What puzzle pieces were missing before the Near system exploded?

In the race of ecosystems, NEAR Protocol is definitely a good candidate platform. To help you have an overview of this potential ecosystem and help you find investment opportunities, I send you the article in the Ecosystem Digest series about Near Protocol.

Let’s take a look at the overall picture of the NEAR platform together!

Overview of the NEAR Ecosystem

What is the NEAR blockchain?

NEAR Protocol is a decentralized application platform designed for the development of the Open Web, to create an open online world.

Token NEAR: (Updated May 14, 2021)

• MCap & Full Cap: $2,163,016,753 & $5,754,081,437.
• Rank: 67.
• ATL & ATH Price: $0.52 & $7.56.
• Circulating & Total Supply: 375,909,857 & 1,000,000,000 NEAR.
• List of major exchanges listed: Binance, Huobi, OKEx, Gate,…

Blockchain NEAR: (Updated May 14, 2021)

• TPS: 100,000 TPS in terms of 1 million nodes.
• Number of nodes: 59.
• Blocktime:1.01s.
• Total Tx: 4,034,175.
• Avg. Tx fee ($):0.005$.
• Block Height: 37,305.014

Number of Dapps: 19.

Partner: Octopus Network, Mask Network, The Graph, Mooniswap, TUSD, 1Inch,…

Backers/Investors: Coinbase Ventures, a16z, Multicoin Capital, Pantera, Arrington XRP Capital, IOSG Venture, Libertus Capital,…

Development process:

• Formation of Near Protocol (August 2018): The stage of ideation and development of Near Protocol.
• Mainnet Phase 0: PoA Genesis (4/2020): The first phase of the Mainnet took place at the end of April 2020, using the Proof of Authority mechanism developed by the NEAR Foundation. During this phase, the nodes are still operated by validators belonging to the Near Foundation.
• Mainnet Phase 1: Restricted (9/2020): The second phase of the Mainnet allows third-party validators to participate in the operation of the network.
• Mainnet Phase 2: Community Governed (October 2020): This phase allows the community to become the administrator of Near Protocol’s network through on-chain operations. Users were able to transfer tokens and trade.
• Rainbow Bridge (April 2021): The bridge between Near Protocol and the Ethereum network has been launched.

Highlights of the NEAR . Ecosystem

• Near Foundation’s fundraising history is quite impressive, with 3 rounds of funding, reaching $ 35 million in two rounds and 1 unannounced round. Investors in Near Foundation include many large funds, such as Coinbase Ventures, a16z, Multicoin Capital, Pantera, Arrington XRP Capital, IOSG Venture, Libertus Capital,…
• Currently, the transaction fee and transaction speed of the NEAR network is quite impressive, with an average fee of only $ 0.005 (compared to $ 0.5 of Avalanche, $ 0.3 of Tron, …)
• Full support and compatibility with EVM makes it easy for developers to move dApps from Ethereum to NEAR Protocol.
• However, moving money from centralized exchanges to NEAR Protocol still faces certain difficulties, which is one of the main reasons why this ecosystem has not yet attracted cash flow.

Current situation and roadmap

• The project has completed the design phase of the network structure, and is starting to work on the development of the DeFi network.
• The Layer 2 pieces of the infrastructure segment are still in the focus of development, such as Aurora EVM just launched last week, Rainbow Bridge just released last month, Oracle system on NEAR is still incomplete and mainnet operations.
• The DeFi ecosystem on NEAR is still slowly forming the fundamentals, and has not yet attracted the cash flow and investors’ attention.

Pieces of the NEAR ecosystem

Stablecoins

The Stablecoin project that has been brought to NEAR includes USDT, USDC, DAI and TUSD.

The project to make DeFi Stablecoin over-collateralized on NEAR is now available Oin Finance – a project that allows users to mortgage altcoins to mint stablecoins and swap those stablecoins with low slippage. Because this is a rather special project (using altcoins as collateral, the liquidation rate can be very high, leading to when the market fluctuates, many positions can be liquidated, affecting the price). of stablecoins), so the effectiveness of this project still needs to be verified by the market.

The Collateral Over Collateral Stablecoin piece which is the top coins voted by the community on NEAR like MakerDAO on Ethereum has not been developed yet, and this could be a potential area for projects that want to develop on it. NEAR.

AMM DEX

Although there have been many marketing activities, AMAs and other activities with Uniswap, 1Inch, Hackathon-winning projects about AMM DEX such as NEARSwap, NEARBook,… but now, the first AMM DEX works on NEAR The new protocol is only available Ref Finance.

