The NEAR Foundation launched the Infrastructure Committee, funding $4 million to strengthen key infrastructure, decentralize decision-making and streamline efforts, with half of the budget still available.
The NEAR protocol has seen significant growth in users and transactions in recent months. To ensure the smooth functioning and expansion of projects and founders, the NEAR Foundation has launched the Infrastructure Committee. With $4 million in funding allocated to 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, relays, indexers, bridges, wallets, load balancers, and oracles. It is critical that these components function properly and seamlessly integrate with the DEX tools. The committee’s main goals are to decentralize decision-making, improve 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, Aurora Web 3.0 Wallet support services, the development of the Treasury App for steering committees, and the audit of Ledger integrations. Additionally, the committee actively manages legacy projects such as Aurora RPC SpeedUp and Meteor’s MyNEARWallet support.
With more than half of the $4 million budget still available, the committee is inviting the community to propose innovative infrastructure projects. Some proposed designs include faster RPC nodes, specific common endpoints to replace broad RPC requests, new bridges to improve cross-chain transactions, ICANN-compliant DNS and top-level domain extensions, and focused relayers to support gas without and other specialized needs of repeaters.
The committee encourages community members, including NEAR founders, developers, and enthusiasts, to contribute their ideas, suggestions, and feedback to improve the foundations of NEAR technology. The current Infrastructure Committee consists of ecosystem leaders, NEAR partners, and various members from NEAR’s core organizations.
To ensure transparency and public engagement, the commission has established clear processes for tracking and openly discussing proposals. The community can review the public proposal tracking document and participate in public discussions, including Request for Proposal (RFP) notices. 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 is provided on how to submit proposals. The mandate and infrastructure charter and working group details offer additional information about 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 disruptions. The development of a Blockchain Operating System (BOS) based proposal management application 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 that the blockchain can handle the expected increase in traffic as more users join the ecosystem. Those interested in participating on the Infrastructure Committee can join the working group discussion on GitHub to collaborate on initiatives, discuss proposals and RFPs, or ask questions.
In conclusion, the launch of the NEAR Protocol Infrastructure Committee with $4 million in funding demonstrates its commitment to strengthening core infrastructure and supporting the success of NEAR projects. With the ability to engage the community and fund innovative infrastructure projects, NEAR is poised for further growth and scalability.
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