Despite the bear market in 2022, Near Protocol has made significant progress and achieved significant milestones. A year in review from Nearity, including a look at the crypto economy landscape, highlights, on-chain data, and innovation for creating without limits.

Cryptocurrency Landscape

The year 2022 marked the beginning of a new “crypto winter,” with high-profile companies collapsing across the board and digital currency prices plummeting spectacularly. The events of the year caught many investors off guard, making predicting bitcoin’s price even more difficult.

However, many market observers have been caught off guard in what has been a turbulent year for cryptocurrency, with high-profile company and project failures sending shockwaves throughout the industry.

According to coinmarketcap, the total crypto market capitalization has decreased by nearly 65% from $2,231 billion on January 1st to $799 billion on December 29th.

Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap
Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap

Now, Bitcoin has a market cap proximity $320 billion, down nearly 64% from early 2022. And Near protocol dropped 87% from 8.79 billion to 1.15 billion.

 

Bitcoin & Near marketcap in 2022
Bitcoin & Near market cap in 2022

Impact of Key Events on the Cryptocurrency Price

The collapse of terraUSD (UST)

The collapse of terraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin that was supposed to be pegged one-to-one with the US dollar in May. Its failure brought LUNA down with it, as well as companies with exposure to both cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD crash shows risks of algorithmic stablecoins.

On April 25, Decentral Bank just released stablecoin USN v1 – the first NEAR-native stablecoin. $USN was intended in v1.0 to accomplish both growth and stability by combining on-chain arbitrage with a self-balancing Reserve Fund, which would keep $USDT and $NEAR overcollateralized. However, the collapse of the UST coin cast doubt on the stablecoin’s algorithm. This affects the value of USN.

On June 30th, Decentral Bank introduced USN v2.0 which has a more flexible paradigm, beginning with a 1:1 backing of mostly stable assets with a sustainable, native income from $NEAR staking rewards and gradually reintroducing non-stablecoin assets as collateral.

The collapse of Three Arrows Capital

As of March, Three Arrows Capital (3AC) still manages about $10 billion in assets and is one of the most prominent crypto funds in the world. In July, the business had to file for bankruptcy after the value of cryptocurrencies plummeted and a risky trading strategy made it impossible for 3AC to repay creditors. The collapse of Three Arrows Capital is linked to the May crash of terraUSD (UST), one of the most popular stablecoin projects in the US.

The collapse of FTX

Then there was the November collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, which was run by Sam Bankman-Fried, a prominent executive. The repercussions of FTX continue to reverberate throughout the cryptocurrency industry.

In addition to crypto-specific failures, investors have had to deal with rising interest rates, which have put pressure on risk assets such as stocks and cryptocurrency.

Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of Near Protocol, shared, “The failure of FTX is due to human error rather than a lack of regulation or a corrupt codebase. Instead of condemning cryptocurrencies, FTX shows how truly decentralized, transparent, and open Web3 technologies can better protect users and support a more equitable and resilient digital financial system”.

Other Events

Bitcoin has fallen roughly 70% from its recent all-time high, and the total value of the cryptocurrency market has been reduced by more than $2 trillion. Bitcoin was trading at just under $17,000.

In 2022, the NEAR price from $14.61 (January 1) is down more than 90% to just $1.34 (December 26).

The figure below shows the impact of other events on the price of Bitcoin and the NEAR protocol over the past year.

Impact of major events on the cryptocurrency market-01
Impact of major events on the cryptocurrency market

However, compared to other layer 1 blockchains, NEAR still has outstanding growth.

OP LAYER 1 BLOCKCHAIN COMPARISON

The growth index of NEAR unique addresses wallet compared to the beginning of 2022 is 939%.

The growth of Unique Addresses
The growth of Unique Addresses

Highlights of Near Protocol

NEARProtocol has achieved many significant accomplishments and milestones in the development of the NEAR ecosystem in the cryptocurrency market in 2022.

Let us take a look back at the notable NEAR events of the past year.

