Near at ETHDenver: the Blockchain Operating System, Near Day, and More

Missed Near Day and ETHDenver 2023? We’ve got you covered with content from Near talks and panels. There were also a number of awesome announcements, including the big news out of ETHDenver — the Blockchain Operating System.

Let’s take a look at all that was Near at ETHDenver. 

Near Day talks

Near Day, the 1-day mini summit on all things Near, was jam-packed with the latest technological and protocol updates. Chief among them was the announcement of the Blockchain Operating System.

Things got started with a Regenerative Finance (ReFI) talk from Open Forest Protocol’s Frederic Fournier and Flow Carbon’s Phil Fogel. Later in the morning programme, OnMachina’s Polina Aladina and Mark Collier talked about building decentralized storage on Near. As a vital Near ecosystem project, it was great for the ETHDenver crowd to hear from OnMachina on Web3 storage. 

Keypom, which also recently launched on Near, got some much needed visibility at Near Day. In “Instant Crypto Experiences with Keypom”,  Ben Kurrek and Matt Lockyer took the audience on a tour of their Web3 onboarding solution, in which users are given a special type of access key that can be used to experience a crypto application and later be turned into a wallet. (Read more about Keypom here.)

The morning programme also featured talks from Calimero Network’s Sandi Fatic on privacy and scaling with private sharding; Aurora Labs’ Alex Shevchenko on Containers, Aurora’s cloud computing solution for blockchains; Sweat Economy’s Oleg Fomenko on how to effectively onboard people from Web2 to Web3; and Near co-founder Alex Skidanov on how the future of AI will be decentralized. 

In the afternoon, there were a range of talks, starting with Pagoda’s Max Zavershynskyi presentation on creating “high velocity developer communities” via Near DevGov DAO. But the big news on Near Day was the Blockchain Operating System talk from Near co-founder Illia Polosukhin. After Illia primed the audience, Pagoda’s Chief Product Officer Alex Chiocchi elaborated on how Blockchain Operating System will help in onboarding millions of users to Near, while Pagoda’s Bowen Wang detailed the protocol innovations powering the Blockchain Operating System. 

Near Foundation CEO Marieke Flament and Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi also talked about why the future remains bright for Web3 even during the crypto winter. There were also talks from Pagoda’s Pavel Kudinov on the Near data stack and Josh Ford on a fully decentralized Javascript. 

Other topics included the building of infrastructure to onboard 1 billion users on Near, NFT infrastructure, a “DeFi survival kit” for the bear market, and the regulatory landscape in Web3.

Near speakers at ETHDenver 

A number of speakers represented the Near ecosystem at ETHDenver talks. Topics included the Blockchain Operating System, sustainability, UX design, and more. 

Aurora Labs’ Alex Shevchenko kicked things off with a presentation on Web3 infrastructure and scalability — specifically, how not to hack everything up in creating bridges. Alex also gave another talk on next generation user experience. Near Foundation CEO Marieke Flament delivered a talk on the three pillars of Web3 sustainability, while Proximity Labs’ Kendall Cole explored how Web3 can win in the DeFi battle against app stores. 

In separate talks, Illia Polosukhin and Pagoda’s Bowen Wang spoke to the ETHDenver audience about the Blockchain Operating System. While Bowen mapped out Near’s vision for Layer 1 Infrastructure, Illia talked about reinventing Web3 development with decentralized frontends and social networking. 

Near Announcements

While the Near is the Blockchain Operating System announcement was the talk of ETHDenver, there were plenty of other announcements. Find the full run-down of Near ecosystem announcements here.

In other news, the Near ecosystem had two wins at ETHVC’s Startup Demo Day during ETHDenver — Niche Protocol, a Web3 social media platform, and Kino, a film financing platform.