## Introduction
The launch of concentrated liquidity AMM is an achievement for Ref Finance and de facto the NEAR ecosystem. First, what is concentrated liquidity? It is the liquidity allocated within a custom price range. With the mechanics of concentrated liquidity, liquidity providers (LPs) can accumulate capital with smaller price intervals than (0, ∞), enabling individualized price curves. Which could potentially improve 4000x higher capital efficiency for traders.

Ref Finance is always on the lookout for ways to offer more value to users in regards to their liquidity. With this in mind, the launch of concentrated liquidity on Ref is an incremental new key feature for the NEAR ecosystem in the Rust environment brought to you in partnership with Izumi Finance and Arctic.

Key Features — The difference of features between V2 and V1

- Liquidity Providers can now put liquidity in a range, with efficient swap fee earnings and less impermanent loss.
- Limit-Order as a one-way liquidity, brings up CEX order-book style user experience;
- With much thicker liquidity around the current price point, swap slippage has a notable decrease.

Key Features — The difference of features between Ref V2 and Uniswap V3

- Using constant sum formula on small price range fragment instead of constant production formula, the support of limit order has a remarkable improvement.
- Users can place limit buy orders at a price higher than current price or sell orders lower than current price. Ref V2 would auto match with best price first, similar to CLOBs (central limit order books) seen on centralized exchanges.
- As a kind of one-way liquidity, it is not necessary to keep an eye on the Ref V2 limit order deal progress. Users can claim their order earning at any time without any concern that the earned token would be reverted.
- Improved fee structure: Only takers or market makers would pay a fee for an open order. Thus, only LPs (and the protocol itself) can benefit from swap fees.

All this to say that the concentrated liquidity model offers you two options:

- To provide liquidity across a full range, in order to spread your assets thin with lower rates of return but lesser risk of falling out of range;
- To narrow your range in accordance to the market’s conditions to increase capital efficiency and earn more fees.

As mentioned above, we’ve compared our development features of this model in comparison to Uniswap’s model, from Ethereum to NEAR, but far less costly.. Ref V2 provides a more capital efficient, user-friendly experience with dynamic pricing, reduced fees, and cross-chain integrations.

## Audit
Smart contract security is a top priority for a DeFi protocol, which is why the core contract codebase is currently under audit by BlockSec and bug bounties will be listed on Immunify approaching the mainnet launch.

Testing Season
Last but not least, test it out on testnet -> https://testnet.ref-finance.com/

Currently, 3 concentrated liquidity pools are created:

1. usdt-near-0.2% fee: 6000 usdt — 1100 near, 5.2 usdt/near
2. ref-usdt-0.2% fee: 30k ref — 19k usdt, 0.5 usdt/ref
3. usn-usdt-0.01% fee: 20k — 20k, 1 usdt/usn

Or you can also create your own liquidity at:
https://testnet.ref-finance.com/addLiquidityV3

## Get in touch with us
If you are a DEX market maker, or have experience with DEX market making, or simply have questions about Ref Finance, wish to partner, we are reachable at business@ref.finance, our telegram and discord. Don’t miss us at NEARCON 2022.

Efficient swap fee earnings and less impermanent loss.

Ref V2 — Unlock concentrated liquidity for better capital efficiency

Tether Operations Limited (“Tether”), the company operating the blockchain-enabled platform tether.to that powers the first and most widely used stablecoin, has launched Tether tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar (“USDT”) on the NEAR Network.

NEAR is a smart contract-capable blockchain designed to provide the ideal environment for Dapps which is enabled by its unique scaling solution. The network just hit a milestone of 700 projects now building on NEAR, making it a great ecosystem for Tether to launch a new version of USD₮. As of July, NEAR Foundation reports that the NEAR network has been used for 300,000 to 400,000 transactions per day.

“We’re excited to launch USD₮ on NEAR, offering its community access to the first, most stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether. “The NEAR ecosystem has witnessed historic growth this year and we believe Tether will be essential in helping it continue to thrive.”

Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation said: “We champion initiatives that can bring greater stability to the DeFi ecosystem and help us advance the mass adoption of Web3. We look forward to seeing what Tether will achieve with the launch of USD₮ on NEAR Network and the vital role it will play in shaping the future of finance and the digital economy.”

This announcement further solidifies Tether's position as the most widely adopted stablecoin, having pioneered the concept in the digital token space. The stablecoin is now live on Algorand, Avalanche, Bitcoin Cash’s Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), Ethereum, EOS, Kusama, Liquid Network, Omni, Polygon, Tezos, Tron, Solana and Statemine.

Tether has launched Tether tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar (“USDT”) on the NEAR Network.

Tether (USDT) Launches on NEAR Network

[NEARCON 2022](https://awesomenear.com/nearcon) is at full tilt here in the gorgeous city of Lisbon, where the NEAR ecosystem is on full display, with over 2,000 people in attendance. With a distinct carnival atmosphere, NEARCON has been a vibrant, interactive showcase of the ecosystem’s diverse and inspiring talent and creativity. Beyond the myriad of engaging talks and projects demos, there have also been parties, an IRL hackathon, food trucks from around the world, and much more

NEARCON has also seen a bevy of exciting announcements, including some new ecosystem funds, a major Nightshade sharding milestone, and more. 

Let’s take a quick look at everything that is new on NEAR from NEARCON. 

A number of other announcements will be rolling out over the course of NEARCON, so stay tuned for those tomorrow. 

## Switchboard Brings Permissionless Oracle Protocol to NEAR

Switchboard Labs launches its permissionless, customizable oracle devnet implementation on NEAR Protocol. The protocol allows developers to build general-purpose data feeds such as price, sports or weather data, opening up a world of new possibilities for developers. Being a permissionless oracle protocol, Switchboard allows a developer to build their own data feed within minutes and have complete customizability, and management over their own feeds.

## NearPay brings debit cards creating another bridge between crypto and IRL

NearPay, the bridge between the fiat and crypto world has taken another step forward in helping users access their crypto wherever they are with the launch of a physical debit card. A virtual card is already working in the EU and the UK, and the physical card is due to start delivery during the autumn. On top of that, the NearPay team has plans to expand into the US and Asia over the next 12 months. 

## Pagoda launches flagship product for dApp developers on NEAR

Pagoda, the easiest Web3 startup platform and a major contributor to the NEAR Protocol, announced today the launch of their [flagship developer product](https://console.pagoda.co/). The Pagoda Console provides a robust set of integrated tools to streamline the dApp development experience from a single place. 

