NEAR will for the first time offer Proof-of-Stake (PoS) delegators the chance to earn rewards in more than one token. Launching with Aurora, the Ethereum scaling solution that allows projects built on Ethereum to utilize the cutting-edge technology of the NEAR Protocol, stake farming contracts will allow validators to distribute more than one token to delegators that help secure the NEAR network.

This gives NEAR validators the unique opportunity to attract more capital while ensuring new and growing projects can take part in network security as well as gain exposure to delegators.  

NEAR is the first proof-of-stake blockchain to support stake farming contracts. This will provide opportunities for the NEAR ecosystem to further decentralize by allowing validators to take a more active role in supporting new and emerging projects.

“The new validator model allows for better alignment of the incentives in the NEAR ecosystem. We’re looking forward to seeing the collaborations between projects and professional validators and delivering much more value to the users,” says Alex Shevchenko, the CEO of Aurora Labs. 

## What is Proof-of-Stake?

Proof-of-stake is a type of consensus mechanism used by blockchain networks to help keep them secure. It requires users to stake the network’s base token to become a validator. Validators play the same role as miners in proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin: they help order transactions and create new blocks. 

Proof-of-stake networks like NEAR, however, come with a number of improvements over proof-of-work. They use a lot less electricity to power the network – NEAR is certified carbon neutral – and doesn’t require expensive, specialized hardware to be a validator. 

As a result, proof-of-stake networks are likely to be more decentralized than their proof-of-work counterparts, as more people can meet the requirements of being a validator. 

## Staking and validating on NEAR

For validators to take part in securing NEAR, they must stake a certain amount of $NEAR tokens as collateral. Once staked, these tokens are then used to ensure the validator acts honestly. If the validator tries to cheat or change the blockchain record, the network burns part of the stake as punishment. 

There is a minimum threshold for how much $NEAR must be staked, which validators can invite delegators (token holders who want to secure the network without running validation hardware) to contribute to. Delegation is the opportunity for all token holders to stake in partnership with a validator, leasing a small portion of their validating node. Delegators can lock their funds into a staking pool and receive rewards.

## Challenges with existing PoS Mechanism

In the current system, just like any other proof-of-stake network, a user delegates the base token—in this case, $NEAR—to the validator and receives the same token back as a reward from staking, which is currently around 10% of annualized return. 

The current PoS mechanism creates a misalignment of interests from the professional validators, who specialize in server management for staking, and ecosystem projects, who build and grow the NEAR ecosystem. Previously, ecosystem projects on PoS networks couldn’t receive any benefits from validator rewards. With this new update, they now can. 

## A New Option for Validators and Delegators 

In NEAR’s new stake farming system, ecosystem projects can partner with validators to incorporate the project tokens’ farming into their rewards structure. This allows validators to split the NEAR staking rewards with the projects. 

At the same time, stake farming also creates a more compelling proposition to delegators who now get both NEAR and project tokens, with a much higher APY in most cases. This newly found synergy will likely accelerate NEAR’s ecosystem growth with further network decentralization.

Aurora is the first project to adopt this new vision for validators on NEAR. Going forward, other projects will also have the opportunity to take part in this radical new vision for securing NEAR and supporting the ecosystem.  In Aurora’s case, its DAO approved the new staking farm. The launch of the new Aurora validator is a fulfillment of the Aurora DAO promise to distribute 3% of AURORA tokens to the NEAR community.

While this is the first farm launched by Aurora, there is flexibility to open more in the future. 

This upgrade to NEAR protocol is one of several planned this year that will help the network further decentralize, become more inclusive, and help accelerate its mission to onboard the world into web3. 

NEAR will for the first time offer PoS delegators the chance to earn rewards in more than one token.

NEAR Launches Stake Farming To Unlock Ecosystem Rewards

NEAR Protocol has successfully raised $150 million in its latest funding round, accelerating its mission to help billions of people learn and use blockchain and decentralized technologies.

The round was led by Three-Arrows Capital with participation from several crypto-native funds including Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, a16z, Jump, Alameda, Zee Prime, Folius, Amber Group, 6th Man Ventures, Circle Ventures, and MetaWeb.vc — the NEAR ecosystem fund. The round also included several top angels including Alan Howard, Santiago Santos and Aave Founder Stani Kulechov cementing NEAR’s reputation among industry leaders as a fast-growing blockchain that combines simplicity, scalability and security.

“We are excited to support the NEAR team and ecosystem as they scale blockchain applications,” says Kyle from Three-Arrows Capital.

