NEAR’s SF Blockchain Week Event Preview

Next week, the crypto community descends on San Francisco in force for the 2018 SF Blockchain Week. For the NEAR team, this is our home turf and a great chance to host our friends from around the world so we’ll be actively involved.

For those who can’t make it in person, our online panel event is listed as well.

The week is broken into three major parts:

1. The Ethereum SF Hackathon this weekend (Oct 5–7)
2. The Epicenter Conference on Monday-Tuesday (Oct 8–9)
3. The Crypto Economics Security Conference on Wednesday-Thursday (Oct 10–11).

We’ll be attending all of these events in different capacities, and here’s how you can meet the team or learn more about what we’re doing:

Friday Oct 5 – Sunday Oct 7: ETH SF

We love developing as much as you do so a number of NEAR team members will be participating in the ETH SF hackathon over the weekend. We won’t tell you our ideas yet… but we hope to see you there.

Tuesday Oct 9 @ 9am: (Talk) From Sharded Databases to Sharded Blockchains

NEAR CEO Alex Skidanov will be delivering a talk at the Epicenter Conference which dives into the details of what makes sharding difficult, how the lessons from the database world transfer to blockchain and why sharding on the state, in particular, is so important. The team will be on hand to answer questions.

You’ll need tickets to the conference for this but the video will be available afterward.

RSVP Here

Tuesday Oct 9 @ 3:30pm-5pm: (Hands-on Dev Workshop) Building & Deploying a Highly Scalable Smart Contract Game

NEAR Protocol powers a highly scalable, mobile-friendly decentralized app platform. In this workshop, NEAR Protocol’s co-founder Illia Polosukhin will walk the audience through the steps of building scalable smart contracts: from collectibles to interactive cross-contract game. The audience will then have a chance to compete in a competition to build the best AI smart contract for this game to win the most tokens.

Again, you’ll need tickets to the conference for this one.

RSVP Here

Tuesday Oct 9 @ 6:30pm-8:30pm: (Panel Discussion) ABC Spotlight: Sharding for Blockchain Scalability

This event is organized by ABC Blockchain Community, as part of the SF Blockchain Week and the Spotlight Program. Our spots are limited so RSVP today to secure your spot.

Join founders of Harmony, Quarkchain, MOAC and NEAR Protocol for a panel discussion on sharding including

• How sharding can solve blockchain scalability
• Mainstream sharding solutions and the differences between them
• Security challenges of current sharding solutions
• Sharding vs two-layer solution
• How to build industry grade database sharding & apply it to the blockchain

RSVP Here

Wednesday Oct 10 @ 5:30pm-8:00pm: (Panel Discussion) 500 Blockchain: State of Scaling — Latest Progress & Challenges

NEAR joins Oasis, Solana and Celer Network on stage to discuss scalability in a panel moderated by Bonnie Cheung from 500 Startups.

Scalability is undoubtedly one of the key roadblocks facing the public blockchains today. Since late 2017, we have seen an explosion in the number of new projects and highly-experienced developers looking to solve the scalability challenge from all angles. As we approach Q4 of 2018, where are we in terms of development, breakthroughs, and challenges?

Join us for a fun evening of information sharing & networking over drinks and nibbles!

In this panel discussion, you will learn:

• Latest developments & breakthroughs across scaling solutions
• Current challenges they are working on
• Key milestones for the next 6–12 months
• How new developers, founders, industry experts can get involved

RSVP Here

Thursday Oct 11 @ 9:00am-10:00am: (Online Panel Discussion) Blockchain Sharding Approaches (with Ethereum Foundation)

Moderated by Ivan Bogatyy from Metastable Capital

This event will have three teams dedicated to Ethereum sharding joining the stage with the NEAR team. The topics to be discussed include:

• The current state of sharding project development
• Current challenges with the various sharding approaches
• Key milestones and plans for next 6–12 months
• Sharding questions asked by moderator
• Sharding questions from the audience

The panel will include:

• Alex Skidanov & Illia Polosukhin who work on sharding at NEAR
• Justin Drake who works on sharding at Ethereum Foundation
• Preston Van Loon who works on sharding at Prysmatic Labs
• Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy & Ryan Lipscombe who work on sharding at Status.im / Nimbus

RSVP Here

Saturday Oct 13 @ 10:30am-12:30pm: (Talk) From Sharded Databases to Sharded Blockchains

In this workshop, NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin will walk the audience through…

1) What sharding is
2) Why sharding is important
3) What are the challenges with sharding
4) How to build and deploy a mobile-friendly game that runs on a sharded blockchain

The audience will then have a chance to take part in a competition to build the best AI smart contract for the game with a live scoreboard.

RSVP Here