Pagoda supercharges existing dApps built on NEAR and accelerates the development of new NEAR dApps. Developers, innovators, and founders are empowered with a comprehensive toolset to build, deploy, improve, manage, test, monitor, analyze and interact with their dApps. 

## Regional Hubs Launch in India and Vietnam

At NEARCON, not one but two regional hubs were announced: India and Vietnam.

The regional hub in India is dedicated to blockchain talent development and innovation. NEAR’s involvement in the country aims to move the dial towards a sustainable and inclusive approach to blockchain development, and a strong group of potential emerging leaders already exists in the region.

In Vietnam, meanwhile, NEAR has partnered with premier venture capital fund GFS Ventures to launch a hub dedicated to ongoing blockchain innovation, education and talent development throughout the region. Vietnam’s digital economy is booming with the pandemic seeing eight million new digital consumers and a doubling of new startups in the country. The nation is actively promoting digital transformation and development and also ranks 5th out of 154 countries in the Global Cryptocurrency Acceptance Index. However, Vietnam tops global rankings when it comes to the percentage of crypto ownership, as one in five of its people (or 20.3 per cent) own crypto.

## Fayyr Launches First NFT Marketplace on NEAR for Social Impact Organizations

[Fayyr](https://awesomenear.com/fayyr) provides a unique online marketplace for users to support social impact causes and artists at the same time. Artists upload their creations to Fayyr and earmark a percentage of the proceeds support an impact organization of their choosing. 

Founded by a professor and two students from the University of Waterloo, Fayyr’s vision is to empower global participation in an environment that supports social good using emerging blockchain technology. The team at Fayyr is addressing a gap in the current NFT market by providing a space for charities, non-profits, and social impact organizations to participate in the crypto space through donations from NFT purchases. 

## NEAR to Form Community Working Group on Ecosystem Governance (NDC)

NEAR is thrilled to be reaching a new milestone on the road to decentralization by creating a new framework for an ecosystem-wide self-governance treasury called the NEAR Digital Collective (NDC). The purpose of the NDC is to shift decision-making to the blockchain itself, making the NEAR community more resilient, transparent, and fair. 

This working group will be led and shaped by the NEAR community and will take the next steps necessary to launch and implement the NDC framework. This process, now being launched, aims to serve as a model for the wider Web3 ecosystem for the creation and implementation of truly decentralized, on-chain governance.

## Sustainable Learn2Earn with “Coinbase Earn”

Along with being the world’s leading blockchain for developers, with its low fees, high speeds, and infinite scalability, NEAR has always championed the importance of education and sustainability in its mission toward mass adoption of Web3. 

Now, in a new, exciting partnership with Coinbase, one of the world’s largest digital currency exchanges, those values will take center stage in Coinbase Earn, a new program aimed at educating users about NEAR and the utility of its native token. 

The program will be funded through NEAR staking rewards—a first-of-its-kind, sustainable approach to help users learn about the tokenomics of the NEAR ecosystem, and what makes NEAR the best entry point to Web3.

## Women Make Web3

Inclusion and accessibility are at the heart of NEAR Foundation’s mission. Partnering with Forkast, a global digital media platform focused on Web3, NEAR is thrilled to unveil the winners of the inaugural Women in Web3 Changemakers.

In total 1,167 votes were tallied for 180 nominations. Of the nominees, eleven were selected (ten + one tie) and it will be a joy to honor them publicly at NEARCON.

Here are the names of the 2022 Changemakers listed in alphabetical order:

- Amy Soon, Founder,  Blu3 DAO
- Bianca Lopes, Identity Advocate and Investor
- Deborah Ojengbede, CEO, AFEN Blockchain
- Erikan Obotetukudo, Founder and General Partner, Audacity
- Lauren Ingram, Founder, Women of Web3
- Medha Parlikar, Co-founder, Casperlabs
- Oluchi Enebeli, Nigeria’s first female blockchain engineer, founder Web3Ladies
- Sian Morson, Founder and Editor of TheBlkChain
- Tammy Kahn, Co-founder and Co-CEO of FYEO
- Tricia Wang, Co-founder and lead Crypto Research and Design Lab (CRADL) at CISA 
- Wendy Diamond, Web3 Impact Investor, LDP Ventures, CEO/Founder Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO)/#ChooseWOMEN

CEO of NEAR Foundation Marieke Flament said: “Together we can inspire one another, become each other’s role models and level the playing field for the next generation of women.” 

Selected by public vote, these extraordinary and diverse women hail from all corners of the globe. They are founders, investors, CEOs, engineers, and so much more. “This inaugural list of these incredible eleven Changemakers,” writes Angie Lau, CEO, editor-in-chief, and co-founder of Forkast, “celebrates the trajectory of our collective story. We can’t wait to tell their stories, and share them with the world.” 

## Tether Finds a New Home at NEAR 

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce a new and important partnership with Tether (“USD₮”). The addition of Tether to NEAR’s rapidly growing ecosystem is a major moment for both parties and will be crucial to an increasing presence in DeFi ecosystems. 

“We’re excited to launch USD₮ on NEAR, offering its community access to the first, most stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space,” says Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether Operations Limited. Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation, adds “We look forward to seeing what Tether will achieve with the launch of USD₮ and the vital role it will play in shaping the future of finance and the digital economy.”

For more information on how the stablecoin works, head over to [Tether](https://awesomenear.com/articles/tether-usdt-launches-on-near-network). 

## NEAR Foundation announces partnership with Few and Far to grow the NEAR NFT ecosystem 

[Few and Far](https://awesomenear.com/few-and-far), the next-generation NFT marketplace built on NEAR Protocol, has been awarded a grant by the NEAR Foundation — and a partnership to significantly increase the advancement of NFTs across the ecosystem. 

“We are thrilled to support Few and Far’s mission to provide seamless NFT minting solutions and an easy-to-use marketplace for the NEAR ecosystem and beyond,” says Robbie Lim, GM, Partners & International at NEAR. 

“The NEAR Foundation embraces the digital asset revolution and the importance of laying the foundations for web3 gaming, the metaverse economy, and much more.”

## Nightshade Sharding Phase 1 is live 
On NEARCON Day 1, there was some major Nightshade sharding news. Pagoda, the Web3 startup platform and contributor to NEAR Protocol, announced the launch of Sharding Phase 1—a major technical milestone that increases the number of validators, improves decentralization, and bolsters the network’s resilience. 

This is great news for anyone building or creating on NEAR, the network for creating without limits. Sharding Phase 1 is a significant step toward network decentralization and scaling capacity toward billions of transactions. And it will do this without any disruptions for developers, entrepreneurs, end users, and token holders. 