“With multichain interoperability of Rainbow Bridge, Aurora (EVM), Octopus (Substrate), and NEAR native’s Nightshade sharding technology, NEAR is best suited for empowering blockchain applications for mainstream adoption,” says Amos Zhang, founder of MetaWeb.vc.

“We’re delighted to be backed by such a fantastic group of investors. It provides proof of what’s been built, and what’s to come,” says Illia Polosukin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol.

The funding builds on the $65.9 million raised by the project so far, from backers across the globe including DCG, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.

## Fueling Decentralization

The funding will be used to accelerate adoption of Web3 technologies through ecosystem funding, developing NEAR’s regional hubs and raising awareness for the brand, the projects building on NEAR and its global community to new audiences.

NEAR has already established communities in Asia, Africa and Europe, and is looking to help support emerging communities in Latin America, Turkey and India.

“We are delighted to have such a fantastic list of backers supporting NEAR’s mission,” says Marieke Flament, NEAR Foundation’s CEO. “We are looking forward to leveraging the funding to improve access to blockchain technology in an ever growing list of countries across the world.”

NEAR Protocol has a proven track record of supporting its fast-growing ecosystem. In 2021, it allocated $800 million (now valued at $1.8 billion) — the largest of any layer 1 blockchain — to help fuel its mission to decentralize the community and help users reimagine finance, creativity, and identity in new and inclusive ways.

As part of that allocation, Proximity Labs, a research and development firm targeting the NEAR ecosystem, created a $350 million grants DAO (now valued at $800 million) aimed at projects, organizations, and individuals building decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on the NEAR blockchain.

Since mainnet launch in Q4 2020, the NEAR network has processed more than 70 million transactions, and supports over 2.3 million accounts. It has 200,000 community members, 1,700 actively monthly builders and more than 100 guilds. It also became the first truly sharded blockchain, in Q4 2021, running with four shards on mainnet, with further upgrades scheduled for 2022.

NEAR Protocol has successfully raised $150 million in its latest funding round.

NEAR Raises $150M To Help Accelerate Mass Adoption of Web3

NEAR Foundation is pleased to announce that it has awarded a grant to Fusotao Protocol, a verification protocol for an order book-based matching system. Using the paradigm of “execute off-chain, verify on-chain”, Fusotao aims to facilitate the creation of a new era of Web3 crypto trading.

Fusotao will use the NEAR Foundation grant to help accelerate the building out of the DAO’s functionality as well as grow its user base.

Trading and investing in crypto carries risk regardless of which type of exchange one uses. Centralised exchanges (CEX) present risks such as hacks and foregoing asset custody, while decentralised exchanges (DEX) present the challenge of high transaction fees and low efficiency. Fusotao intends to disrupt this by providing a user-friendly order-book based DEX with zero-cost gas, low latency, and high security.

As a substrate-based application chain (appchain), Fusotao is designed to hold users’ assets and verify matching transactions from off-chain exchange services. Fusotao will collaborate with Octopus Network to ensure blockchain security and enable Fusotao’s interoperability with NEAR or any IBC-enabled blockchain.

Fusotao will launch its testnet at the end of February 2022, as well as FXDX, which is the first order book-based DEX in the NEAR ecosystem. The community can earn rewards by trading on FXDX or directly share transaction fees through staking tokens on the FXDX or other DEXs backed by Fusotao Protocol.

Fusotao’s immediate goal is to support a number of upcoming DEXs that trade NEAR ecosystem’s token and promote the NEAR ecosystem. In the near future, Fusotao aspires to be a core component in driving development of DeFi using its high performance and high security features.

NEAR Foundation is pleased to announce that it has awarded a grant to Fusotao Protocol, a verification protocol for an order book-based matching system.

Fusotao Protocol Brings Order Book DEX to NEAR Ecosystem

We are happy to announce that imToken now fully supports Aurora for our iOS and Android users. As a non-custodial wallet, imToken lets you handle your assets on Aurora with full control, use DApps and more.

Aurora is an EVM scaling infrastructure built on the NEAR Protocol, which is a high-throughput, scalable and future-safe platform, with low transaction costs for users.

The ecosystem of Aurora contains not only the Rainbow bridge, an official bridge to transfer tokens among the Ethereum, NEAR and the Aurora blockchain, but also leading industry projects like Terra/Luna, 1inch, DODO, The Graph, Chainlink, NEAR, Definer. Lately, Aurora has integrated Moonpay as well, which lets users buy NEAR token via fiat currency.

The latest version of imToken allows users to:

- 💸 Manage Aurora asset balances,
- 💹 Observe all token prices,
- 💱 Send and receive Aurora-based assets,
- 📊 Build their DeFi portfolio and
- 🎮 Use DApps on Aurora

To get started, download the latest imToken from Google Play, Apple App Store, or directly at token.im.