Outstanding Events

Highlight near protocol in 2022

January 13: Near Raises $150M From Major Crypto Investment Firms

NEAR Protocol successfully raised $150 million in a funding round, accelerating its mission to assist billions of people in learning and using blockchain and decentralized technologies.

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

February 10: MetaBUILD 2 Hackathon

MetaBUILD 2 awarded $1 million in prizes, similar to the first hackathon. This time, however, nearly 4,000 people took part in the hackathon, submitting over 356 projects (186 of which were eligible) across NFTs, DeFI, Gaming, DAOs, infrastructure apps and tools, and EVM apps.

Check out the full list of MetaBUILD 2 hackathon winners.

February 19: The Launch of Pagoda, the World’s First Web3 Startup Platform

Near Foundation proudly announced the launch of Pagoda: the world’s first Web3 startup platform at ETHDenver 2022, a top blockchain conference and hackathon. Pagoda’s vision is to provide developers with a fully Web3-native toolset for creating, managing, and scaling blockchain-based startups.

March 21: A Deep Dive into DAO in NEAR

What role does NEAR play in the DAO world? The NEAR protocol is the ideal ecosystem for DAOs due to its super-fast, easy, and low-cost blockchain, which is moving toward infinite scalability via the unique Nightshade sharding approach.

Astro is now a frontend for all smart contacts that run DAOs on the NEAR network. Jordan simplified it so that Astro’s user-friendly UI is almost binary in how it allows users to set up a DAO: users are given two options for how to launch. For instance, whether or not voting power will be democratic or token-weighted.

April 06: NEAR Protocol raised $350 million in a funding round led by hedge fund Tiger Global

In order to “accelerate the decentralization of the NEAR ecosystem,” NEAR Protocol raised $350 million in a funding round led by hedge fund Tiger Global.

This investment round will accelerate the decentralization of the NEAR ecosystem by leveraging ecosystem funds to support growth across industry verticals and increasing the number of regional hubs in key community centers around the world.

April 12: Sweatcoin Collaborates with the NEAR Foundation to Launch a New Movement Economy

Sweatcoin, a London-based tech company on a mission to inspire a healthier planet by incentivizing people to move more, has teamed up with the NEAR Foundation to launch SWEAT, a revolutionary new token.

Highlight SweatEconomy - move to earn #Sweateconomy is a project #minted by moving. TheSpartanLabs talked about the future of sustainable Move-to-Earn Models in: https://twitter.com/TheSpartanLabs/status/1572588437752123392 Some more information in the picture #NEAR #NEARITY $NEAR #BLOCKCHAIN

April 25: Decentral Bank Launches $USN: a NEAR-native Stablecoin

Decentral Bank has launched its first stablecoin, $USN. $USN is a NEAR-native stablecoin that is soft-pegged to the US Dollar and is backed by a Reserve Fund that initially includes $NEAR and $USDT. On-chain arbitrage and a self-balancing Reserve Fund based on the Currency Board Principle are the core stability mechanisms of $USN. Combining the growth potential of $UST and the strong peg defense of $FRAX, $USN is poised to be one of the most effective ways to bootstrap liquidity in the NEAR ecosystem, all while adding a new layer to the utility of $NEAR as a token.

May 09: NEAR Launches Kenya Regional Hub to Support Blockchain Projects and Talent in Africa

The NEAR Foundation established the Kenya Regional Hub in collaboration with Sankore, a Kenya-based NEAR Guild. The Kenya Regional Hub will promote blockchain innovation, education, and talent development throughout the African continent.

May 17: Aurora launched Aurora plus

Aurora+ is a membership program for Aurora users that offers a variety of valuable benefits, including free transactions and the ability to earn multiple rewards by staking your AURORA tokens. Users can get an AURORA airdrop and a chance to win an Aurobot NFT during the first week of the Aurora+ launch.

Everyone gets a free Aurora+ account. Aurora+ will eventually offer paid subscription plans that provide additional benefits.