This launch is the second part of a four-phase plan to implement Nightshade, a novel sharding design that enables an almost infinitely automated scalable blockchain. Phase 1 follows less than a year from the launch of Phase 0, which marked the very beginning of sharding on the NEAR network. 

Pagoda said Nightshade’s subsequent phases are expected to be complete in 2023.

## NEAR and Caerus launch a fund for creators
NEAR Foundation also had some exciting news for creators. The Foundation announced a new strategic partnership with Caerus, a recently launched investment firm, to help revolutionize how Web3 intersects with culture and entertainment. 

The partnership will see the creation of a $100M venture capital fund to support the development of next-generation platforms, marketplaces, and apps that showcase a range of creators, talent, IP owners and their communities. The Venture Lab, the partnership’s first investment, will be an incubator for creators and IP owners to build and launch projects. 

“We’re yet to imagine the plethora of use cases for how Web3 technologies will change how culture is experienced, entertainment is consumed, and value is distributed,” said Nathan Pillai, an executive at IMG/Endeavor. “And that was the genesis of Caerus: to be a catalyst for innovation that unleash projects in sport, music, film, TV, fashion, art and gaming which offer greater equity for all.”  

Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow!

A number of other announcements will be rolling out over the course of NEARCON, so stay tuned for those tomorrow. 

NEARCON 2022 Highlights

A little over a year ago, NEAR held its first conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Fast forward to today and NEAR is back in Portugal, for the next chapter of NEARCON. But things have changed quite a bit in that time. 

To celebrate the second anniversary of NEARCON, the NEAR Foundation looks back at all the things the community has achieved across the year. 

## A catalyst 
At NEARCON in 2021, the Foundation announced an $800m fund to help spearhead growth within the ecosystem and to back technological advancements that would simplify development and adoption of Web3. 

Under the terms of the agreement, the fund would distribute $250 million in ecosystem grants over four years, establish a regional fund of $100 million, and earmarking $100 million specifically for socially impactful startups and launch a DeFi focused fund, Proximity, with $350m.

## Create without limits 
In the spring of 2022, the Foundation received $590m from the following key backers: Tiger Capital, FTX, a16z, Circle, Dragon Fly, and others.

To ensure the Foundation can maintain sufficient resources throughout the market downturn, the Foundation has been very conservative in how the funds have been managed. Exposure to non-NEAR has been limited, with more than $500 million of funds raised held in fiat in Swiss bank accounts.

This approach has left the Foundation in an extremely strong position to continue to distribute funds to high quality projects for the foreseeable future. 

## Ecosystem Growth 
The ecosystem went into overdrive over the last 12 months. Here’s a snapshot of some of the ways the NEAR ecosystem has delivered stellar results: 

- **Wallets** – the number of NEAR wallets has exploded from 1 million at the last NEARCON to more than 19 million today.  
- **Developers** – The NEAR community has grown from 250 to 1,500 developers deploying on MainNet.  
- **DAOs** – Thanks to projects like AstroDAO, NEAR has one of the largest DAO communities in all of Web3, growing from 50 in October 2021 to more than 800 today. 
- **Projects** – When NEAR held its first conference, there were 100 projects developing on its blockchain. Today that number is 790, and growing quickly. The Foundation expects that number to pass 800 before 2022 is finished. 
- **Total transactions** – Another huge growth signal. During NEARCON, the total number of transactions sat around 50 million, today that number is beyond 200 million, showing 4x growth in how active the ecosystem has become. 
- **External funding** – One of the key markers of a healthy ecosystem is its ability to attract external funding above and beyond the Foundation. In the past year, projects building on NEAR have raised more than $300 million from outside funding.  
- **Total Value Locked** – A measure of the relative health of a network’s DeFi ecosystem, during the first conference, there was $50 million in locked value inside DeFi projects. Today, that number is $600 million, peaking at $1.8 billion in April this year. 

## Keystone Development 
During the past year the NEAR Foundation and the NEAR Community have hit several crucial milestones in developing the core components of a healthy and vibrant ecosystem. Below is a summary of how the ecosystem has matured over the last 12 months. 

## Infrastructure and Integrations
Infrastructure is a catch all term for key parts of the ecosystem that are needed to help unlock mass adoption. These include things like wallets, bridges, oracles, zk technologies, privacy tools, and improved tools for developers. 

Integrations with the NEAR network are crucial to bring more users into web3. The following partnerships have been instrumental in accelerating NEAR’s connection with the rest of web3. 

Since NEARCON 2021, these key projects have been at the forefront of building out these capabilities on NEAR.  

- [Aurora](https://awesomenear.com/aurora-dev)
- [Pagoda](https://awesomenear.com/pagoda) 
- [Calimero](https://awesomenear.com/calimero) 
- [Switchboard](https://awesomenear.com/switchboard) 
- [Octopus](https://awesomenear.com/octopus-network)
- [Brave](https://awesomenear.com/brave)
- Coinbase
- [BitGo](https://awesomenear.com/bitgo)
- [USDT](https://awesomenear.com/tether-usdt) 
- [Fireblocks](https://awesomenear.com/fireblocks) 
- [Token Terminal](https://awesomenear.com/token-terminal)
- Copper

## Gaming / Entertainment
The Web3 gaming space is still wide open. While it’s still early days for gaming and entertainment in the NEAR universe, the following projects have all deployed on NEAR in the past 12 months. 

- [Armored Kingdom](https://awesomenear.com/armored-kingdom)
- [SWEAT](https://awesomenear.com/sweat-economy)
- [Endlesss](https://awesomenear.com/endless) 
- [Niche](https://awesomenear.com/niche)
- [playEmber](https://awesomenear.com/playember) 
- [eFuse](https://awesomenear.com/efuse)

## NFTs
NFTs on NEAR have been growing rapidly over the last 12 months. Below are projects that have either deployed or have seen stellar growth: 

- [Few & Far](https://awesomenear.com/few-and-far)
- [Mintbase](https://awesomenear.com/mintbase)
- [Paras](https://awesomenear.com/paras)
- [Seatlab](https://awesomenear.com/seatlab-nft)
- [Stack Sports](https://awesomenear.com/stack-sports) 

## DAOs
NEAR has the strongest no-code, easy to use, DAO tech stack. It’s no surprise to see DAO growth be so strong in 2022. Below are projects have accelerated DAO development on NEAR. 

