfil their potential. In response to this need, the partnership is initiating funds for investment to expand the ecosystem’s technology and community. Developer tooling and documentation, validator and staking resources, open-source libraries, public goods projects, research & development, decentralized applications with open source components, educational materials for developers, and interoperability solutions can all benefit from this initiative.

“NEAR is leading the way in ecologically sound blockchain development,” said Alchemy Pay CEO, John Tan. “Their vision for sustainability will influence the work of the Alliance we are building together, making it all the more positive for the industry at large.”

“Ultimately, blockchain solutions must be well integrated with the fiat currency economy,” said NEAR’s CEO, Eric Trautman. “Alchemy Pay is crucial in helping us get there.”

The application scenarios of Alchemy Pay are rich with possibility, and the number of NEAR mainnet accounts exceeded 1.5 million in November this year. The cooperation between NEAR Protocol and Alchemy Pay is a promising development for the blockchain industry.

Alchemy Pay will enable easier access to NEAR Protocol by providing fiat on-ramps across 65 countries via Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and other local payment methods.

NEAR Integrates Alchemy Pay’s Hybrid Gateway, Joins the Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance

Travala.com, the world’s leading cryptocurrency-friendly online travel agency, and NEAR Protocol, the high-performance and high-security blockchain platform, today announced a strategic partnership to integrate NEAR Protocol’s NEAR token on the travel website’s platform. 

The integration will enable NEAR token holders to book over 2.2 million hotels and homes, 600+ airlines, and 40,000+ activities in more than 230 countries. “It’s announcements like this that perfectly symbolise NEAR’s mission to bring billions of users into the Web3 world,” says Erik Trautman, the CEO of NEAR Foundation. 

Through the partnership, holders of NEAR will be able to participate in a cheaper, fairer, and more inclusive travel economy alongside leading cryptocurrency assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Travala.com’s native AVA token. Additionally, NEAR Protocol will be using Travala.com’s corporate account services for the company’s internal travel requirements. 

With savings of up to 40% available on Travala.com (when compared with other online travel agencies), a total of over 3,000,000 travel products will soon be at the fingertips of NEAR token holders worldwide, increasing the exposure of NEAR Protocol’s ecosystem to an ever-expanding user base. 

“We are very excited to see how unlocking travel for NEAR token holders will help other see the benefits of building and using NEAR,” says Trautman. 

Commenting on the partnership, Juan Otero, Travala.com CEO, said “In continuing our commitment towards mass cryptocurrency adoption, we’re very excited to partner with NEAR Protocol to champion the growth of the crypto community and to bring a new use case to NEAR. The team impressed me with their vision for their business, and I have no doubt that we will see them making waves in the crypto community.”


NEAR token holders will soon be able to book over 3,000,000 travel products in 230+ countries, boosting NEAR adoption.

Travala.com Partners with NEAR Protocol to Integrate NEAR

Today is a momentous day for the NEAR blockchain and the NEAR ecosystem: The launch of Simple Nightshade, the first step toward a fully sharded and secure blockchain. 

Since NEAR released the design for the protocol back in 2019, it was always meant to be a sharded blockchain. However, when preparing for the launch in early 2020, we realized that there was no need to launch a completely sharded network. 

Sharding is a very complex piece of technology – which we’ll be explaining in detail over the coming weeks on our Medium blog – and the network was brand new. It didn’t need to be capable of handling hundreds of millions of transactions at launch. 

Since then, the average number of daily transactions has risen to more than 300k. With the emergence of more and more projects building on NEAR, the number of transactions is only going to increase in the coming months. 

While the network is still currently using only 13% of the total capacity, we wanted to start the transition to sharding now to avoid any unpleasant surprises and ensure we can support all the applications on NEAR. Today is the start of that transition. 

Below, we’ll briefly discuss how sharding — a partitioning of the NEAR protocol — splits the work of processing transactions across many participating nodes. We’ll also offer some details on why this matters for NEAR’s booming community of developers and users.  

## Simple Nightshade

Today, the code for phase 0 was successfully deployed to the mainnet – it can take several hours or days for the code to be integrated by all network participants. 

This phase, nicknamed Simple Nightshade, will kickstart a year of changes and additions to the NEAR blockchain that when complete, will make it super-fast, incredibly secure, and capable of onboarding millions of users into the world of Web3 without skipping a beat. 

In this initial phase, we will shard the state, but not processing – meaning the blockchain will still be validated by all the network’s validators. The state will be split into four shards, significantly increasing the throughput of the network.  