What is new on #Aurora+? Aurora+ is bridging the innovative world of #Web3 and #Web2 It opens a whole new chapter in the blockchain user experience by setting the blockchain FREE #Nearity #NEAR $AURORA

June 01: NEAR Launches Balkans Regional Hub to Incubate Web3 Talent and Projects

NEAR has announced the establishment of the NEAR Balkans Regional Hub, which will expedite the onboarding of Web3 talent and blockchain projects in the Balkans. The Hub will direct activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.

The Balkans hub will also help founders, developers, and community members along the way. NEAR Balkans will facilitate partnerships, mentoring, and incubation for both individuals and teams in addition to funding and education. The innovation lab at the hub will also focus on launching new products. The goal is to inspire the region’s entrepreneurs by demonstrating why building in a more decentralized and democratized manner is the way of the future.

June 30: Join Stake Wars to Become a Chunk-Only Producer

Stake Wars is back to help decentralize the NEAR network and provide new challenges and rewards to members who want to become validators. NEAR is focusing on Chunk-Only Producers in Stake Wars: Episode III—next NEAR’s step toward a fully-sharded protocol.

Image

August 08: NEAR Releases JavaScript SDK, Bringing Web3 to 20 Million Developers

More than 20 million JavaScript developers can finally join the internet revolution and build fast, scalable, and user-friendly decentralized applications with NEAR’s JS SDK. With that many more contributors, the open web could experience a fascinating renaissance.

September 12 – 14: NEARCON 2022

NEARCON 2022 was an enormous success. NEARCON showcased the ecosystem and community at its best—with boundless energy for creating without limits—from developers and builders to other visionaries and champions of NEAR.

Impressive numbers after NEARCON

NEARProtocol after #NEARCON in numbers 21 Global Media Partners 256+ Pieces of Media Coverage 20M Accounts & 200M Transactions 11 Visionary ‘Women of Web3 Changemakers’ What number are you impressed with at NEARCON? Let us know by commenting #NEAR #Nearity

Let’s look back highlights of events at NearCon Day 1, 2, and 3.\

MetaBUILD III is back with a $1 million prize pool. It’s shaping up to be an 8-week product-oriented incubation program hosted by Pagoda, with the goal of assisting teams beyond the prize money in obtaining funding and developing a market-ready prototype.

September 26: NEAR Foundation Launches Smart Contract Audit Program

The NEAR Foundation has announced the launch of its Smart Contract Audit Program. This is a significant step toward expanding smart contract audits and improving ecosystem security.

The NEAR Foundation’s Smart Contract Audit Program includes two major components: a new auditor ingest form and an audit request form.

September 30: Nightshade sharding Phase 1 is live on NEAR’s Mainnet

The Nightshade Sharding rollout is divided into four stages, beginning with Phase 0: Simple Nightshade.
Chunk-Only Producers will be introduced in Phase 1. Chunk-Only Producers are solely responsible for producing chunks (parts of a shard’s block, see Nightshade for more information) in a single shard (a network partition), and thus require less sophisticated, less expensive hardware.
The following phase of the roll-out is Nightshade, which will complete the implementation of challenges, removing the need for validators to track all shards.
The network will be dynamically split into shards and then merged based on resource utilization in Phase 3: Dynamic Resharding.

October 23: The Foundation publishes an update on the recently formed Digital Collective (NDC)

The NEAR Digital Collective (NDC) is a new way of organizing the rapidly growing community of NEAR ecosystem users, projects, stakeholders, partners, and backers. Its ultimate goal is to create a cohesive structure that allows all of the NEAR ecosystem’s component parts to collectively decide how NEAR should be run. Over the coming months, the NDC will collaborate with the Foundation, Pagoda, and other ecosystem nodes to develop a structure and make its first proposals to the community.

The governance framework is currently in its first version. The NDC’s vision for a decentralized governance system and core governance components is embodied in this framework. When finished, it will outline roles, responsibilities, participation rules, and dispute resolution procedures.

