Aurora with $12M raised - The Expansion of the Near Ecosystem

The Near ecosystem has expanded rapidly recently. The number of partners and updates has increased significantly. The ecosystem is robust and accelerating. Let’s check out what is new for the past week!

Big things around the Near ecosystem

Infrastructure on Near Protocol is almost finished. The total asset value on Rainbow Bridge is increasing steadily, roughly 10% per week. Aurora has been running smoothly and started to get new, exciting projects built on it.

TVL on the ecosystem is steady and has no sign to settle back to the lower value, implying the confidence and trust from communities and the ability to refrain asset flows from leaving the network.

Binance Staking has officially launched a series of new high-yield NEAR Locked Staking activities. Near holders can deposit & stake NEAR for 10, 30, 60, or 90 Days and enjoy up to 54.49% APY. Details on the activity can be found here.

Coin98 Wallet announced to support NEAR Protocol on DApp Browser, making it the first native Web3 for NEAR dApps.

It is also exciting to see SOL <> NEAR and BSC <> NEAR bridges that are under development currently. They create asset flows and interoperability between blockchains, enable users to transfer digital assets from blockchains that hold significant value to Near - the one that is developing its DeFi ecosystem and in need of additional liquidity. 

Harvest $CHEDDAR farm is live, users who have claimed minted $CHEDDARs from the activity of staking NEAR can now stake those $CHEDDARs and earn new ones.

All about Near Ecosystem this week

Infrastructure

1. Rainbow Bridge

Total asset value on Rainbow Bridge is increasing steadily, roughly 10% per week, and reached $35.5M last week.

$21M out of that $35.5M belongs to OCT (Octopus Network Token), since the token has multiple token standards.

2. Octopus Network

Octopus Network mainnet was officially live on October 8th and Decentralized Bio Network is the first appchain on Octopus Network mainnet. The project has partnered with Skyward Finance and Ref Finance to initiate its IDO and listing in the upcoming November. The project also expects to complete the audit in a few days. 

Octopus Network has introduced Octopus Accelerator - a structured acceleration framework to initiate the future of web 3.0. The accelerator acts as a starter encouraging and attracting developers to Octopus Network. Winners will receive grants of up to $50,000 and gain access to an expansive community of other projects, as well as investors, marketers, and subject-matter experts.

3. Aurora - an EVM built on the NEAR Protocol 

Aurora is a bridge and an EVM built on the NEAR Protocol. It delivers a solution for developers to operate their apps on an Ethereum-compatible and scalable platform. 

EVMs have their own advantages and disadvantages. They allow new and developing blockchains to easily scale up, encourage developers to migrate their applications from chains to chains. 

Ethereum hosts 2862 Dapps at the moment of writing, which is an astonishing 77.51% of all the dApps developed in the industry - 3,692 dApps. When it comes to scalability, besides their consensus mechanisms, newer chains always desire to attract Ethereum developers to their networks.

However, EVMs are not entirely perfect:

• Teams have to split their resources between EVMs and their own networks. EVMs need to be maintained and upgraded in the long run → Losing focus on network development.
• Overuse of EVMs will cause liquidity fragmentation and therefore, liquidity can be very difficult to navigate.

For the past week, Aurora has been the most robust component on the Near Protocol, with continuous and important updates:

• Aurora has recently closed its first private round of funding by raising a total of $12M, with the participation of Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital. The team will use the funds for the development and maintenance of the EVM, as well as the bridges it’s currently operating between Ethereum <> NEAR, and Ethereum <> Aurora.
• AuroraDAO approved AURORA token - a governance token - to ensure a more effective project governance and development. Token use cases, IDO date, and other parameters should be approved by the DAO in the future.
• TriSolaris is the first AMM DEX on Aurora. The AMM allows users to swap between any ERC20 tokens, provide liquidity for any ERC20 tokens and earn fees for providing liquidity. It also announced on Twitter that TriSolaris received a development grant from the Near Protocol. There has been no information about how much the grant is and what the money is for. Stay tuned with Coin98 Insight for further updates.

Stablecoin/Fiat

Meta Pool has announced its partnership with OIN Finance to bring the first native stablecoins to Near Ecosystem - stUSD. Users stake Near with Meta Pool, earn interests and also receive stNEAR. stNEAR could be deposited on OIN Finance to mint stUSD in the future or to be used at other DeFi platforms. 

TVL on Meta Pool has been steady, roughly $20M USD (~2.8M NEAR). The larger the TVL, the better for Meta Pool as the project needs staked Near tokens as the liquidity source to mint stUSD. 

The value of Stablecoin issued last week through Rainbow Bridge is consistent with weeks before. USDT and DAI have accounted for the same amount in percentages.

Lending & Borrowing

On its Medium, OIN Finance revealed that it will launch OIN Finance V3 in late October with a new set of features. We are excited to see the innovative version and hopefully, it will be good enough to be the first lending/ borrowing project on Near Protocol.

AMM DEX

1. Ref Finance

The multi-rewards farming program now lives on Ref Finance. The program allows users to earn tokens of Ref Finance’s partners as well as $REF tokens at the same time. Currently, Ref Finance has partnered up with Paras, and included a portion of PARAS tokens as LP rewards.

In the future, new partners shall be added and Ref Finance farmers shall have more reward options to choose from.

Ref Finance has also introduced good APYs of its nine provided pools. Pools with good APYs as of today include PARAS-wNEAR; REF-wNEAR, HAPI-wNEAR, DAI-wNEAR. Stakers, however, should consider Impermanent Losses before actually staking their tokens in the pools.

2. Trisolaris

As mentioned above, Trisolaris is the first AMM built on Aurora. The team plans to launch its $TRI governance token this week. Since it has not launched the token yet, users can try to use, “skin-in-the-game” and hopefully the project will have the intention to give out airdrops.

NFTs and Gaming

ShroomKingdom has sent the airdrop of $207,100 SHRM token in total to 17,150 wallets of NEAR Protocol early adopters. The team is currently running a script and winners will see the token in their wallets soon.

PixelPets - an NFT game for pet trading and battling. PXT will be the main token for PixelPets with a total supply of  12.500.000 tokens. There are several token usages include buying a new egg to hatch a pet, training your pet, and selling or buying a pet on the marketplace.

A NEAR-PXT pool will be created on Ref Finance in October and the Mainnet Beta will be available for the Public within a few days.

Other categories/ sectors

PULSE token sale on NearPad successfully raised $1.25M on October 7th. Unfortunately, the price of PULSE as of the moment of writing is lower than its token sale price ($0.25 per PULSE). The token recently has been listed on Ref Finance and Uniswap.

OP Games is a multi-chain gaming platform currently built on Ethereum and the NEAR Protocol. The team raised $8.6M with the participation of leading blockchain venture capital firms including Republic Crypto, Ascensive Assets, Morningstar Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Polygon Studios.

AstroDAO, the next generation of DAOs, is close to launching on NEAR. The project is the next evolution of SputnikDAO with new features and more flexibility.

Summary

Below are some highlights summarizing main points:

• The Near Ecosystem keeps expanding aggressively with important updates coming from the infrastructure sector.
• Aurora is leading the Near Ecosystem this week with $12M raised at the seed round.
• Trisolaris - the first AMM built on Aurora - has introduced the beta version.
• It is expected that projects will be booming in the upcoming weeks.

Read more:  NEAR Protocol raised $350 M, Sky Mavis's efforts after being hacked