We have an experimental format again, and this time we decided to try to make an online conference with presentations from speakers from the NEAR ecosystem and questions from the community.
Speakers:
Ilya Polosukhin (Co-founder NEAR)
Alex Shevchenko (CEO Aurora)
Vadim Ilyin (Zavodil) (DevRel NEAR, Dev Proximity)
Vlad Frolov (Frol) (Tech Lead Manager at NEAR inc).
Conference recording
For those who do not have time to watch the entire conference, we have prepared a text summary.
Text version
Ilya Polosukhin, CEO NEAR
What is NEAR? What is your main goal?
The global mission of NEAR is to create a world in which people control their finances, their data, a world in which they can participate in voting, in decision-making. We call it OpenWeb, or Web 3.0.
We want to move away from centralized systems that manage users, to a system where people who participate in it and manage it themselves. To do this, you need to build a platform that will be available to billions of people. The main principles of such a platform are simplicity, safety and scalability.
First, it should be understandable to everyone, because most likely not every person will understand what blocks, hashes, addresses, private keys are. They should use this platform without thinking about it. And if we think about user-friendliness, why should we forget about developers, they should not learn new programming languages. We want them to feel like they’re developing a normal Web application, but with new features.
Second, it must be secure. The blockchain itself provides protection through cryptography, but there are still many different components on top, they need to be audited.
And the third is scalability. If we think about the billions of users that will come into this ecosystem, it must be able to scale to that many users. Sharding technology comes to the rescue. In addition, the blockchain must be fast. This is exactly what NEAR builds.
Sharding is an application scaling strategy. As part of sharding, information from a common database is divided into blocks and distributed among different servers, which are called shards
B 2018 year, when we were just starting, we realized that we need to attract developers who have not yet developed applications for Web 3.0, so we chose programming languages such as Rust and TypeScript.
The ecosystem is growing, so it must provide funding. We have created funds that sponsor DeFi, provide grants to developers and fund various startups in the ecosystem.
Plans for the development of the ecosystem.
We plan to create features that will attract new users. Artists, musicians, developers, they will be able to bring something new to the ecosystem, the communities of which will be united by the ecosystem itself.
There are also plans to create dynamic sharding to maintain a uniform amount of load between shards. In addition to it, we recently announced Machina – this is the ability to store big data on the blockchain.
Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Aurora
What is Aurora? Main technical points.
Aurora is an EVM a solution on top of NEAR that allows you to run EVM contracts on it. Also, at the moment, all transactions on Aurora are subsidized, free. In this regard, many people have a question, how can you protect yourself from DDOS attacks, how does it even work?
The user makes a transaction and signs it in any wallet, after which it sends it to our RPC, and he in turn, after all transactions, pays a commission to NEAR Protocol. But where can he get the funds for the commission? The fact is that Aurora launched its second generation validator, which distributes Aurora tokens. Therefore, thanks to users who stake NEAR, as part of the PoS consensus, the validator earns about % per annum, from which commissions are paid.
The DDOSa problem is solved in turn by the following actions: special systems detect and ban a user who makes numerous requests and transactions that go through RPC.
After we explain all these operations to users, they wonder: is the blockchain not decentralized? The blockchain is decentralized, but our RPC is not.
Vadim Ilyin (DevRel NEAR, Dev Proximity)
What can I do in the NEAR ecosystem and what does it consist of?
A lot of projects have already been built on NEAR, DeFi, P2E games, NFT marketplaces and much more. We also provide free code samples for anyone who wants to start developing their projects on NEAR. In addition, NEAR provides many different free educational materials. Also, we will be hosting a hackathon soon with a $1M prize and possible future support from us.
And for those who are not programmers, you have the opportunity to create NFTs on various marketplaces on our blockchain.
Vlad Frolov (Tech Lead Manager at NEAR Inc),
How to continue building on NEAR?
I want to reiterate, NEAR is a platform that allows you to build independent applications with reliable integration into other applications. Here is one use case for the app ecosystem:
NEAR Enchancement Proposals.
What does the NEAR ecosystem look like now?
NEAR Protocol – Blockchain;
dApps – decentralized applications that are on the blockchain and can; interact with each other, building complex systems;
Indexers – sets of tools;
Communities – communities that participate in the development of the entire protocol.
If you want to start interacting with our ecosystem, then it’s best to start at:
Zero to Hero NFT Series;
NEAR SDK for Rust;
Indexer for Explorer database;
NEAR Protocol & Standards.
We also have resources for everyone who has just joined:
NEAR Dev:
Open Web development;
StackOverflow.
Will there be a transaction confirmation function for 14 tokens at the same time?
On NEAR you can do anything, on Aurora you need to A smart contract that is not included in the ERC token standard-10.
Are you planning to release a NEAR wallet extension?
This extension has already been created, it is out of beta version February.
Can I filter transactions in my wallet?
We are working on it right now, maybe this quarter the feature will be available.
What will Machina provide? What type of data can be stored there?
This will be a separate network, with separate validators per kÐ Which can store any type of data, including the NEAR blockchain itself. At the same time, it will be connected by a special bridge that will allow you to receive this data for the execution of smart contracts.
How is the balancing between shards arranged?
Not yet, this is just an idea, we are working on it.
Will there be a stable from NEAR?
NEAR stables already exist, but for other options stay tuned!