Before sharding, blockchains would become congested as the project became more popular.
In this step, we have built a mechanism to split a shard into multiple parts through live upgrades, which will serve as the foundation for dynamic resharding in the future – more on that later. Meanwhile, because every shard is still validated by all validators, the safety guarantees remain the same. 

## What does this mean for users? 

It means they get the same simple, easy-to-use experience, but with increased speed and performance. One of blockchain’s biggest challenges has been scalability: how does a network grow to handle increased activity without compromising on security? Our solution to that question is Nightshade Sharding.  

While there are many new blockchains claiming to have thousands of transactions per second (TPS) and many layer 2 scaling solutions, due to their non-sharded designs, they would all hit an upper limit of what the network could handle eventually. 

NEAR’s Nightshade Sharding, on the other hand, allows NEAR Protocol to scale linearly with the number of shards, thereby having the ability to satisfy the demand for transactions as more and more users start to use NEAR. Ultimately it prepares NEAR for mass consumer adoption of billions of users.

## What does this mean for developers? 

Similar to users, developers will not have to change existing processes in order to take advantage of the increase in speed and scalability. 

Thanks to Nightshade’s homogeneous design, developers are not exposed to the details of sharding from the very beginning and they will remain unaffected by this upgrade. More specifically, internally we treat cross-contract calls the same regardless of whether two contracts are on the same shard. Therefore, developers should expect no changes to their experience of developing on NEAR.

## What does Nightshade Sharding change about the network’s performance? 

While transactions per second are often used as a measure of a network’s speed, there are many other factors that go into how quickly a blockchain can verify a transaction. 

At NEAR, network congestion, transaction finality and cost are all parts of the puzzle when it comes to assessing how ‘quick’ a network is. For reference, for token transfers, on one shard we can do 800-1000 TPS and with the upcoming sharding with four shards, we will be able to do a minimum of 2500-3000 TPS.

Ultimately, NEAR’s Nightshade is theoretically limitless (by increasing the number of shards) and can handle millions of transactions per second. 

## What comes after Phase 0? 

Early in 2022, Phase 1 will begin. In this phase, we introduce a new role: chunk-only producers, who only validate one shard. They produce chunks (shard blocks) for some specific shard and only need to run inexpensive hardware, without sacrificing the security of the network. 

The introduction of chunk-only producers also helps increase the total number of validators and improve the decentralization of NEAR as a whole. Once this phase is complete, we will have 200-400 validators and only a fraction of them (block producers) need to run more expensive hardware. We expect to deliver phase 1 in January 2022.

## Phase 2: Nightshade

In this phase, we finish the implementation of challenges, thereby eliminating the need for any validators to track all the shards. Once this step is completed, both state and processing will be fully sharded. This will also further lower the hardware requirements of running a block producer on NEAR, making the network more accessible for validators. We expect to deliver phase 2 in Q3 2022.

## Phase 3: Dynamic Resharding

After phase 2 is complete, we will have a fully functional sharded mainnet with a fixed number of shards. In phase 3, we want to expand on that and create the ability for the network to dynamically split and merge shards based on resource utilization. This will make NEAR almost infinitely scalable and resilient to short-term usage spikes. We expect to deliver phase 3 in Q4 2022.

Eventually, the network itself will dynamically adjust the number of shards based on their utilization and no validators will need to validate all the shards. 

Sharding is not the final phase of evolution for NEAR Protocol. Rather, we hope it’s just the beginning. We are simultaneously working on a number of improvements on the protocol level to build a secure, user-friendly, and scalable blockchain that can support mainstream usage and adoption. 

After sharding more and more validators could be recruited to ensure the network remains congestion free.

## An ecosystem primed for growth

In addition to the work on the protocol by NEAR Inc, NEAR Foundation is creating an ecosystem for developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises to thrive with ambitious funding programs including $800 million worth of global ecosystem funding (now valued at $1.2 billion). 

We’re also seeing a thriving gaming, metaverse, and NFT ecosystem emerging, not to mention a DeFi ecosystem that has gone from strength to strength since mainnet launch one year ago. 

For consumers, we’re making strides forward to make the crypto experience even easier to use. From simple, language-based wallet names, to two-factor authentication, and staking baked right into the wallet. 

This is just the beginning of a period of explosive growth at every level. We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

## Get Started Today 

If you’re looking to build on NEAR, check out our [developer resources](https://near.org/developers/). 

If you’re an entrepreneur and want to get started, head for our [Founders space](https://near.org/developers/). 

If you’re looking to create DAOs and Guilds, check out our [Community Page](https://near.org/community/). 




NEAR launches Simple Nightshade, the first step toward a fully sharded and secure blockchain and the beginning of the mass adoption age.

