NEAR Ecosystem’s Weekly Update W32

5 min readAug 17, 2021

Last week was an eventful week for the NEAR Protocol ecosystem. Some of the notable news includes a partnership between Near Protocol and Filecoin, the $OCT token sale on Octopus Network, and a $1 million hackathon on Near.

Let’s dive in and analyze the events of week 32nd of NEAR Protocol.

Overview Of The NEAR Ecosystem’s Weekly Update W32

Important Updates

Since Near Protocol is already quite complete in terms of infrastructure applications, with such apps as Aurora EVM, Rainbow Bridge, Flux Oracle, and coordination between Band Protocol and Chainlink (not yet implemented), the next big update that the whole ecosystem is looking forward to is the launch of Octopus Network’s mainnet appchain in September or October this year — according to Octopus’s roadmap.
After the ETH-NEAR bridge, the NEAR Foundation team is developing the BSC-NEAR bridge. Following the BSC-NEAR bridge, SOL-NEAR will be the next choice of the ecosystem development team. If they finish these bridges, this will be a good premise for money to flow into the Near Ecosystem.

NEAR’s Impressive Performance Numbers

$2.15 million in assets were deposited to Near via Rainbow Bridge. Compared to the previous week, there is a slight increase of $50,000 in asset value.
In the past week, the volume of weekly transactions continued to increase by 1,700,000 transactions. The total number of transactions on Near Protocol has passed 20 million. This was only a month and a half since the 10-million goal was reached.

Over the past week, the number of stablecoins on Near has returned to $1.2 million. In comparison with the last week, there was a slight decrease of $100,000. However, the total value of assets on Rainbow Bridge has increased, proving that users are still migrating other assets to NEAR.

New Projects

We did not see any new projects in the past week. However, there are many important updates of the ecosystem:

Near and Filecoin have officially partnered up to promote data storage on Near’s Web3 system.
Octopus Network’s token ($OCT) has been launched and will be available for sale on Skyward Finance on August 23rd.
Near Protocol, Skyward Finance, and Ref Finance continuously launched marketing campaigns to attract users and promote community activities.
The $1-million MetaBuild hackathon is being held. This promises to bring Near Ecosystem many new projects.
Some users have exploited a farming contract bug on Ref Finance to withdraw all the money in the REF-NEAR pair. Total damage was estimated at $3 million. The team has promised to compensate for infringed users, work with legal authorities to recover the lost funds, and reward those who voluntarily return tokens.

There is also some notable news about the ecosystem, which I will go into detail later.

Dissecting The News

Stablecoin, Lending & Borrowing

The total amount of stablecoins on Near, after a sudden increase to $1.4 million due to the $REF sale, has returned to $1.2 million. In which, nearly $900 thousand is DAI. The rest are other stablecoins, including USDT, USDC, and TUSD. The total value of assets on Ethereum on this Bridge is at nearly $2.2 million.

You can also see how strong of an impact the token sale events have had on the development of the ecosystem. REF token has bootstrapped the ecosystem very successfully. I am expecting that the following components of the ecosystem can do the same. There are still other big guns for NEAR to bring out in the near future, such as OCT (Octopus Network), PARAS (Paras), and META (Metapool). With this hackathon, the platform has many great options for bootstrapping.

The current Lending & Borrowing and DeFi Stablecoin platforms are extremely inadequate. Going forward, Ref Finance will launch a lending protocol. This will be the first lending project on NEAR. If you are holding lots of NEAR coins, you probably want a protocol that allows you to mortgage NEAR coins to lend USDC or USDT. With a protocol like this, the system as a whole can effectively utilize the capital.

AMM DEX

Last week, Ref Finance and the REF-NEAR pair were heavily exploited. Farming contracts had a bug that allowed liquidity providers to withdraw more tokens than what they have deposited. Ref Finance has identified 18 wallets that took advantage of the accident.

Ref Finance immediately closed the app website, posted bug bounty rewards for those who agreed to return the stolen funds, and contacted exchanges to block funds from being cashed out. Right now, it is not clear how much damage has been done. But Ref Finance has promised to use the funds in the DAO Treasury raised from the public sale to pay the users who were damaged in the exploitation.

We can say that Ref Finance is handling the situation quite promptly and professionally. They have successfully prevented panic among the community. However, given that it was such a fundamental smart contract farming error, the project perhaps has launched their farming protocol too early without a thorough audit, leading to serious consequences.

Going forward, after handling this bug, Ref Finance needs to focus on marketing. For its name to get out there more, the project needs to push for more promoting activities, including getting on Coingecko, Coinmarketcap, and CEX exchanges. REF’s listing on these major exchanges will open up a way for other NEP-141 tokens.

IDO Platform

In the past week, Octopus Network has listed its tokens on Skyward Finance to start a public sale from August 23rd. 2.5% of the total supply of Octopus Network will be open for sale, OCT tokens will be sold in the last week of August.

Personally, I deem this event to be an extremely important infrastructure development for Near. The OCT token being offered for sale will be a great chance for the platform to bootstrap its ecosystem.

In Summary

Over the past week, there are the following significant events regarding the NEAR Protocol:

Ref Finance was exploited. The team has announced a plan to compensate those who suffered from the accident.
Near Protocol, Ref Finance, and Skyward Finance continuously launched community activities to promote the projects.
A $1 million hackathon has started.
Skyward Finance has opened the OCT token sale, starting from August 23rd.

Which update gets you most excited? Let us know down in the comment section.