NEAR Foundation Funding Team Report: October 2022
NEAR FOUNDATION
November 23, 2022
Welcome to our Funding Team Report that captures and highlights data  for the month of October 2022. The purpose of this document is to provide transparency regarding our Funding Team’s activities last month, and is to be shared publicly to the NEAR ecosystem and our investor network.

Summary 

1. Grant data

1.1. Approved Grant program data

1.2. Grant highlights

1.3 Completed projects & Milestone data

1.4 Effectiveness of the funding program

2. External funding in the NEAR Ecosystem

3. Ecosystem highlights

1. Grant data
1.1. Approved Grant Program data
Data reflects projects that have applied for a Grant via the Grants Program and that have been signed by the NEAR Foundation during the month of October (01.10.2022 to 31.10.2022).

 *Note: all applications have been processed.

General Grant data

Applications received*   📥	Grant Agreements signed   ✅	Conversion rate	Average Grant Amount	Committed amount in dollars 💵
141	14	8.5%	$40 K	$564 K 
Grant tracks**

Activation (up to $10 K)	3
Builder (up to $50 K)	8
Advanced Builder (up to $100 K)	3
** For more information please have a look at our grant tracks.

Grants per category 

NFTs                                 5

Infrastructure / Wallets             3

Social Impact                        1

Institutional / Financial            1

Gaming / Metaverse                   1

DAOs                                                 1

Other                                2

Grants per country (Top 5)

United States                3

United Kingdom               3

Switzerland                  1

Singapore                     1

Thailand                      1

1.2. Grant highlights 
This section provides highlights of grants that have been signed during the month.

NFT projects 

KINO	website	Advanced Builder	United States
Disrupting Hollywood by allowing retail to invest in film making, create experiences for token holders and collectives. Founded by an Executive Producer who has sold shows with Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel, and a 3x Tech Founder (USC Law/London School of Economics) whose last web3 startup reached over 500k holders and $500m mcap. 

KwikTrust	website	Builder 	United Kingdom
The Platform allows for easy, self-certified and third-party validation of files, with the results stored securely on a blockchain, creating an irrefutable record of activity. This will increase trust and transparency in the NEAR NFT space and be a platform for existing and upcoming NFTs.

Endless	website	Builder 	Thailand
Web3 gaming launchpad and building SDKs for gaming developers. The team has plenty of experience building web3 gaming platforms with their current company called Playfix

Haus Passport	website	Builder 	United Kingdom
Data base on the NEAR blockchain that acts as a repository for information relating to a property, like a passport for a house. The goal is to provide a transparent platform to make buying and selling houses simpler, safer and quicker.

NFT.HipHop	website	Builder 	United States
NFT.HipHop is being developed to be the primary destination for all Hip Hop-centric NFT/Web3 projects. The founder is deeply rooted within the NEAR Ecosystem and aims to bring his existing large web2 community in the Hip Hop space to NEAR.

Infrastructure / Wallets projects 

Blockversekit	website	Advanced Builder	Spain
NFT Analytics tool that allows tracking of held NFTs and provides updates for  upcoming mints and collections, with the focus on approaching the communities and people about NEAR. Strong connection with the TENK Bay and drives NFT growth within NEAR. 

MAP Protocol	website	Builder 	Singapore
MAP Protocol is an omnichain layer of Web3 with highly secure cross-chain communication built upon light-client and zk-SNARK technology. MAP Protocol connects both EVM & non-EVM chains, extending the EVM layer with pre-compiled smart contracts of destination chains seamlessly.

NEARBlocks	website	Builder 	Indonesia 
NEARBlocks features optimisations being provided by Invoker Labs.

Institutional / Financial projects 

Datality 	website	Activation	United States
Datality brings trust and safety to connect researchers with research data providers. A two-sided data marketplace with blockchain as the transparent layer of trust.

Social Impact projects 

Aidonic	website	Builder 	Switzerland 
AIDONIC offers digital cash and voucher assistance, powered by NEAR and by ensuring end-to-end transparency, cost- and speed efficiency and accountability for social fundraising and last-mile aid distribution.


DAO’s

Community Health Analytics	website	Builder 	United Kingdom
Provide insights for the Near Ecosystem that improves its ability to collaborate effectively and operate thriving communities thanks to predictive indicators of viability as well as diagnostic tools for DAO Communities. 