Entering the wallet and switching to ‘Aurora’ in the menu on the top.

Also, Click the ‘DeFi’ on the Aurora wallet, then you are able to follow your Defi portfolio on imToken.

Clicking the ecosystem button on the main page, that brings the user to their favorite DApps on Aurora.

After you enter the Aurora ecosystem and open the DApp, like Rainbow Bridge. Choose the existing token that you want to transfer.

We are happy to announce that imToken now fully supports Aurora for our iOS and Android users.

imToken now Fully Supports Aurora

NEAR is pleased to announce that [API3](https://awesomenear.com/api3), a leading first-party oracle solution that makes real world data accessible by smart contracts, will integrate its first-party oracle into the NEAR and Aurora blockchains. API3’s oracle, Airnode, is deployed natively within the API provider’s back-end infrastructure.

With Airnode, API data can be queried from blockchains without having to use specialist node-operating middlemen. This architecture both eliminates the Sylbil-vulnerable third party node layer and reduces fees by cutting out the “middleman tax” paid to these node operators for their services.

API3 [has made over 180 Web2 APIs](http://api3.org/apis) accessible to Web3 using Airnode so far. The API3 catalogue has a wide variety of data feeds across price, sports, weather, travel, randomness, and a range of other data categories.

This also includes over 400 institutional grade Open Banking APIs that deliver composability for onboarding and KYC (know your customer), transactions and account data, merchant and ATMs, and a range of other open banking use cases. These were recently utilized by a state-owned bank in El Salvador for a hackathon, supporting the exploration of inclusive on-chain financial services.

NEAR is committed to supporting the integration roadmap that prioritizes the deployment of crypto, forex, commodity, and equity data feeds to support the demands of DeFi. This will see API3’s catalogue of Airnode-enabled APIs being made accessible to dapp developers on Aurora and NEAR.

Ecosystem builders are encouraged to engage with NEAR Foundation and the API3 DAO. We are committed to supporting projects that will use NEAR’s easy, fast, and secure blockchain and API3’s oracle solution to power decentralized applications.

NEAR is pleased to announce that API3, a leading first-party oracle solution that makes real world data accessible by smart contracts, will integrate its first-party oracle into the NEAR and Aurora blockchains.

API3 Connects NEAR with Over 180 Web2 Data Providers

NEAR is pleased to announce that Terra, a leading blockchain protocol deploying a suite of algorithmic decentralized stablecoins, is integrating its UST stablecoin on the [NEAR](/near-protocol/) and [Aurora](/aurora-dev/) ecosystems. This integration is made possible through a partnership with leading DeFi protocols [NearPad](/nearpad/) and [Rose](/rose/).

NearPad, which aims to be the DeFi hub on Aurora, includes a DEX AMM product where users will be able to trade assets and provide liquidity with UST pairs. Rose is a stableswap and borrowing protocol on Aurora that allows users and other DeFi platforms to tap into deep, capital efficient, stablecoin liquidity.

The partnership between Terra, NearPad, and Rose will facilitate the growth of UST to new ecosystems on both NEAR and Aurora. Users will be able to bridge assets directly from Terra to Aurora via Allbridge or from any of the other supported chains. Both NearPad and Rose will offer incentivized opportunities for users to deposit UST liquidity into the protocols, which then can be accessed by the wider NEAR and Aurora communities.

“Partnering with Terra to bring UST to ecosystem to our community will be a big step towards growing the Near and Aurora ecosystem,” says Aiden Knox, Founder of NearPad and Rose. “I’m excited to be working closely with the Terra team to not only bring UST to NearPad and Rose, but also for the deeper integrations and collaborative projects this partnership enables.”

UST’s expansion to the NEAR ecosystem demonstrates the importance of a move toward a multi-chain,composable future. Users will have access to the benefits of protocols built on NEAR technology without any compromise in terms of having access to some of the most popular assets such as the leading decentralized stablecoin.

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

“We’re excited about the NEAR ecosystem and are looking forward to continuing UST’s cross-chain expansion via NearPad and Rose,” adds Jeff Kuan, Head of Business Development of Terra. “Working with strong teams like theirs, we’ll see UST embedded more deeply in the global DeFi ecosystem.”

NEAR is pleased to announce that Terra is integrating its UST stablecoin on the NEAR and Aurora ecosystems.

