Community Update: June 19th, 2020

Summer is knocking on the door and we are getting NEAR ready for the next steps of decentralizing MainNet and our community efforts. We have already accepted over 20 communities into our Guild Program, who are now starting local community initiatives including AMAs, translating content, and engaging new community members. If you would like to get involved with your existing community or start a local NEAR presence, we would love to hear from you.

Partnerships

We are supporting Coinbase Rosetta (https://rosetta-api.org), an open-source specification and set of tools that makes integrating with blockchains simpler, faster, and more reliable. It enables projects to

• Onboard faster with exchanges and apps; 
• Build while ensuring strict security constraints are met; and 
• Grow adoption by making code predictable & easier to debug.

Learn All About Building the Open Web

The Open Web Collective has launched a Podcast “Building the Open Web”. Sasha will be exploring entrepreneurship in Web3 with founders, investors, and industry leaders. To access the latest episodes, subscribe here (Apple) or here (for Spotify).

The first four episodes are already out

• Episode #1 is with @roneilr from @AudiusProject on Building a Decentralized Music Streaming Platform
• Episode #2 is with @MariaShen from @ElectricCapital covering Startup Advice for Blockchain Entrepreneurs 
• Episode #3 is with @yanivgraph from @graphprotocol to talk about Getting Initial Customers and Finding Product-Market Fit
• Episode #4 is with @taratan from @ideocolab on Bridging Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Product Design

Events

• Protect Privacy Hackathon on Gitcoin from June 15th to June 29th; you can still sign-up and show us how you would enhance user privacy in the web3 space.
• Community Talk: AI and Blockchain by Arif, the CEO and Co-founder of Alethea.AI on Wednesday the 24th at 5PM CEST (Check out this video to get an idea of what the call is going to be about)
• NEAR-Shell AMA for validators and builders (next week, stay tuned for the date & time)

Content Highlight

Deep dive on Optimistic Rollups and scaling Ethereum smart contracts with Optimism Co-Founder Ben Jones and NEAR Co-Founder & CTO, Alex Skidanov

Community Spotlight

• Flux Community Update June 2020, including
  • Market Creator Fee
  • Affiliate Fees
  • Selling Shares – @UniswapProtocol
  • Crowdsourced Dispute
  • Resolution Fee 
• A contributor created a NEAR Prometheus Exporter, which is a service that exports various metrics from a NEAR node.
• We started hosting engineering syncs with our contributors; this Trello board will provide a high-level overview of our initiatives, currently featuring devx.

How You Can Get Involved

We have something for everyone

• Join the NEAR Contributor Program to contribute to our engineering efforts.
• You love hosting events, engaging communities, and creating content? Then head over to our Guild Program.
• If you are in the process of setting up your own start-up in the Web3 space, the Open Web Collective will provide guidance.

If you’re just getting started, learn more in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol or read the official White Paper. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, join the conversation on Discord, and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox.