Near Protocol Offers $800M grants focusing on DeFi and ecosystem

The decentralized application platform, Near protocol, launches a $800 million grants fund and seems to gear up for a new high water mark amidst the launch of huge development funds by Fantom, Avalanche, Harmony, and Celo blockchains.

On Monday, the self-styled climate neutral chain said that it has raised the funds with different portions assigned for specific purposes. It includes a regional fund of $100 million along with a $100 million portion dedicated to startups. The high-speed protocol also notified that it has decided to keep $250 million in ecosystem grants for a time span of four years. The remaining $350 million fund from Proximity Lans will be specifically devoted to decentralized finance (DeFi) which has been the primary focus of the program.

Near is well-known for its user-friendliness and is used to pay transaction fees and storage on its platform.

Near Protocol brings DeFi DAO

Near protocol added that it has formed a “DeFi Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)” to keep track of how funds are utilized. Through DAO, the protocols will have the option to apply for liquidity mining programs. 

Proximity, a set of independent entities with funding from the Near Foundation, are the major early Near contributors.

Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of Near, revealed that this year, the program has distributed $45 million in funds. He added that the main focus of the program is to build the early stage ecosystem.

Polosukhin further said that earlier he had a feeling of pulling the ecosystem but now the ecosystem is pulling us all. 

Earlier this month, Aurora, an Near ecosystem project raised around $12 million funds to bring Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contracts on its blockchain. Many are considering it as the first step towards a full DeFi ecosystem.

The user-friendly protocol Near was launched in 2017 by Alexander Skidanov, a former Microsoft employee and Illia Polosukhin, the senior developer.