Terra Partners with NEAR and Aurora, Bringing UST Stablecoin to Boost DeFi Growth

In line with the multichain future vision, DODO is expanding the list of networks it is available on. DODO is officially launching on the NEAR Protocol, using Aurora as the Ethereum-compatible scaling solution! Not only that, but DODO have reached an agreement with the NEAR team to have DODO as the **‘blue chip’ decentralized exchange (DEX)** on their platform. This unprecedented deal will ensure that DODO has ‘first mover’ advantage in this new and exciting space.

The NEAR Protocol is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that’s intended as a community-run platform to host decentralized applications (dApps), but with unique sharding technology designed to make it much **cheaper and more scalable** than some popular competitors like Ethereum. Does this mean the hardworking developer community has to reprogram the whole DEX from scratch? Not at all! Using Aurora as the Layer 2 go-between, DODO is able to seamlessly deploy onto the NEAR Protocol, despite having been developed to be compatible with the EVM.

“We’re excited to see big Ethereum players coming to Aurora to expand their businesses,” Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Aurora, said, “I’m glad that in such a short timeframe we were able to satisfy all the technical requirements of DODO: RPC methods, The Graph integration, and others. And now on Aurora we see **one of the most influential decentralized trading protocols** being fully operational.”

## Why DODO On NEAR?

You might be wondering, “Ok, yet another chain DODO’s integrating with. Why should I care?” You might also be surprised to learn that Aurora currently has **an average block time of one second and zero transaction costs** (you read that right)! The NEAR Protocol and Aurora are fast, low-cost, easy to use, secure, and meet all of our technical requirements. The NEAR Protocol is also climate neutral, so you can save the environment and save money, too. Based on these and other considerations, the DODO Team has determined that NEAR/Aurora will likely be the “next big thing” in Layer 1 technology. Together, we foresee this deployment ensuring DODO’s continued growth and market success for years to come.

There has never been a better time to make a dApp on NEAR - and if that’s something you’re into, please don’t hesitate to contact DODO.

## Looking Ahead

DODO expect to achieve the following over the next six months:

- Total Value Locked (TVL): **$100M+**
- Volume: **$300M+**
- Users: **100k+**
- Transactions: **100k+**

To achieve these, the DODO and Aurora/NEAR teams will collaborate in a marketing campaign to promote the deployment, and especially our generous user incentives, on all official channels.

“Our deployment on the NEAR Protocol is unlike our other recent multichain campaigns,” said Diane Dai, DODO’s CMO, “Since DODO has a unique ‘blue chip’ advantage on NEAR, we are more prepared than ever to bring market-leading liquidity to as many people as possible.”

Aurora believes that the launch of DODO is an important milestone in creating a healthy NEAR and Aurora ecosystem with strong partners and a great variety of products for the community.

DODO is coming to the NEAR Protocol by launching on Aurora.

DODO launches on Aurora to encompass the features of NEAR blockchain

## Overview

In Q1 2022 the NEAR Foundation plans to stake 1,500,000 million NEAR on Meta Pool. This will help decentralize the allocation of NEAR tokens in new /current validator nodes and help secure the network– which are both core to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols such as NEAR.

## Background

We approached the NEAR Foundation during NEARCON to explore options for collaboration in a way that could have the largest impact on the ecosystem.

We decided not to apply for a grant, since we already had meaningful commitments from our early backers and the current fee structure allowed us to bootstrap the protocol.

As an alternative, we proposed that the NEAR Foundation stake liquid tokens on our platform. Going back to our earliest AMA´s and webinars, we have said: — our goal is to help decentralize and strengthen the NEAR network — so we developed this delegation structure and began discussing it with the NEAR Foundation Funding Team.

## Growth over Grants

Instead of Meta Pool receiving a sum of money in a one-time grant, we are receiving support via adoption of the Meta Pool model. The NEAR foundation will become a user of Meta Pool just like any individual user: depositing 1.5 million $NEAR tokens, which can be withdrawn at any time, and receiving the equivalent balance in stNEAR.

The NEAR Foundation’s plan to delegate such a large amount to Meta Pool is a strong vote of confidence that should send a clear message: Liquid Staking is an important part of the growing NEAR ecosystem and Meta Pool is a strong project supporting this staking model. As a prerequisite of this delegation commitment Meta Pool will complete a full review / audit of their smart contracts & codebase. Once this delegation is completed we are optimistic that other large major projects will begin to explore committing to delegations with Meta Pool in the upcoming year.

## Advantages of Staking with Meta Pool.

This are the main advantages that our liquid staking platform offers:

- The tokens that are staked on Meta Pool will be capital efficient.
- Support new validator nodes coming to the network.
- Help improve the censorship resistance of the protocol.
- Incentivize retail token holders to discover liquid staking.

