NEAR Launches Infrastructure Committee with $4 Million in Funding

NEAR Protocol has experienced significant growth in users and transactions in recent months. To ensure the smooth operation and expansion of projects and founders, the NEAR Foundation has launched the Infrastructure Committee. With a funding of $4 million allocated for infrastructure projects, the committee aims to strengthen NEAR’s Key Infrastructure and support the success of NEAR projects in an open and transparent manner.

Key Infrastructure includes RPC nodes, relayers, indexers, bridges, wallets, load balancers, and oracles. It is crucial to have these components functioning correctly and seamlessly integrated with DEX tools. The committee’s primary goals are to decentralize decision-making, enhance critical infrastructure, and streamline efforts for greater clarity and decentralization.

The Infrastructure Committee has already funded five critical infrastructure proposals, including the implementation of Jutsu IDE infrastructure, the creation of FASTNEAR infrastructure services, support services for Aurora Web 3.0 Wallet, the development of a Treasury App for governing committees, and an audit of the Ledger integrations. Additionally, the committee is actively managing inherited projects such as Aurora RPC SpeedUp and MyNEARWallet maintenance by Meteor.

With more than half of the $4 million budget still available, the committee is inviting the community to propose innovative infrastructure projects. Some suggested projects include faster RPC nodes, specific common endpoints to replace broad RPC queries, new bridges to improve cross-chain transactions, ICANN-compliant DNS, and expansion of top-level domains, as well as focused relayers to support gas-free and other specialized relayer needs.

The committee encourages community members, including founders, developers, and NEAR enthusiasts, to contribute their ideas, proposals, and feedback to improve the foundations of NEAR technology. The current Infrastructure Committee consists of ecosystem leaders, NEAR partners, and various members from core NEAR organizations.

To ensure transparency and public engagement, the committee has established clear processes to track and discuss proposals openly. The community can view the public tracking of proposals document and participate in public discussions, including announcements of Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Meeting notes will be shared with the community to maintain openness about the committee’s decisions and discussions.

To facilitate community engagement, an Interim Proposal and Funding Process guide has been provided on how to submit proposals. The Infrastructure Mandate & Charter and Working Group Details offer additional insights into the committee’s mission, structure, and ongoing projects.

As NEAR continues to grow, the Infrastructure Committee plans to introduce a more sophisticated incident management system and post-mortem processes for infrastructure outages. The development of a Blockchain Operating System (BOS)-based app for proposal management is also in the pipeline to optimize the efficiency of the funding process.

The committee’s work will support NEAR’s growth and chain abstraction efforts, ensuring the blockchain can handle the anticipated increase in traffic as more users join the ecosystem. Those interested in getting involved with the Infrastructure Committee can join the Working Group Discussion on GitHub to collaborate on initiatives, discuss proposals and RFPs, or ask questions.

In conclusion, NEAR Protocol’s launch of the Infrastructure Committee with $4 million in funding demonstrates its commitment to strengthening the core infrastructure and supporting the success of NEAR projects. With the opportunity for community engagement and the allocation of funds for innovative infrastructure projects, NEAR is poised for further growth and scalability.

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