October 25: USN wind down

USN was launched in April 2022, when there were no native stablecoins in the NEAR ecosystem. With increased regulatory focus and market perception changes from recent high-profile incidents, USN has faced numerous headwinds in recent months. As a result of these issues, they have made the difficult decision to wind down the USN project in a controlled and responsible manner that protects USN holders.

The NEAR Foundation has set aside $40 million USD for a USN Protection Programme grant, which is intended to protect users from a recent issue involving USN by ensuring that eligible USN holders can redeem their USN for USDT.e on a 1:1.

November 01: Near Protocol launched Korea Regional Hub

South Korea will soon have its own NEAR Regional Hub focused on Web3 innovation, business development, education, and talent development across the country. The hub will be led by entrepreneurs Scott Lee and Ben Kang, both of whom are well-known figures in South Korea’s burgeoning blockchain community. The plan includes tapping into the country’s active gaming community, as well as bringing more amazing projects and creators to the NEAR ecosystem.

November 09: NEAR Protocol Roadmap 2023-4

The roadmap is divided into two sections: Experience and Core. The Experience section includes the user and/or developer experience, as well as the protocol features required to enable those experiences.

The Core section, on the other hand, discusses major efforts to improve the protocol’s scalability and decentralization. Most notably, phase 2 of sharding is now live, scaling the network to 100 shards with no validators tracking all shards. Phase 2 is scheduled for 2023. The roadmap extends until 2024, when phase 3 of sharding will be delivered, which will dynamically adjust the number of shards based on demand.

2/#NEAR Protocol Roadmap 2023-2024 Check out what Pagoda is calling a “living document” https://near.org/blog/near-protocol-roadmap-2023-4-the-next-2-years-of-near%EF%BF%BC/

November 21: NEAR Foundation’s Funding Strategy

With these long-term perspectives in mind, NEAR Foundation is reviewing all of its capital allocations over the last few years to determine what has had the most impact and where we should reconsider our approach. They will also closely examine upcoming capital deployments. The Foundation must prioritize high-quality projects with the greatest potential and alignment with its NEAR vision. The NEAR Foundation has already taken significant steps to increase the transparency of NEAR’s funding.

November 24: Proximity launched a $10M fund dedicated to decentralized orderbook solutions on NEAR

Proximity, together with Orderly NetworkSpin, and Tonic, is launching a $10M fund dedicated to decentralized orderbook solutions on NEAR. The fund, which is to be derived from the participants’ treasuries, would be deployed in the form of grants or investments for DeFi protocols that leverage the central limit orderbook (CLOB) infrastructure provided by Orderly Network, Spin, or Tonic. Proximity will also provide advisory services and developer support from their team of industry experts and core NEAR contributors.

This $10 million fund is an open invitation to builders from any ecosystem to help NEAR’s decentralized orderbook infrastructure compete with centralized exchanges.

December 15: NEAR Strategic Update and Outlook for 2023

Fundamentals and Convictions

  • NEAR has the best technology in Web3
  • NEAR has world-class talent and ample runway
  • Achieving mainstream adoption is about users
  • Web 2.5 will get us there

Strategic Approach

In the coming year, the NEAR Foundation will establish an early-stage accelerator to assist promising projects and founders on NEAR in areas such as education, technology, hiring, legal, UX, and GTM guidance, allowing them to grow into the landmark Web3 projects of tomorrow.

Looking Ahead 

All of these user-centric elements further up the stack, especially at the app layer, will serve as the foundation for a key component of the NEAR ecosystem’s product and technical focus in 2023. Pagoda, NEAR Foundation, and other key ecosystem participants will collaborate to provide the best technology possible with an increasingly integrated and seamless experience for developers and end users. From here, the goal is for NEAR to evolve into more than just a layer-one blockchain: it will become a global blockchain operating system.

NEAR listed on Exchanges

  • Whitebit
  • Hoo
  • Bitget
  • Coinbase

Near listed on exchanges

Conferences

In addition to attending several blockchain conferences around the world to discuss and share blockchain knowledge, NEAR Co-Founder Illia Polosukhin has made significant announcements about the NEAR ecosystem’s future direction. More information on the conference’s highlights can be found below.