## Tokens that are capital efficient.

When the NEAR Foundation stakes the 1.5 million NEAR on Meta Pool, the protocol will mint around 1.49 million stNEAR (approximately). This NEP-141 token can now start to flow back into the ecosystem. The NEAR Foundation Funding team will begin to explore creative ways to utilize tokens to support the broader ecosystem.

## Decentralisation and Censorship Resistance

The key part here is that the NEAR tokens are not locked on one validator node and it will flow to 51 validator nodes, it will also accrue $META rewards so the NEAR Foundation will also have voting rights on our ASTRO DAO. These $META tokens could also be delegated to projects that have overlap with Meta Pool.

It is a green field opportunity that we are really excited to be collaborating with the NEAR Foundation upon. More details will be provided as we finalize the commitment date.

### Securing the allocated tokens.

Another important aspect to disclose is that the tokens will be non-custodial, that means that during the 24 months that it will provide staking to Meta Pool the NEAR Foundation will have complete control over the tokens.

### Being the new validator on the block.

Launching a validator node requires work, just have a look around the documentation or ask the Open Shards Alliance Discord, it requires deep knowledge and a team that can maintain the infrastructure to keep the node running efficiently and be cost effective.

When NEAR Foundation starts staking on Meta Pool, it will distribute those one and half million NEAR tokens to new nodes and also allocate it to the top performing nodes that sit outside the Top 10. The protocol needs new validator nodes to come in and keep the network running and provide the base for all our DApps to run on.

Thus improving the performance of the NEAR network protocol. We are convinced that this partnership will be a success and will show that community is part of the DNA of the protocol.

## Next Steps

Our commitment is that on January 3rd all the Meta Pool smart contracts will be audited by Blocksec, who is a Tier 1 security firm.

These are the repositories of the contracts that will be audited:

- Staking contract — https://github.com/Narwallets/meta-pool
- $META contract — https://github.com/Narwallets/meta-pool/tree/master/meta-token

Once the audit has been completed and we have implemented the changes/improvements to our smart contracts, then the NEAR Foundation will finalize the delegation.

2022 is looking bright! Keep on staking!

In Q1 2022 the NEAR Foundation plans to stake 1,500,000 million NEAR on Meta Pool.

NEAR Foundation embraces Liquid Staking by committing 1.5 million $NEAR to Meta Pool

On December 8th, Amazon Web Services suffered a massive outage, rendering a large number of projects and websites inaccessible. If you own an IPFS-based front end, then you didn’t experience the effects of this outage at all.

With this AWS crash in mind, NEAR is pleased to announce 4EVERLAND — an IPFS-based hosting service — is bringing its one-stop service for deploying front ends to the NEAR ecosystem.

IFPS, or InterPlanetary File System, is a protocol and peer-to-peer network used for storing and sharing data in distributed systems, like blockchains. 4EVERLAND’s IFPS protocol frees apps’ data storage and access from centralized servers, guaranteeing better data security and trustworthiness. It will also allow dApp developers and users to explore more of Web3’s possibilities.

4EVERLAND provides DDNS, Data I/O, Cert Manager, and other modules in the gateway layer, which are compatible with Web2 access experience. Developers can quickly complete DWeb deployment in minutes without any plug-ins and additional learning costs.

4EVERLAND is also providing global acceleration and data analysis services for all front-ends that are deployed on 4EVERLAND, which will make for more helpful project operation and maintenance.

The 4EVERLAND team is now welcoming all NEAR developers to deploy their front-end on IPFS, either as the main site or as an alternate site. To encourage front-end development on 4EVERLAND, the team is currently offering a number of rewards.

4EVERLAND already launched a ‘First Leap’ program to encourage outstanding projects to deploy their front ends on IPFS. In addition to that, 4EVERLAND is providing 30 extra business version free places for the NEAR Ecosystem, sponsoring six months of services to advance NEAR ecosystem development. Outstanding NEAR developers will also have the opportunity to become 4EVERLAND’s whitelist members and get Dev Grants, while enjoying diversified service rights from 4EVERLAND.

NEAR is pleased to announce 4EVERLAND — an IPFS-based hosting service — is bringing its one-stop service for deploying front ends to the NEAR ecosystem.

4EVERLAND Partners with NEAR on Open Web Hosting Service

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://awesomenear-spaces.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/production/articles/near-partners-with-kyve-to-bring-permanent-storage-to-ecosystem/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://awesomenear-spaces.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/production/articles/deadmau5-launches-nft-partnership-with-mintbase-and-near/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.

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