NEAR Ecosystem’s Weekly Update W33

5 min readAug 30, 2021

Last week was full of updates and news on the NEAR Protocol ecosystem. The notable events include the public sale of $OCT on Skyward Finance, Ref Finance was back online after the liquidity farming bug incident, and Arterra closed their fundraising round.

Let’s go through and break down the events of week 33rd of NEAR Protocol.

Overview Of The NEAR Ecosystem’s Weekly Update W33

Important Updates

Near Protocol is 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). What I am looking forward to is the launch of Appchain Octopus Network. It will be a huge boost for Dapp’s scalability in the NEAR ecosystem.
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. The development of the SOL-NEAR is facing a halt due to a lack of developers. Once they finish these bridges, the stream of money that flows into the Near Ecosystem will become broader and steadier.

NEAR’s Impressive Performance Numbers

$2.11 million in assets were deposited to Near Protocol via Rainbow Bridge. There was not much increase or decrease compared to the previous week.
The volume of transactions in last week has reached 2 million transactions, with a 24-hour ATH of 311,000 transactions. Although Ref Finance has been under maintenance for the past week, the transaction volume is still high. It proves that other constituents of the ecosystem are gradually gaining the attention of users.
The number of stablecoins on Near has returned to $ 1.18 million. It is a slight decrease of about $ 20,000 compared to the previous week. That means the money coming in for $OCT is not large. For the most part, investors are using the NEAR tokens that already exist in the ecosystem for $OCT investment.

New Projects

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

Octopus Network’s $OCT was open for sale on Skyward Finance.
Metapool launched Mainnet Version 1.0. You can now stake NEAR in Metapool to receive $META.
OP Game was launched. It will develop blockchain games on Near Protocol.
Two new guilds were launched: Near Games Guild and Nearverse Portal Guild.
Ref Finance started reopening the project’s web app after the $3 million hack.

There are also some notable events 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 $1.18 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 tokens have bootstrapped the ecosystem very successfully. I am expecting that the following components of the ecosystem can do the same. With the launch of $OCT this week, coupled with $META open for farming, hopefully, the Near ecosystem will start to pick up speed.

The current Lending & Borrowing and DeFi Stablecoin platforms are extremely inadequate. Ref Finance has promised to launch a lending protocol in 2020 according to their roadmap. For now, NEAR lacks a very prominent constituent which is a money market. If you hold 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 its capital.

AMM DEX

Ref Finance

Ref Finance has compensated thóe who were damaged by the liquidity farming bug incident. After that, the project has reopened its web app and is preparing for a relaunch. This time, there will be lots of incentives for liquidity providers.

The hack was quite a blow to the health of Ref Finance. However, in my opinion, the project’s team has done extremely well compensating for users and handling the crisis. Through this incident, you can realize how serious the project’s long-term commitment is. You can also trust that Ref Finance’s entire fund will be safe.

Going forward, after handling this incident, Ref Finance needs to focus on marketing to promote the project’s liquidity and community. Its recent marketing activities have been more intense but it needs to go further to grasp the community’s attention. 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.

SushiSwap

After Near’s AMA on Sushi Onsen, NEAR Protocol posted a tweet with the only in it being an icon of a piece of sushi. It’s not clear if this is just a tweet suggesting that liquidity providers for $NEAR are getting double rewards on Sushi Onsen’s pool or Sushiswap is planning to bring their AMM DEX to Near via Aurora.

Sushiswap is a project that is already present in many blockchains. So it is not impossible for them to integrate with the Near Protocol. If Sushiswap goes on Near, this will be a great sign for the growth of the whole ecosystem. However, these are just speculations, not official announcements. Stay tuned with me for more news on both projects in the future.

Staking

The Metapool project on Near has launched and now you can use the project’s staking products. This is a NEAR staking solution to create liquidity for staked tokens. Now, when you stake NEAR on Metapool, you not only receive NEAR but also META — the project’s liquidity incentives.

IDO Platform

The Octopus Network’s $OCT tokens have been opened for sale on Skyward Finance. Currently, the price of the OCT token stands at over $1.6 — four times the price at the last round of the Octopus Network.

You should consider investing in the project. It is because according to the project’s tokenomics, 100% OCT that is sold in semi-private and seed rounds will be unlocked on the first day of the token launch. These tokens account for 30% of the total OCT supply.

This is definitely a very important infrastructure piece for Near. This OCT token sale will be a very good bootstrap event for the ecosystem. Users using NEAR to buy $OCT tokens is probably one of the reasons that pushed the $NEAR token price to a peak of $6.59 last weekend.

Conclusion

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

Octopus Network’s $OCT is open for sale on Skyward Finance. The current selling price is $ 1.6. Octopus Network’s current FDV is $ 160 million.
Instead of staking NEAR in Near Wallet, you can now stake NEAR in Metapool to receive NEAR and META.
Ref Finance is back online.
There is a chance of Sushiswap going to Near via Aurora.
Arterra successfully raised capital.

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