By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 22nd, 2024
It has also become known that the launch of the NEAR sharding mainnet is scheduled for November 15.
Amid the ongoing bullish rally in the digital currency ecosystem, NEAR Protocol (NEAR), has printed a new All-Time High (ATH) of $12.88 at the time of writing. The potential upshot in the price of NEAR takes its backing from the $800 million Global Ecosystem Fund unveiled by the NEAR Collective, the team behind the ecosystem.
Per the details shared by the outfit, the total sum is targeted at facilitating ecosystem growth and rebuilding its business offerings to focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) initiatives.
“While NEAR is giving all communities access to this record amount of funding, it will be focusing on decentralized finance (DeFi) teams who are actively revolutionizing and reimagining the way we interact with money,” reads the latest announcement. “DeFi projects on NEAR have already hit a significant milestone of more than $150M Total Value Locked (TVL). NEAR has an ambitious goal to grow that number quickly and securely. NEAR is also actively looking for projects focused on NFTs, DAOs, and gaming.”
According to the announcement, the next chapter for the blockchain protocol “is all about fostering growth by helping developers access best-in-class support and providing users with a frictionless experience using and navigating the web3 world,” adding that its “new funding helps accelerate this process.”
The potential impact of the funds notably boosted the upsurge in the price of the network’s native token which is now up by 74% in the past 14 days. The boosted sentiment is centered on the premise that the fund which can stir the acceleration of tokens on the platform will place enough demand on the NEAR token, and as such, drive up its price.
The bulk of the investors accumulating NEAR at this time are perhaps doing so to avoid missing out on such growths that Solana (SOL) showcased when it soared to its current ATH of $218, from a price of $1.09 in the year-ago period.
NEAR ATH Boost per Global Ecosystem Fund Allocation
According to the team, $100 million of the $8000 million funds will be allocated to Startup Grant Pools. From this sum, “more than 20 startups will be identified and given $5M each in funding to redistribute to key stakeholders,” the update reads, adding that “the ecosystem ultimately decides who gets funding.”
Projects like Mintbase, a non-fungible token (NFT) minting platform, and Flux, a protocol that allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, real-world events, and more that are currently resident on the NEAR Protocol are entitled to $250 million for them to develop and scale. The other funds will be allocated to develop NEAR’s communities in various regions including Asia, Europe, and the United States.
The approach to bolster its ecosystem with the new funding is not uncommon amongst blockchain protocols. Coinspeaker reported earlier this month that Binance exchange floated a $1 billion fund for its ecosystem growth.
Moreover, just recently it has become known that the launch of the NEAR sharding mainnet is scheduled for November 15.