- [AstroDAO](https://awesomenear.com/astrodao)
- [OrangeDAO](https://awesomenear.com/orangedao)
- [SailGP](https://awesomenear.com/sailgp-dao)
- [Flamingo DAO](https://awesomenear.com/flamingo-dao)
- [Unchain Fund](https://awesomenear.com/unchain-fund)

## The Year Ahead 
While it has been a fantastic year for NEAR, the community is just getting started.

This year, the foundations have been laid, and thanks to NEAR’s simple, secure and scalable blockchain, it has an incredibly long runway to build bigger than anywhere in Web3. 

NEAR is the simplest, most usable and most scalable tech around. The next 12 months will be all about helping to bring more projects and users to NEAR. 

Create without limits! 

To celebrate the second anniversary of NEARCON, the NEAR Foundation looks back at all the things the community has achieved across the year. 

A Year on NEAR

Sender, a leading NEAR-based eco-wallet, today announced the completion of a US$4.5 million private round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Crypto.com Capital, Jump Capital, Amber Group, WOO Network, SevenX Ventures, Smrti Labs, D1 Ventures, Puzzle Ventures, Shima Capital, Eniac Ventures, and GFS Ventures. In addition, several notable projects in the NEAR ecosystem such as Octopus Network, Ref Finance, and Paras also participated in the funding round.

The round follows Sender’s April 2022 seed round of financing led by Binance Labs and Metaweb Ventures. With this new round of financing, Sender plans to further expand its R&D team, raise the security threshold for Sender Wallet, and expand its wallet ecosystem.

Since the beginning of 2022, Sender has achieved rapid growth and completed integration with more than 30 mainstream projects in the NEAR ecosystem. The cumulative downloads of the plug-in and mobile versions have exceeded 500,000, making it the leading third-party wallet in the NEAR ecosystem, with built-in functions such as Staking, Swap, NFT showcase, and more. Sender is now capable of connecting to two hardware wallets, Ledger and Keystone, and is integrated with three well-known fiat-to-cryptocurrency service providers — Moonpay, Banxa, and Transak, allowing users to purchase cryptocurrency in more than 140 countries.

In the future, Sender’s plans include:

- Aggregation of liquidity transactions, Sender Swap: Integrating the liquidity of multiple DEXs on NEAR to provide users with a smoother trading experience and lower slippage;
- One-stop node staking, Sender Pool: Sender builds its own pledge nodes, giving wallet users higher returns and more convenient pledge services;
- Built-in transaction aggregator, Sender Market: One-stop efficient aggregation of NFT markets on the NEAR chain;
- Commercial MPC multi-signature wallet, Sender Pro: Multi-signature hosted wallet mainly focused on corporate and investment institution users.

“As a strong believer in the NEAR ecosystem, we at Sender Wallet are blessed to be growing with such a vibrant community. We humbly thank the NEAR community and developers for everyone’s trust and support from day one. Current market dynamics have proven to be a powerful catalyst for development, and Sender has many exciting features in our pipeline and will bring more Web2 users into the Web3 world. I expect Sender to exceed 10 million users by the time the new market hotspot arrives next year,” said Kenny, Founder and CEO of Sender Wallet.

“As the leading crypto wallet in the NEAR ecosystem with a complete suite of browser plugins and iOS and Android apps, Sender is seeing tremendous user growth and we are excited to help them reach the next level,” said Paul Veradittakit, General Partner, Pantera Capital.

Sender, a leading NEAR-based eco-wallet, today announced the completion of a US$4.5 million private round.

Sender Wallet Raises US$4.5 Million in Private Round Led by Pantera

Tonic DEX is proud to announce partnership with HERE Wallet, an automatic and commission-free mobile app.

HERE Wallet is the first  mobile wallet for NEAR Protocol. It combines high yield, ease of use, and security.

We believe that this integration is yet another step forward towards our aim of providing world-class service to NEAR community. Enabling seamless storage and transfer of crypto assets is one of the most important aspects of Tonic DEX. 


Tonic DEX is proud to announce partnership with HERE Wallet, an automatic and commission-free mobile app.

Tonic DEX partners with HERE wallet

Few and Far, the next-generation NFT marketplace built on NEAR Protocol, has been awarded a grant by the NEAR Foundation and a partnership to significantly increase the advancement of NFTs across the ecosystem. The announcement comes on the heels of the highly anticipated NEARCON event in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 11–14th.

In the upcoming months, Few and Far will support the growth and development of NFT projects within NEAR, and work closely with the team to provide world-class launchpad capabilities to support the onboarding of top brands and major IPs from Web2 into Web3.

The team will also collaborate with the NFT Vision Group, a dedicated team focused on NFT growth within NEAR, to spearhead efforts in NFT smart contract standardization, liquidity and blockchain indexing solutions. The partnership focuses on a joint go-to-market strategy to bring new communities and businesses into the NEAR ecosystem by launching on Few and Far.

“We are thrilled to support Few and Far’s mission to provide seamless NFT minting solutions and an easy-to-use marketplace for the NEAR ecosystem and beyond,” says Robbie Lim, GM, Partners & International at NEAR. “The NEAR Foundation embraces the digital asset revolution and the importance of laying the foundations for web3 gaming, the metaverse economy, and much more.”

Minting digital assets and crypto collectibles on NEAR brings significant added value to end-users who are looking to create, buy, sell and auction NFTs. NEAR Protocol fees are usually 38 hundred percent lower than Ethereum’s. For example, the cost of transferring an ERC-20 token is below $0.01, while for Ethereum (at 50 Gwei and an ETH price of $3,000), it’s around $5.40. NEAR is also able to handle up to 100,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s blockchain which currently processes only 13.

“Building a next-generation NFT marketplace will enable more users and creators to participate in Web3 by taking advantage of a premiere user experience, low fees and fast transactions. NEAR’s easy-to-use web wallets, which require no downloads or plug-ins, and the Aurora Bridge, will enable users from Ethereum to easily convert their assets into NEAR.” said Chris Gale, Co-Founder of Few and Far. “Soon, access to NEAR NFTs will be just clicks away on our marketplace, and the integration of fiat on and off ramps within our app will enable people to purchase NFTs with just a credit card.”

NEAR and Few and Far agree that NFTs will be the future of digital asset ownership and a critical path to onboarding the next 1 billion users into Web3. In the coming months, Few and Far will expand its NFT marketplace to facilitate the growth of the NEAR blockchain through the partnership.

Few and Far, the next-generation NFT marketplace built on NEAR Protocol, has been awarded a grant by the NEAR Foundation.