Partnership

In the year 2022, NEAR Protocol expanded its collaboration with a variety of partners in order to expand the ecosystem and help it grow. Here are a few noteworthy collaborations.

NEAR by the Numbers

Near by the Numbers

New Accounts and Unique Addresses

The total number of new accounts (or new wallets) created is nearly 23 million, an increase of more than 900% compared to the beginning of 2022. The peak of this year was recorded on May 6 when 697,150 new wallets were created.

Despite NEAR’s price decrease this year, the number of unique addresses continues to rise rapidly. Addresses do not correspond to the number of users, but they can be used as a rough proxy for overall growth.

New Accounts and Active Accounts
New Accounts and Active Accounts

New Contracts

Smart contracts built on the NEAR blockchain are programs that execute automatically when certain conditions are met. The community can gain a better understanding of the ecosystem’s health and growth by examining the Daily Number of New Contracts Created. The more active new smart contracts are executed, the more projects and users engage with NEAR.

These figures are still significantly higher than at the start of the year when there were approximately 200 to 400 daily active contracts. The highest number of new contracts per day is over 1200.

New Contracts and Active Contracts
New Contracts and Active Contracts

Transactions

The Daily Transactions metric shows how many times the blockchain logged a transaction in the past year. On August 20th, the daily number of transactions reached the highest transactions with approximately 2 million. Besides, the total number of transactions is over 250 million and increase by 311%

Gas Fees are the costs of performing transactions on the NEAR network and blockchain. Validators for the network are compensated for their services with Gas Fees, incentivizing validators needed to secure the network.

Number of Transactions and Gas Fee

Total Value Locked

The total value locked (TVL) currently is $71.71M (Dec 30th, 2022). According to Defilama statistics, Near has the highest TVL of nearly 500 million in the middle of the year.

TVL NEAR

Asset Holder

NEAR token

Total Supply: 1,112, 328,428

Circulating supply: 843,736,972

AURORA token

Total Supply: 1,000,000,000

Circulating supply: 120,747,070

METRIC NEAR RAINBOW BRIDGE OVERVIEW

Community Growth

126 validators supported the network, with 33% of the total staked NEAR delegated to the 9 largest validators.

Top 5 countries with the most traffic to the NEAR Protocol website

United States: 11.02%

Russia: 8.76%

Laos: 8.02%

United Kingdom: 7.93%

Vietnam: 6.69%

Top countries with most traffic Near.org

Top 5 countries sending the most traffic to NEAR Protocol wallet

Laos: 12.79%

Ukraine: 8.78%

United States: 8.75%

Russia: 7.73%

United Kingdom: 7.12%

Top countries traffic NEAR wallet

Social Growth

Twitter: 1 million followers

Telegram: 55,079 members

Ecosystem

Projects on NEAR Protocol

DeFi

 

Let's look back with @proximityfi on a year of NEAR DeFi in 2022 Proximity Labs has released a summary of notable #DeFi trends and how DeFI is evolving in the NEAR ecosystem In addition, they also set out goals and notes for DeFi on NEAR and #AURORA in 2023 #Nearity

NFT

 

Top NFT on near
Top NFT on NEAR

Gaming

Top Game Projects with the highest number of users on NEAR

Top game

Funding and Grant Program

As of Q3, the NEAR Foundation has supported high-quality projects that will support its mission of attracting 1 billion users. Below is the table of funds allocated in the ecosystem.

Funds Distributed Ecosystem Fund

These grant channels are to be used to expand and decentralize the NEAR ecosystem in a more efficient manner.

NEAR FUNDING & ECOSYSTEM These grant channels are to be used to expand and decentralize #NEAR ecosystem in a more efficient manner. More information is available at https://linktr.ee/nearfunding #Nearity #NEARProtocol #NEARisNOW #grant #DeFiProject #NFTs #GameFi #web3 #Aurora

Grant

In 2022, NEAR Protocol sponsors many projects in many areas. NEAR grants help projects get the funding to grow and perform better. Let’s take a look at the potential projects that have been granted by NEAR.