NEAR Launches Nightshade Sharding, Paving the Way for Mass Adoption

Aurora is excited to announce that we are integrating the industry-standard Chainlink Price Feeds into our turn-key, Layer 2 EVM solution for scaling the Ethereum ecosystem. 

The integration of Chainlink Price Feeds will allow developers to connect their smart contracts to high-quality, tamper-proof price data across a wide range of assets, ultimately establishing support for DeFi use cases such as money markets, algorithmic stablecoins, synthetic assets, options and futures contracts, asset management services, and much more. The result is Ethereum-based DeFi projects being able to seamlessly extend their projects onto the NEAR blockchain using oracle infrastructure that they already trust and know, along with enhanced scalability and lower costs enabled by Aurora L2.

We opted for Chainlink as the recommended oracle solution for Aurora developers needing external data because it is thoroughly time-tested and relied on by top DeFi and various other smart contract protocols. Chainlink Price Feeds already help secure tens of billions of dollars in value for leading dApps thanks to its demonstrable accuracy and resilience during even the most intense market conditions, including extreme market volatility, network congestion, and centralized infrastructure outages.

## Empowering DeFi on Aurora with Chainlink Price Feeds

Aurora is an EVM-based solution that serves as a fully compatible L2 for Ethereum-based dApps wanting to deploy on the NEAR blockchain. The Aurora environment is made up of the Aurora Bridge—a cross-chain bridge that allows users to transfer ETH and ERC-20 assets between Ethereum and Aurora—and the Aurora Engine, a high performance EVM. Through the combination of these two, smart contract developers can attract Ethereum users by making it easy to enter the Near ecosystem and enjoy a similar EVM experience, such as paying fees in ETH.

One of the most crucial pieces of infrastructure needed by smart contract developers building on Aurora is a secure and reliable connection to off-chain data and resources, particularly price data for DeFi. For example: lending markets need price data to issue loans and execute liquidations; algorithmic stablecoins need price data to trigger rebases and rebalances in order to maintain their peg; and synthetic asset protocols need price data to mint, swap, redeem, and liquidate synthetic asset positions.

However, price data that reflects a weighted average of all exchanges is not inherently available on blockchains. Instead, developers require additional oracle infrastructure so they can fetch and deliver external data into the blockchain that is then consumed by their smart contracts. Chainlink has established itself as the industry leader in secure oracle solutions, with Chainlink Price Feeds serving as pre-built and thoroughly tested decentralized oracle networks that supply premium price data on-chain in a secure and reliable manner.

Some of the key optimizations of Chainlink Price Feeds that made them the preferred solution for Aurora developers include:

- **High-Quality Data** — Chainlink Price Feeds source data from numerous premium data aggregators, leading to price data that’s aggregated from hundreds of exchanges, weighted by volume, and cleaned from outliers and suspicious volumes. Chainlink’s data aggregation model generates more precise global market prices that are resistant to API downtime, flash crash outliers, and data manipulation attacks like flash loans.
- **Secure Node Operators** — Chainlink Price Feeds are secured by independent, security-reviewed, and Sybil-resistant oracle nodes run by leading blockchain DevOps teams, data providers, and traditional enterprises with a strong track record for reliability, even during high gas prices and heavy network congestion.
- **Decentralized Network** — Chainlink Price Feeds are decentralized at the data source, oracle node, and oracle network levels, generating strong protections against downtime and tampering by either the data provider or the oracle network.
- **Transparency** — Chainlink provides a robust reputation framework and set of on-chain monitoring tools that allow users to independently verify the historical performance of node operators and oracle networks, as well as check the real-time prices being offered.

By natively integrating Chainlink Price Feeds into Aurora, Ethereum-based dApps currently using Chainlink Price Feeds can deploy on Aurora without the need for custom tooling or modifications. Importantly, Chainlink Price Feeds will be able to update at a higher frequency due to Aurora’s high-throughput and low fees. Chainlink can also enable connection to other types of external resources in the future to support the expansion of the Aurora development community.

“As the most widely adopted oracle solution on Ethereum, Chainlink Price Feeds are key to growing the Aurora ecosystem and creating a fluid transition for Ethereum dApps tapping into the NEAR ecosystem. With a proven track record of successfully securing high-value smart contracts, Chainlink Price Feeds will give Aurora developers plug-n-play decentralized price oracles, which they can use to quickly build and deploy DeFi applications across a variety of use cases and asset types.” — Dr. Alex Shevchenko, Founder of Aurora.

Aurora announces integration of Chanlink Price Feeds.

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