NEAR Foundation announces partnership with Few and Far to grow the NEAR NFT ecosystem

## Introduction
Currently scheduled for mid-September, the Ethereum network is planning its most significant update in years—a change of consensus from "Proof-of-Work" to "Proof-of-Stake". This event is commonly referred to as, "The Merge."

The purpose of this article is to describe the important implications for users of Aurora.

## Implications of the Merge

At the end of this post, we’ll include links to detailed articles about the Merge, but in this section we’ll provide a brief overview.

At the moment of The Merge, the Ethereum network may split—known as a "fork"—into two or more chains, of which at least:

1. A continuation of the existing Ethereum network, validated by miners using the Proof-of-Work approach, referred to as 'PoW-chain'
2. A new chain validated through the Proof-of-Stake approach, which we will refer to as "PoS-chain".

At that moment, an interesting situation will occur in that the PoW-chain and PoS-chain networks will be identical.

- If you have 10 ETH and 5 AURORA on the PoW-chain, you will have 10 ETH and 5 AURORA on PoS-chain.
- If you have BTC & USDC in a liquidity pool on the PoW-chain, you may also have BTC & USDC in a liquidity pool on the PoS-chain.

Just like the big bang, what happens after that moment can only be speculated, but the networks will begin to diverge.

Here's what we know:

1. One chain should eventually be the "winner", meaning we might see it be the chain that the most of the Ethereum community will support and refer to as "Ethereum".
2. It's generally expected that the new PoS-chain that the Ethereum Foundation is introducing will continue to receive most of the support going forward.
3. It seems likely that the PoW-chain will continue, with miners processing blocks as normal.
4. We assume assets and protocols on the PoS-chain will continue to behave in terms of value and function as they previously did on PoW-chain.
5. Aurora believes in the effort behind the PoS-chain initative and should the majority of the community support it as well, we will stand behind it, too.

## Implications for Aurora Users
For Aurora users, the main implication relates to contact point between Aurora and Ethereum—i.e. the Rainbow Bridge.

While you can learn more about Rainbow Bridge works here, in short, when you bridge tokens from Ethereum to Aurora, your assets are locked in a smart contract on Ethereum and you receive an IOU equivalent token on Aurora. When you bridge them back, the assets on Ethereum are released from the lock.

At the moment of the Merge, there will be identical Rainbow Bridge smart contracts on the PoW-chain and the PoS-chain, holding an equivalent amount of equivalent assets in each.

- When you bridge assets from Aurora to Ethereum, you will receive the expected amount of assets on the PoS-chain. Everything will appear as normal.
- Ensure you have NO pending transactions on the PoW-chain prior to The Merge to avoid loss of funds. All transactions must be finalised prior to the The Merge.

An important question, however, is what happens to the assets locked in the PoW-chain Rainbow Bridge, after the Merge?

All assets will remain safe and secure and several options will be available. We have to assess the situation after The Merge, and then execute on a plan of action regarding those assets.

The AURORA token on the chain that receives little to no support from the community will will not continue to be a part of the official AURORA supply, and eventually will not continue to be supported by the Aurora Network.

## Pausing of the Rainbow Bridge

At the moment of the Merge, a number of technical risks exists; for example, "transaction replay attacks", among others.

To mitigate these risk, the Rainbow Bridge's interaction with Ethereum will be paused 1 to 3 days before The Merge, which is expected to take place anytime from September 10th to September 20th. We will resume its operation after the Merge, as soon as we feel certain about the safety of the winning network.

We will keep you informed of status updates through banners on the Rainbow Bridge website, and Twitter.

Note that we will not pause transfers between NEAR and Aurora during this time.

## Conclusions

Around mid-September, it is planned that the Ethereum network will fork, and the "winning" chain will be Proof-of-Stake, what we've referred to here as the PoS-chain.

As an Aurora user, the main thing you need to be concerned with is the operation of the Rainbow Bridge around that event. To mitigate risks, we will pause the bridge shortly before, and reenable it shortly after the Merge, targeting the winning Ethereum chain.

Unknown issues include what will happen with assets and protocols on the losing chain. With regards to the assets locked in the Rainbow Bridge on the losing chain, a plan of action will be formed post-Merge, and our primary goal will always be to make sure that the Ethereum network transition period is as seamless and secure as possible for users of Aurora's products and their funds.

Updates about the Merge will be posted to our Twitter account as we get closer to the event. In the meantime, be sure to raise any questions or concerns you have in the #merge channel in our Discord.

Further reading
- https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
- https://blog.ethereum.org/2022/08/24/mainnet-merge-announcement

We strongly recommend all pending transactions be finalised before the bridge is paused in order to prevent any loss of funds.

The Ethereum Network merge and its important implications for Aurora users.

The Ethereum Merge and What To Expect on Aurora

It seems that the words “Spin” and “First on NEAR” have already become inseparable neighbors. We were the first to offer an on-chain order book solution, the first to launch spot markets on the mainnet and the first to release on-chain Perpetual Contracts. Our journey of pioneering doesn’t end here and today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re ready to become the first DEX on NEAR Protocol to start supporting the private sharding solution by Calimero as a faster side-chain solution complementing the NEAR native blockchain.

A Calimero Private Shard is a customizable sidechain built on top of NEAR Protocol that shares all the benefits of NEAR including high performance, incredible security and infinite scalability and sustainability. But at the same time Calimero Shards are independent networks that do not share validators, execution and state storage and can support up to 200k transactions per second. This way, the Calimero solution opens the path for more centralized and several times faster transaction processing — a perfect addition to Spin’s dApp on NEAR native for those who search for still higher speed.

This way, in the future Spin is likely to become a place to meet the demands of both those who have speed as their top priority and those who prioritize decentralization and privacy. NEAR Protocol and Calimero Shards communicate with each other over a bridge. This bridge works similar as the Rainbow Bridge works between NEAR and Ethereum — there is a light client on one each side of the bridge used to sync relevant blocks from one chain to the other, which provides an ability to prove that something happened on a specific chain. There are relayers that relay blocks between chains. This bridge is also able to transfer assets via contracts and call other contracts between both chains. So the Spin users will be able to switch between NEAR Protocol and Calimero Shards easily and seamlessly according to their needs.

Stay tuned for more news about this integration and new partnerships and releases from the Spin and Calimero teams. LFG!

Today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re ready to become the first DEX on NEAR Protocol to start supporting the private sharding solution by Calimero.

Spin is to Become the First NEAR DEX to Integrate the Private Sharding Solution by Calimero

Five main concepts are frequently discussed with respect to decentralized blockchain networks and crypto: decentralization, security, scalability, interoperability, and composability.

