NEAR Foundation PR Roundup for March
NEAR FOUNDATION
March 31, 2023
The NEAR ecosystem is ending March on several extremely high notes, from partnerships and community events to unfolding initiatives. 

NEAR strengthened its India and Southeast Asia presence, widened its gaming footprint — and of course, introduced the Blockchain Operating System (BOS). 

Here are all the key happenings from a massive March.

NEAR unveils itself as the Blockchain Operating System (BOS)
Coindesk broke the biggest news of March, announcing NEAR as the Blockchain Operating System (BOS) at ETHDenver. NEAR will now be the common layer for browsing and discovering open web experiences in an industry-first category. The BOS makes NEAR the entry point for both web2 and web3, enabling easy web3 access and navigation for users and devs.

The BOS adds composable frontends to NEAR’s tech stack, simplifying onboarding and enhancing development from a collection of over 1,800 components. In only a few lines of code, builders from any ecosystem can create custom components and benefit from quick onboarding to help construct their web3 applications.

“The iOS provides developers a place to show their app in front of billions of users, and it gives them all the services and the infrastructure underneath to build,” NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin told CoinTelegraph. “We’re trying to give the platform underneath and let developers build.”

An alpha version of the BOS is now available for both users and developers to test at alpha.nearpages.wpengine.com.

Near at ETHDenver Highlights: the BOS, NEAR Day, and more
Exciting times for NEAR at ETHDenver, with a capacity crowd and jam-packed NEAR booth as the ecosystem engaged with builders from around the world. NEAR’s presence included a range of, including OnMachina on Web3 storage, Keypom for Web3 onboarding, and the Sweat Economy. Not to mention the BOS being first introduced to the world by Illia.

Let’s also not forget the over 1,000 people in attendance for NEAR Day, a one-day mini-summit for all things NEAR. Other big highlights out of ETHDenver included premium NFT platform Few & Far raising $30 million, the very first session unveiling the BOS, and Flowcarbon’s new carbon-market ecosystem built on the NEAR blockchain.

Arpit Sharma joins as Managing Director for eastward expansion
March also saw the appointment of Arpit Sharma as the Managing Director for India, South East Asia, and the Middle East regions. His focus will be on expanding the NEAR ecosystem’s presence in those regions, bringing a wealth of experience and expertise from a wide array of industries, solutions, and use cases.

Sharma’s web3 experience extends from the metaverse and NFTs to supply chain tracking and stablecoins. He sees enormous potential in regions and countries like India and the Middle East, believing that Web3 can be used to connect, collaborate and change the world. Regional hubs in India, Vietnam, and Korea should see a huge boost with Sharma on board.

Korean web3 gaming in focus with BORA and WEMADE 
Next, NEAR set its sights firmly on the Korean gaming sector as Yahoo! Finance reported a new partnership with BORA gaming, the first of two such agreements. A subsidiary of METABORA, the two will explore new frontiers of web3 adoption in Asia and beyond. Both entities are affiliated with Kakao Games and bring a wealth of IP and gaming expertise into NEAR’s orbit.

Together, NEAR and METABORA will work to identify global IP-based web3 joint ventures. This means leveraging BORA’s existing gaming catalog and future development capabilities to bring fun and interactive web3 games to the world. And per Business Insider, the NEAR Korean Hub should be an enormous beneficiary as the partnership progresses.

On top of that, MarketWatch reported the new relationship between NEAR and global web3 gaming company WEMADE, also based out of South Korea. The partnership will leverage WEMAKE’s over 20 years of experience in the gaming industry, as well as its WEMIX 3.0 mainnet for advanced blockchain services.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with WEMADE as part of our shared vision towards a decentralized future for the gaming industry,” added Marike Flament, CEO of NEAR. “By joining forces, we are confident in our ability to accelerate the development of cutting-edge solutions that meet the growing needs of gamers and developers in the web3 space.”

Popp’s web3 customer engagement platform launches on NEAR
Finally, small-to-medium-sized business owners are about to get exciting new tools for customer engagement using web3 and NEAR. Popp, a web3 customer engagement solution-as-a-service, announced that it will launch its white-label service exclusively on NEAR.

Popp lets businesses set up micro-tasks called “Popps,” which reward users when completed. Actions like retweets and reviews are rewarded with Popp’s native token that can be redeemed for vouchers, discounts, experiences, and more.

March was certainly a whirlwind month for NEAR, with the BOS taking the ecosystem into the next era of web3 usability. And not to mention NEAR Day at ETHDenver being a rousing success. NEAR will continue to forge ahead at full steam in April, but if we missed anything that happened in March the community should hear about, don’t hesitate to let us know!