NEAR Community Update: April 5, 2019

We’ve already open sourced our code on Github so developers can follow along as the blockchain and its tooling comes together. Frankly, open-sourcing the protocol development is table stakes and every credible next-generation protocol has already done this.

As we begin expanding our ecosystem and polishing up the application layer that supports developers and their end-users, we’d also like to apply a similar openness to our other development efforts. To that end, we’re experimenting with an “open design” process where anyone can see our product development work on Discord in the #PRODUCT channels. Join us and jump in.

Let’s build the future together.

Community and Events

Congratulations to the 3 winning teams at the Nueva Hacks hackathon, “Team H II R” (addressing teen depression), “Credit Secured” (better credit scores) and “Team Biased” (eliminating media bias).

Recent Events

1. [Berlin] Mar 25: NEAR, Fluence and Cosmos DevNet and MainNet Demo Night
2. [SF] Mar 27: Unblocked SF with Erik Trautman of NEAR Protocol
3. [SF] Mar 28: Decentralized Computing with WASM @ Github
4. [Uruguay] Mar 29: Rust Latam conference
5. [San Mateo] Mar 30–31: Nueva Hacks Hackathon

Upcoming Events

1. [Sydney] April 8–13: EdCon
2. [SF] April 10: NEAR, Cosmos & Fluence: Devnet & Mainnet Demo Night I
3. [Santa Clara] April 11: NEAR, Cosmos & Fluence: Devnet & Mainnet Demo Night II
4. [Fremont] April 20: Launch Hacks hackathon

If you want to collaborate on events, reach out to [email protected]

Writing and Content

The whiteboard series continues to be a great opportunity for projects to get credible technical exposure and for us to learn from exceptional founders. More in the queue!

1. Ep12: James Prestwich from Summa
2. Ep13: Tom Close from Magmo
3. Unqualified Opinions interview with Ryan Selkis of Messari

Our technical documentation also continues to improve every day thanks to heroic efforts from the dev and dev rel teams.

Engineering Highlights

On the application/development layer, we’ve open-sourced our product development process. Now, anyone can contribute on our chat (http://near.chat) in the #product channels. On the blockchain layer, we’ve been working hard to stabilize and improve the performance on our multi-node TestNet (pre-release). We’ve also added support for containerized deploys!

As an anecdote, @Evgeny built a Pokedex live at a WASM meetup hosted by Github. Later, someone said the live demo was so smooth and fast they thought we were cheating by having planted a suggestion in the audience.

There were 54 PRs in nearcore from 10 different authors over the last couple of weeks. As always, the code is completely open source on Github.

Blockchain Layer

• Implemented scripts for managing TestNet in the cloud and locally using Docker and GCP. Check out how to do it in the docs.
• Consolidated testing infrastructure for DevNet and TestNet
• Implemented layer to manipulate network traffic (similar to Linux traffic control) used for testing

Application/Development Layer

• Command line tool now includes local template generation that includes the ability to test against apps deployed to devnet
• Devs can now build a contract, deploy to DevNet and deploy a front end to GitHub Pages with `npm run deploy` from template projects
• Continued work on improving receipts for cross-contract calls.
• Added persistent collections to NEAR AssemblyScript library
• Integrated NEAR, React and next.js at our internal hackathon with a fun toy and a cuter example.
• Updated the UI for the debugger.
• Made example chess game deployed on GitHub Pages

How You Can Get Involved

Join us! If you want to work with one of the most talented teams in the world right now to solve incredibly hard problems, check out our careers page for openings. And tell your friends 🙂

Learn more about NEAR in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, joining the conversation on Discord and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox.

Reminder: you can help out significantly by adding your thoughts in our 2-minute Developer Survey.