Enabling Cross-chain Composability: How NEAR Protocol’s Nightshade Will Disrupt DeFi

## Trisolaris & Aurigami are partnering with Axelar & Squid to create a cross-chain DEX and cross-chain money market on Aurora, Near Protocol’s EVM Chain.

The future is cross-chain. To onboard the next millions of users into DeFi, NFT ownership, DAO governance, and other applications that interact directly on the decentralized web, their experiences must be universal and seamless. No more maintaining multiple private-key identities; no more risky bridges with bad UX.

In this vision of Web3’s future, a user holding AURORA, NEAR, or USN can use those currencies to buy ETH, BTC, SOL, or any asset issued on any of those chains. Not only that, the user can deposit these assets to receive loans on any chain and vice versa.

For users of the Aurora blockchain, this will soon be possible, through a new partnership announced by four innovators in cross-chain liquidity. In a nutshell, users on Aurora and NEAR will be able to:

- Buy any asset on any chain via [Trisolaris](/trisolaris)’ cross-chain DEX.
- Deposit assets on any chain to receive a loan on any other chain via [Aurigami](/aurigami)’s cross-chain money market.

This cross-chain future will drastically improve utility and user experience for the Aurora & NEAR community, which in turn will drive further growth for this ecosystem.

Primitive cross-chain connections are not difficult, as the proliferation of pairwise bridges demonstrates. Secure cross-chain communication over universal architecture is a step beyond the current state of cross-chain bridges.

## Cross-chain DEX Powered by Squid

This collaboration introduces cross-chain liquidity on Aurora, going a step beyond secure cross-chain communication. Trisolaris, Axelar & Squid are supporting a network of liquidity for cross-chain swaps, extending across Web3, without involving a centralized exchange.

Enter Squid. Squid is a cross-chain swap and liquidity routing module built on [Axelar](/axelar-network). [Squid](/squid) utilizes Axelar’s generalized message passing to enable native swaps between any token on any chain. Squid exposes an API and SDK to interact with its smart contracts, so that DEXs can go cross-chain with minimal changes to their code. Send and swap any token to any chain, without needing to deal with bridges and wrapped assets. Trisolaris will be able to service any user on any chain.

## Here’s how it works:

- Trisolaris, the largest DEX on Aurora, will provide a gateway for liquidity from other chains into Aurora and the wider Near ecosystem.
- Axelar will provide secure cross-chain communication that allows Squid, and Trisolaris to transact cross-chain in Turing-complete function calls that go beyond bridges.
- Squid will provide trustless liquidity and message routing via Axelar, allowing Trisolaris to plug and play into liquidity on any DeFi app on any chain.

## Cross-chain Money Market

Money markets are the backbones of any DeFi ecosystem. DeFi money markets have essentially enabled permissionless lending and borrowing without any centralized intermediary. These platforms offer users instantaneous access to cryptocurrency liquidity and even earn yield with their otherwise idle assets. Users will also be able to borrow digital assets using the liquidity they have supplied as collateral, unlocking even more possibilities with liquidity strategies. Aurigami is one of the largest lending DeFi protocols in the Aurora ecosystem, amassing over 30m of liquidity at time of writing. Aurigami eyes an expansion to other EVM chains and even the Cosmos ecosystem, ultimately establishing a chain-agnostic, one-shop platform for users to access cross-chain liquidity seamlessly, effortlessly. The partnership with Axelar will be a key step towards achieving this vision.

Here’s how it works:

- Aurigami will explore a gateway for users to deposit a variety of assets on any of the 18 chains currently supported by Axelar (with many more to come).
- These assets could be seamlessly routed to Aurora in the background leveraging Axelar’s cross-chain messaging technology
- Based on a LTV ratio users will be able to obtain a loan on any chain supported by Axelar.

> “The omnichain future is inevitable considering how the growth of blockchain infrastructure needs to stay ahead of its user base. Capital in DeFi is already fragmented across countless ecosystems and protocols, and will only get worse as more L1s, L2s and sidechains appear. Aurigami aims to consolidate and concentrate cross-chain liquidity to enable a higher capital efficiency and more seamless experience for the end user in the future”.
> Lucas Huang, co-founder of Aurigami


Trisolaris & Aurigami are partnering with Axelar & Squid to create a cross-chain DEX and cross-chain money market on Aurora.

Secure Cross-Chain Lending & Liquidity Are Coming to Aurora

> TLDR: After a successful beta release, Few and Far has enhanced its marketplace — and unfolded its master plan for the remainder of the year.

NEAR frens,

Earlier this month, we released a beta version of our platform — the first step in creating a next-gen marketplace on NEAR. The past few months have been an incredible journey building our marketplace after getting funded by the NEAR Foundation and enabling creators to keep control of how their digital assets are monetized and used. We’re excited to have cemented ourselves as one of the go-to NFT marketplaces on NEAR, one of their top dApps and are now laser-focused on helping onboard the next 1 billion users to Web3 through NFTs.

The goal of our beta release was to collect a firehose of feedback from our community and iterate on the product quickly with the inevitable optimization that occurs post-deployment. Now, we’ll a few highlights of what we’ve enhanced so far, and dive into how we’re executing our long-term vision (i.e. Master Plan).

## Product Update — August 23rd, 2022

### NEAR Indexer — Enhancing real-time performance

A common piece of feedback from users is blockchain data on our marketplace is taking too long to load. While NFT indexing out-of-the-box has been a difficult challenge for many marketplaces across the NEAR ecosystem, the team is currently moving to the NEAR Data Lake technology to facilitate faster and more accurate NFT indexing. This means faster updates for connected wallets, quicker updates on collections as well as speedy transactions.

We’re also excited to now be part of a working group in conjunction with the NEAR foundation to improve NFT indexing and search capabilities for the community at large — helping to codify upcoming improvements to NFT and core blockchain standards on NEAR.

### Partnering with innovative NFT creators

Over the last few weeks, Few and Far has partnered with new and exciting NFT projects who’ve recently minted on NEAR, including the widely anticipated and sold-out free-mint from RealBirds — the first NEAR Native Omni-chain NFT collection which has integrated cross-chain capabilities through Layer Zero Network — and Murder Mystery Collective, a community-based play-to-earn murder mystery game coming soon to NEAR. We’re excited to continue supporting innovative NFT creators launching on NEAR.