Projects have recived a grant from NEAR

Completed projects & Milestone data 

The number of milestones will be determined by the grant request track:

Milestones

  • Projects have completed a milestone: 53
  • Projects have completed final milestone: 9

Effectiveness of the funding program

Total external funding (overall amount) came from projects that have received a grant (around 40%).

External funding in the NEAR Ecosystem

12 closed projects in Q3 ‘22 – ($92.2M)

4 finalizing rounds

18 new fundraising processes kicked off

38 VC intros made

Closed Rounds (September data)

– Sender Wallet: $4.5M

– Hillridge: $2.3M

Closed Rounds (Q3 data)

– Portalverse Network: multi-million $

– Scorefam: $25M

– Token Terminal: $6.5M

– Mystiko.Network: $10M

– Sweat Economy: $13M

– Niche: $1.8M

– Aurigami: $12M

– Play Ember: $1.4M

Regional Hub

The Foundation selected these locations based on a number of factors, including Web3 adoption, the number of developers available, regulatory environments, and available capital.

NEAR_Regional_Hub (1)

Balkans Regional Hub

The EAR Balkans Hub is one of the world’s first NEAR Ecosystem Regional Hubs. It was founded as a result of a partnership between the NEAR Foundation and the Borderless Tech Association. The Hub will direct activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.

NEAR Balkans was founded to promote and accelerate the development of the Web3 open-source ecosystem.

Ukraine Regional Hub

NEAR UA is a regional hub, a community, a fund, a project accelerator, a product lab, and a job aggregator for developers in NEAR ecosystem.

Kenya Regional Hub

The NEAR Foundation established the Kenya Regional Hub in collaboration with Sankore, a Kenya-based NEAR Guild. The Kenya Regional Hub will promote blockchain innovation, education, and talent development throughout the African continent. The hub, led by Sankore founder Kevin Imani and a core team of four members, will organize events, launch an academy and incubator, and be part of the Sankore Bounty ecosystem.

Korea Regional Hub

NEAR Korea is an inclusive-regional hub of NEAR Protocol dedicated to Web3 innovation, business development, education, and talent throughout Korea and APAC.

India Regional Hub

The NEAR India Hub is a gathering place for anyone in India who is interested in learning, using, or expanding on the NEAR protocol. We want to help developers, entrepreneurs, and businesses in India who want to use or build on NEAR by providing resources and support.

Vietnam Regional Hub

NEAR Foundation cooperates with GFS Ventures, which is one of the leading venture capital funds. They officially launched the NEAR Vietnam Hub. In other words, it is The Center for Research NEAR in Vietnam with the aim of focusing on helping blockchain innovation, education, and talent development in the entire Vietnam region as well as towards the development of the whole of Southeast Asia (SEA).

United States Regional Hub

Intentions 2023

Throughout many aspects, 2022 is a watershed moment for the NEAR ecosystem. With its vision of “Create Without Limits,” NEAR is also committed to being more transparent and communicating with the community this year.

In 2023, NEAR will continue to advocate for Web3 as a change agent, as well as environmental sustainability as a carbon-neutral blockchain, in the future. So, how does one become a Web3 citizen of the NEAR Protocol? You can read it here.

Furthermore, we anticipate that the next phases of sharding will continue in the coming year.

On one other hand, The NEAR Foundation is looking ahead for the entire NEAR ecosystem. The Foundation can ensure that NEAR emerges from this bear market stronger than ever, and is well-positioned to assist builders in continuing to build the future of Web3 by being fiscally responsible and deploying capital in a sustainable manner.

Summary

The above is a summary of the NEAR protocol in the context of the crypto economy, as well as some notable NEAR events in the past year.

NEAR remains dedicated to its mission of: “Remove all barriers for Web3 creators by building an ecosystem that is uniquely simple, safe, scalable, and sustainable”.

A world without limits.

 

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