Gaming / Metaverse projects 

Pixudi 	website	Builder 	Montenegro
Pixudi is an NFT based blockchain project where a traditional race board game meets Heroes of Magic mechanics. It is more than a game, it’s bridge from the real world of board games to the blockchain world of NFT based on DAO mechanics.

Other projects 

Decent.land	website	Activation	Netherlands
Modular collection of social and identity protocols. Developers can use part of all of the stack for anything from adding social features to deploying a fully decentralized, token-aware web3 social network. decent.land is built using Arweave for permanent storage and NEAR for user-facing contracts.

EV Initiative	website	Activation	Canada
EV charging network in the Americas with a web3 value creation mechanism for the drivers. Team has installed over 100 charging slots in the last six months and plans to integrate NEAR for settlements while increasing the installation of charging stations.

1.3 Completed projects & Milestone data 
Grant agreements are structured with milestones. Depending on the selected grant track, a grant can have from 1 to 5 milestones. For more information the funding team invites you to explore our milestone guide. 

Projects having completed a milestone  ☑️	53
Projects having completed final milestone ✅	9
Projects completed per category 

Infrastructure / Wallets             3

Gaming / Metaverse                   3

DAOs                   1

Other                                2

Infrastructure / Wallets projects 

MyNearWallet	website 	Advanced Builder	Switzerland 
An inheritor of the official NEAR wallet. The most well-known and feature filled web wallet for the NEAR Ecosystem.

BytePay	website 	Builder 	China
Coding to earn, sell open-source product as NFT. BytePay is a platform that supports paid tasks to complete open-source projects on Github. Not only can you  code to earn but also sell open-source product as NFT.

NEAR Blockchain Event Webhooks	website	Builder 	United Kingdom 
The development of an MVP for a NEAR blockchain event push notification service. DApp developers would be able to subscribe to their contract events in their backend without having to implement their own indexer, instead implementing webhook endpoints to which this service would push updates.

Gaming / Metaverse projects

Reality NEAR	/ 	Advanced Builder	United States
Reality Near is a multi-metaverse that will combine Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies so that users can experience their different enhanced realities like never before.

MeowRush	website 	Builder	/
MeowRush is a PVP multiplayer game on the NEAR blockchain with different tournament modes: Race, Battle Royale, Obstacles, and Arcade. MeowRush is going to be integrated into the Meowverse metaverse with a Multi-chain ecosystem.

Glory Games Worlds	website 	Builder	Singapore
GameFi for the masses, built on their own native Unreal game engine  with Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality engine.

DAO’s

Mute DAO 	website 	Builder	United Kingdom
Mute is building a safe and secure community that focuses on protecting members of the crypto community by providing accurate and up-to-date information on projects, risk assessments, and education. 

Other projects

SharpShark 	website 	Builder 	Netherland
SharpShark is a WEB3 copyright protection service that helps businesses protect and monetize their textual, visual, and other copyrightable content.

Double	website 	Builder 	United States
A decentralized co-op platform for AMM liquidity providing that will double LP investors’ return on invested capital while at the same time boost liquidity for projects’ tokens.

1.4 Effectiveness of the funding program  
Total external funding (overall amount) came from projects that have received a grant (around 40%).

2. External funding in the NEAR Ecosystem
This section provides information about external funding in the NEAR ecosystem

2 closed projects in Q4 ‘22 – ($6.2M)
2 finalizing rounds
20 new fundraising processes kicked off 
22 VC intros made
Closed Rounds (Quarter-to-Date)

EmpireDAO – Raised a $2.8m seed round with participation from NEAR Foundation to build a global community starting with a flagship location in NYC. Please stop by the NEAR space at EmpireDAO if you are ever in NYC! 
t2.world – Raised a $3.4m seed round led by Inflection and Archetype to empower readers and writers to grow their communities in the Web3 space.
3. Ecosystem highlights  
NEARWEEK is the one-stop-shop for all NEAR related news. Each weekly newsletter and edition is made possible via news contributions from the NEARWEEK community to the NEWS DAO. Subscribe or visit NEARWEEK.com to get your weekly dose of news from the NEARverse!

For the month of October we invite you to read through the following newsletters : 

Newsletter 78 

Newsletter 79 

Newsletter 80

Newsletter 81