### Onboarding major brands to Web3
In addition to partnering with crypto-native NFT projects looking to launch on NEAR, our team has been working closely with traditional Web2 companies with major IPs to launch on NEAR — providing them with new revenue streams and automatic royalty payments. We’re excited to extend white-glove support and offer out-of-the-box minting with a robust NFT architecture to help these major brands seamlessly launch in Web3. Stay tuned for specific brand partnerships and incredible launches to come on our Twitter!

### Fast and simple onboarding for new users (i.e. fiat on/off ramps)
As you may already know, improving user experience in crypto and onboarding the next 1 billion users to Web3 is a huge priority for both NEAR Protocol and Few and Far. Our team has been busy developing UI and third-party payment integrations to offer the most seamless way to enter Web3, including fast and simple ways to buy and sell crypto, the ability to enter our platform with just a credit card, and fiat on/off ramps with out-of-the-box AML/KYC compliance.

In the upcoming quarter, we’ll be rolling out a release with our new onboarding flow — soon, if you think buying NFTs was any easier on Few and Far, you’ll think it’s magic.

### Developing our Launchpad
After the release of our initial beta marketplace, our product managers, engineers, and designers have been collaborating on the build-out of our Launchpad, which will be the go-to destination for launching NFT collections on NEAR. The launchpad plans to deploy toward the end of September, with full-fledged drop and mint capabilities right within the app.

Next week, an initial release of our Launchpad will be available to discover upcoming launches from across the NEAR NFT ecosystem and purchase them on our secondary marketplace. We’ve also been working closely with dozens of projects to prepare their launches for when the full capabilities are ready in the upcoming month.

### Roadmap (i.e. Master Plan)

There’s been a lot of new features we’ve been working on, so we wanted to share a roadmap for our community to keep up with us on where we are at and to get a peek behind the curtain as to what is coming — and we are making significant progress!

Thank you all so much for being a part of the journey thus far. We couldn’t be more excited about what’s to come.

### Q3-Q4 2022

- NEAR Data Lake integration
- Launchpad release
- Social bots and market API
- Creator minting tools
- Redesigned onboarding process
- Multi-wallet partner integration
- Fiat on/off ramps
- NFT sub accounts (i.e. username minting)
- FAR TGE
- Farms launch (Few and Far DeFi)

### Q1-Q4 2023
- Aurora layer-2 compatibility
- Cross-chain bridging
- Community NEAR Validator NODE
- Unreal and Unity SDKs
- Few and Far Gaming
- Mobile app for iOS and Android

Keep an eye out for more exciting Few and Far updates to come later this year — and be sure to explore your favorite NEAR NFTs on our marketplace.

After a successful beta release, Few and Far has enhanced its marketplace — and unfolded its master plan for the remainder of the year.

Few and Far Product Update and Roadmap

The demand for SWEAT comes from fundamental value.

Most engage to earn products lack this value. In these games, users buy NFTs to earn more of the token. Why do they want more of the token? To upgrade their NFT. And so on.

SWEAT is designed differently. There are two main drivers of demand for SWEAT.

- Utility: rewards, use as a platform token, and dynamic NFT gameplay (the principle of the SWEAT game is enjoyment — earning potential is secondary)
- Buy and burn

Buy and burn requires using revenue generated by the Sweat Foundation to buy SWEAT on the secondary market and burn it, or else to distribute it as staking yield (this is why our staking initiative is net deflationary). At the end of this article, we detail the principles of how we generate revenue used to buy and burn.

These two drivers represent short to medium term demand for SWEAT. It is helpful for our community to contextualize these mechanisms according to our long term goals.

The longer term demand for SWEAT is more nuanced. It can be read about in our article on the economic value of movement. Briefly, SWEAT is a tokenization of movement, and can therefore become an expression of the fundamental, inherent economic value of movement. That is our vision.

This is how we get there.

## SWEAT utility: rewards

The Sweat Wallet app is the hub of token utility. At the Token Generation Event (September 13th), SWEAT will be live in your Sweat Wallet app.

Users will be able to stake SWEAT in the new app to access rewards. Rewards will be tiered: if you stake higher amounts of SWEAT, you will receive better rewards. Rewards are designed to bring value to your movement. The more you move, the more/better rewards you can receive.

We are dedicated to bringing rewards that people really want. Please reach out in our channels with ideas for rewards — we would love to hear what our community values.

Examples of rewards:

- Vouchers and discounts for blue-chip brands including Adidas, Amazon and Nike
- Tickets to events: sporting events, and concerts
- Stablecoins (USDt and USDC)

## SWEAT utility: NFTs & gameplay

We are building a casual, dynamic NFT game in the Sweat Wallet app. This will arrive shortly after TGE.

First of all, we want to make this game fun! Enjoying the game, and benefiting your health, are the main goals. In the game, users engage in peer-to-peer competitions that are influenced by their daily steps, NFT level, and gameplay skill.

As for demand, users stake SWEAT when playing the game. The winner of the head-to-head claims the SWEAT, with the Sweat Foundation taking and burning a fee. As such, the game is net-deflationary.

## SWEAT utility: platform token
Staking SWEAT will unlock features in the wallet. For example, higher stakers of SWEAT could access premium features, priority access to NFT drops, and increased daily minting limits.

This utility will become increasingly valuable as features of the Sweat Wallet app increase. For example, shortly after TGE we will integrate a fiat on-ramp feature, allowing users to purchase SWEAT (and other crypto) with a bank card. Higher stakers could have a lower transaction fee.

The features of the app can be found in our roadmap.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*-JVabaWo5cxUXynlwuy8Ww.png)

## Buy and burn
The Sweat Foundation will allocate a portion of revenue to buy and burn SWEAT on the secondary market, or to buy SWEAT and distribute it as staking yield.

We will release the details of the buy and burn soon.

## Revenue
Many engage to earn products rely on a circuitous or reflexive value proposition. Revenue is driven by demand for NFTs; NFTs are desirable because they enhance the user’s ability to earn the token; the token is valuable to upgrade and maintain NFTs.

Our revenue models are not reliant on NFTs or pay to play. User engagement (B2B) and transaction fees (B2C) are our two main revenue drivers. Both revenue streams are complementary to SWEAT, rather than reflexive. The reason for this is demonstrated by the Sweat Economy value flywheel. An increase in value for SWEAT increases engagement, increases value to brands, which increases our ability to provide rewards.

The demand for SWEAT comes from fundamental value.

Demand for SWEAT

NEAR as an ecosystem identifies ownership––the ability for all people to control their own data, assets, and power of governance––as its most important shared goal. 

In light of recent regulatory developments concerning the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash and the ensuing banning of several services, it’s important to reiterate the Foundation’s views on privacy, ownership, and regulation. 