This is a fairly primitive array on NEAR, I think that there is still a lot of development land for new projects on NEAR in this area, but if Ref Finance does well, they alone are enough to make it. solid Layer 3 for other dApps to plug in and grow.

Oracle

As I mentioned above, the Oracle array in NEAR Protocol in particular has not made much progress. Although Band Protocol and Chainlink have agreed to partner with NEAR Protocol for a long time, they have not released a testnet or mainnet product yet. Flux Protocol is also an oracle on NEAR, used to serve the Flux prediction market, but it is not known whether Flux Protocol will serve Oracle services for other projects like Band Protocol and Chainlink.

Lending & Borrowing

This is the most important piece for the DeFi ecosystem across all platforms, but on NEAR Protocol, only Oin Finance (Stablecoin over-collateralized) is the first dApp in this segment.

Let’s wait for the launch of the Lending & Borrowing dApp in the future on NEAR!

IDO Platform

This is an extremely hot category on ecosystems from the beginning of the year until now, because of the huge ROI that dApp usage brings through participating in IDO.

On NEAR currently, there are 3 confirmed projects to work on IDO Platform, including NearPAD, Heo Finance and Skyward Finance. Although no project has launched mainnet and tokens yet, this seems to be a good sign that projects on NEAR are ready to launch and launch tokens, and it is a good sign that an ecosystem is growing. prepare to expand.

NFT Marketplace

This is the category on NEAR with the most projects, with two prominent names being Paras and Mintbase. The investor community on NEAR also pays the most attention to NFT projects, so this is also a key development area on NEAR Protocol for a long time. The number of NFT projects on NEAR is increasing rapidly, which is likely to catch the market’s NFT trend in the future.

Future projections and investment opportunities on the NEAR ecosystem

Projecting the future of the NEAR . system

With the above arguments, we see that the NEAR platform is focusing on NFT development, and is developing Layer 2 and Layer 3 pieces for the DeFi ecosystem. They currently have pioneering pieces for each category including:

• Ref Finance – AMM DEX pioneer;
• Oin Finance – Pioneer DeFi Stablecoin and Lending Protocol;
• NearPAD and 2 other IDO projects – IDO Platform pioneer;
• Infrastructure has gradually matured, with EVM Aurora virtual machines, Rainbow Bridge and Octopus Network.

Thus, in the future, you will join us in waiting for the following developments on NEAR Protocol to perfect the DeFi world:

• Oracle Chainlink and Band Protocol run the finished product to deliver data off-chain onto on-chain on NEAR Protocol;
• There may be a DeFi Stablecoin project like MakerDAO on NEAR;
• Appearing Bridges with other ecosystems, besides Ethereum (eg BSC, Solana, Tron,…);
• Appearing more projects about AMM DEX, Lending,… on NEAR.

In addition, to attract cash flow to this ecosystem, we will wait for information such as:

• The support for transferring money to NEAR Protocol from top CEXs like Binance, Huobi,…
• List Coinbase – this is one of Coinbase Ventures’ investments but has not been listed on Coinbase for trading;
• High APY dApps appear to attract users;
• The first IDOs appeared on the IDO Platforms.

Opportunity to invest in the NEAR ecosystem

You currently do not have many opportunities to invest in the NEAR ecosystem, because the number of dApps is small and the liquidity is not high:

Invest in tokens: If you believe in the NEAR Protocol platform, you can hold NEAR and wait for the price of the platform token to increase – which will certainly happen if the NEAR ecosystem explodes;

Join IDO:

• Project teams working on missing pieces on NEAR will be able to launch and IDO tokens in the future;
• Buy and hold coins of IDO platform: currently, no IDO platform on NEAR has launched tokens.

Join farming, staking in the ecosystem: Currently, because the number of dApps is still small and the liquidity is not high, there are no projects on farming and staking, except for staking NEAR in the NEAR Wallet.

CHK will update more investment opportunities for you in the NEAR ecosystem in the next time.

Conclude

I hope that my above article has given you an overview of the NEAR ecosystem to “skin in the game” effectively, and here are the main ideas in the article to help you summarize:

• DeFi on NEAR is in the early stages of development, has not yet formed, so it has not yet attracted the attention of the community and the cash flow of investors;
• The Layer 2 Infrastructure pieces in particular as well as the Layer 2 pieces in general are almost fully completed;
• The current strongest segment of NEAR Protocol is the NFT Marketplace;
• Currently, the NEAR ecosystem does not have many investment opportunities.

#digest #NEAR