Thread by @ilblackdragon

Happy New Year and Holidays everyone!

2022 has been a crazy year, let’s recap and sneak preview of 2023!

NEAR Protocol has raised $500m. Startups in the ecosystem raised over $330m. A number of eco funds have started like @MetaWebVC @LyrikVentures @stealthcapfund and many of the existing VCs has been supporting projects on NEAR

I mentioned on Forkast: it’s great time to start now in web3 as early stage capital is there. Valuations will be lower and one must really have the fundamentals down (strong team, good product vision or differentiation in the growing market).

https://twitter.com/Forkast_News/status/1608419408250310656?s=20&t=qZhd9dmXn_GtmXJYRxEpmA

Beyond just VC, there will be more ways to get funded in NEAR ecosystem via DAOs: Developer DAO opens up a new avenue for sustainable public good development in the ecosystem, Creatives DAO serves a DAO of DAOs to fund community led projects.

near.org/blog/near-stra…

Ecosystem projects also are providing funding.

For example, @mintbase have been running their grants program (blog.mintbase.io/mintbase-grant…).

@oct_network and @ParasHQ been doing accelerators for projects in their sub-ecos.

@OrderlyNetwork & @proximityfi started $10m fund.

Nightshade Phase 1 launched, allowing for chunk only producers on the network and laying out the next step in scaling while increasing number of active validators in the network.

Next will be to scale to 100 shards. See roadmap ahead: pagoda.co/blog/protocol-…

Javascript smart contracts enabled mass developer onboarding, and @freeCodeCamp (200k+ devs trained) now offers a curriculum using JS SDK.

freecodecamp.org/news/near-curr…

.@PagodaPlatform offered easy project templates, Lake framework for easier on-chain data indexing, enhanced RPCs, on-chain alerting system, smart contract ABIs and more inside Console. Wombi.xyz has been offering deep dapp analytics.

@nearblocks gained traction as alternative explorer. @PulsarFinance offers a portfolio view across NEAR and Aurora.
@pikespeak_ai allows to do deep on-chain analytics. And more cool tooling: awesomenear.com/categories/uti…

Wallets landscape has changed completely, going beyond NEAR Wallet to innovators like @SenderWallet, @here_wallet, @MeteorWallet and more awesomenear.com/categories/wal…

Wallet Selector has been adopted by app developers to allow to users to use any wallet they choose.

@keypomxyz is creating a customizable framework to onboard users via programmable keys/links, useful for anything from drops, ticketing, DAOboarding and more. Aurora has pioneered a freemium subscription model instead of paying individual tx fees.

Meta Transaction are landing on Protocol level, removing barrier of having tokens to use apps.

And @PagodaPlatform is working on the next wave of innovations to improve onboarding and security of key management for everyone (hint: users won't know they are managing keys)

Rainbow bridge has been attacked 2 times and both times attackers lost money.

Are these the only working challenges for a rollup on Ethereum? ;)

decrypt.co/108015/nears-r…

Decentralized frontends have made amazing strides. With hacks like Curve and concerning regulatory conversations - decentralized frontends in the future.

decrypt.co/107120/ethereu…

.@web4near has shown you can have fully self contained apps that exist on-chain without needing any centralized infra.

@NearSocial_ took it way beyond, by creating a fully composable frontend framework that works off the NEAR blockchain.

We are going to see a massive shift with this novel paradigm, creating a Blockchain Operating System that goes beyond just Protocol but offers an end to end experience. #NEARisTheBOS

Beyond infrastructure, it’s important to highlight app innovation that is happening only on NEAR due to ease of use, flexible account model, versatile development environment and long term scaling.

Finance. @OrderlyNetwork, @tonicdex and @spin_fi are leading the pack in order book DEXs, creating more efficient financial ecosystem. @finance_ref has added support to route via Aurora DEXs, discretized liquidity and limit orders.

See deep dive:

https://twitter.com/near_insider/status/1608078979839463425

@proximityfi has been on the connective tissue of DeFi projects across NEAR and Aurora, helping with fundraising, development and go to market. They announced 10m fund for order book solutions and have posted great update of their own.

medium.com/@ProximityFi/a…

Games. @play_ember bringing existing games on-chain, @Zomland_Game and @PixelDapps launched native gaming experiences. With more games building and launching:

https://twitter.com/humanguild/status/1597742000224481280

.@humanguild has been tirelessly working on helping game developers and creators: grants to get them started, advisory and founder to founder work groups.

@Sweatcoin is in a league of its own: offering anyone to capitalize on their movement, Sweat is the biggest app by users in web3 right now, with over 120m installs. They offered initial web3 functionality for their users in Sept and going to be launching more in 2023.

Sports. Partnership with @SailGP allowed to innovate on what fan ownership means in sport. They launched first fan owned team (via a DAO) and with more fan participation to come. Showcasing of what web3 can do in sport.

sportspromedia.com/news/sailgp-da…

Music. @endlesssfm, @tamago_stream @officialloozr are all innovating in their own way. First Grammy nominated NFT album via @DAOrecords. And fully on-chain music by @salomonsen_p

https://twitter.com/MetaJAX/status/1592580923169869824

Enterprises. There are cases where data or transactions must be private. @CalimeroNetwork is allowing to run private shards of NEAR, offering same development environment to get fully authenticated replicated database that can bi-directionally interact with public chain.

Let's not forget AI, next year going to be year of Artificial Intelligence applied across broad set of knowledge work.

Crowdsourcing unique data, both privately and via DAOs is going to be differentiator and @NEARCrowd has pioneered this model over past 1.5 years

There is even more use cases and innovation that I don't have space to fit here. Check out awesomenear.com and subscribe for newsletter on nearweek.com from @NEARWEEK

The number of actors and stakeholders grew, requiring a more robust governance. The NEAR Digital Collective effort kicked off, with v1 launching in March. Latest update is here: gov.near.org/t/ndc-end-of-y…

NEAR Foundation role is evolving as well, moving financing for public goods, ecosystem marketing and other efforts into the ecosystem: lots of experiments have been running over the past 2 years and with lessons learned new versions of Marketing and Creatives DAO are established

Developer Governance has gotten structure too, with a formal NEP process for Protocol and Contract Standards and various working and community groups: neardevgov.org.

Community groups exploring various topics to push the next evoltuion: ZK, DeFi, Social, NFT and more.

Developer DAO with Ideas & Gigs is enabling anyone to propose, fund and build pieces of the ecosystem: devgovgigs.near.social

Ecosystem marketing for projects to get visibility transitioned to @NEARWEEK @NEAR_daily @near_insider and eco influencers.

Main NEAR Foundation twitter has been killing it with 10% MoM growth hitting 1.1m followers just before New Year.

Spaces with AMAs are a new norm across all the ecosystem channels, and expect more conversations to move in that format (we just need a decentralized Spaces)

Plenty of challenges this year too but we have been overcoming them together as an ecosystem and it’s paramount to building this in decentralized way.

War in Ukraine was one that brough us all together to see how we can help and showing blockchain is a force for good. NEAR eco has been the most generous to @Unchainfund, providing over 50% of all collected funding.

Also shout out to @VitalikButerin for his massive support.

To recap, the NEAR ecosystem has decentralized and grown 5-10x across all the dimensions.

Continued to innovate on the simplicity and scalability while staying stable & secure.

And laser focused on active users, targeting 1 Billion Active Users over next 3-4 years.

Unlocking power of ownership and governance that can’t be silently taken away, giving access to work and markets where it doesn’t exist, removing barriers for creativity.

Happy New Year and let’s all join forces to make 2023 when web3 way becomes a norm for the most users in the world