These are fundamental values for NEAR and for the [Web3 movement more broadly](https://near.org/blog/why-web3-is-needed-more-than-ever/). The ecosystem’s response to this watershed moment will have a lasting effect on the evolution of blockchain technologies and their regulation around the world.

## Ownership and Privacy 

The NEAR Foundation believes privacy is essential to autonomy and the protection of human dignity. It forms the bedrock on which many other human rights are built.

Privacy enables citizens to protect themselves from unwarranted interference and affords anyone the freedom to negotiate when and with whom they share information. 

Everyone has a right to privacy because it is a critical aspect of ownership and autonomy. Individuals simply seeking to preserve their own privacy, or to build tools to support others in doing so, should not be criminalized. But each individual is also participating in a system that needs to be able to regulate itself. The NEAR Foundation believes in fair, reasonable, and proportionate regulation of blockchain technologies.

Web3 will never deliver on its potential if systems that allow participants to launder money, fund terrorism, or commit crimes are allowed to propagate. Blockchains are not starting entirely new systems from zero, in a vacuum. They are interwoven with existing systems of rule and law and must operate within and alongside them.

## Work to be done

The Foundation acknowledges there is work to be done to educate regulators about the nuances of these tools. The goal is to build trust not erode it. 

Some of this will be about compromise. Until privacy infrastructure is more mature, KYC at the edges of a system is required, but inside the system, participants should have the freedom to move around privately within it. 

Improving and investing in zero-knowledge protocols is also critical: these allow the parties in a transaction to verify identities and validate sufficient data to establish trust while keeping specifics private. It’s something the NEAR Foundation and Pagoda are working actively on. 

Combining the two will be especially powerful so that KYC doesn’t need complete access to one’s information at the entire expense of privacy. In this way, Web3 can create an improved paradigm that is better both at preserving privacy and preventing crime. And communities should be able to have enough information to govern their own exclusion lists and vote to ban people who don’t follow the rules of the system. 

## Collaboration and Community

While the Treasury’s decision to block and ban Tornado Cash is an overstep that may well create more problems than it solves, the Web3 community must recognize that more ill-informed decisions will be made if we don’t continue to make collaborative efforts to educate regulators.

A crypto-based Web will be much stronger only if it builds on the foundations of what came before rather than trying to rebuild an entirely new paradigm. 

Total crypto-anarchy is not the answer. Pragmatic ownership is. We must continue to correct the balance between preventing crime and preserving individual privacy. 

The Foundation believes in building communities that support the rights of individuals and enforce their own rules for working effectively together. 

## Next Steps 

To continue the NEAR Foundation’s commitment to preserving privacy while respecting the rule of law, it will take the necessary steps to join Coin Center, the leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies. 

Second of all, the NEAR Foundation will actively seek to establish an association to help ensure that validators have better protections when it comes to censorship resistance, and will look to appoint board members to the NEAR Foundation Council that align with this mission. 

Last, but not least, the NEAR Foundation is creating a grant fund for projects specializing in building Zero Knowledge (ZK) solutions to help preserve privacy while allowing projects and communities to comply with law enforcement. 

If you’re a project working on ZK technologies, please make an application to the [NEAR Foundations grant team here](https://airtable.com/shrY3sDi7JnWtLNI6) and mention ‘ZK Grant’ in the referral section. Feel free to reach out to grants@near.foundation with any questions using the subject line ‘ZK Grant’.

In light of recent regulatory developments concerning the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash and the ensuing banning of several services, it’s important to reiterate the Foundation’s views on privacy, ownership, and regulation. 

NEAR Foundation’s Response to Tornado Cash, Ownership and Regulation 

If you are on Aurora and have been looking for an on-chain DEX for quick and minimum-cost perpetual trading, look no further. NEX is the first decentralized spot and perpetual exchange on Aurora, and it has finally launched on the Mainnet. After polishing the platform during two weeks of closed beta testing, NEX is now ready to provide its finest features.

## Optimal Environment for Swap and Perpetual Trading

Traders on NEX can enjoy the benefits that the Aurora network provides as NEAR’s EVM: Ethereum compatibility, ultra-low transaction fees, greater capital efficiency, fast transactions, and precise liquidations. NEX further supports minimal slippage and zero price impact trades, which is possible thanks to the platform’s pricing mechanism and unique liquidity pool called the NIT(NEX Index Token) pool.

- Reliable pricing: NEX provides accurate and reliable pricing through oracle price feeds sourced by FLUX Oracle as well as a self oracle that aggregates prices from leading exchanges (Binance, FTX, Kucoin).
- Leverage trading: Traders can also access larger capital and leverage trade up to 30x by providing collateral and borrowing funds from the NIT pool. The pool currently supports long/short trading in ETH, NEAR, and USDC.

## NIT Pool: Yield Opportunities for Liquidity Providers

Upon providing liquidity to the NIT pool, liquidity providers(LPs) receive the NIT token, which represents an index of all the tokens in the NIT pool. The price of the NIT token is determined by the price of the individual assets in the pool, plus profits and losses of open positions. As NEX uses a dynamic oracle pricing mechanism, LPs are protected against impermanent loss, which is a known limitation of the standard AMM model.

As NIT holders are providing the liquidity that traders use to trade, they are automatically the counterparty to traders, profiting when traders lose and vice versa. In return, NIT holders receive 70% of protocol fees in USDC. Hence, not only do NIT holders gain price exposure to a diversified index of crypto assets, they also earn stable passive income.

The benefits of holding NIT can be summarized as the following:

- Gain exposure to a basket of major cryptocurrencies (> 50% stablecoins)
- Earn a handsome APR as weekly income
- No impermanent loss or token inflation

## Innovative Roadmap

The largest innovation and value of NEX can be seen in its roadmap. The team has a clear direction for the project, revolved around building the optimal trading environment focused on user experience. More specifically, the final version of the product will be an exchange that combines the advantages of both centralized and decentralized exchanges, joining the speed, fees, and composability of DEXs to the deep liquidity and usability of CEXs.

Features coming in the near future include:

- Implementation of off-chain transactions
- NEX Bridge and multichain
- FX trading
- NEX Mainnet
- Hybrid Perpetual model

To start trading or investing on NEX, [visit the app](https://nex.market/) and connect your MetaMask, Coinbase, or WalletConnect wallet!




NEX is the first decentralized spot and perpetual exchange on Aurora, and it has finally launched on the Mainnet.

AwesomeNEAR

Articles

Recent articles on NEAR and ecosystem projects.