NEAR 2019 Year in Review

We are excited to share with you our NEAR 2019 Year in Review. The year has passed at an accelerating speed, filled with events, community programs and lots of engineering work. We planted the seeds of a now growing global collective and iterated most of NEAR's sharding design. While continuously marching towards mainnet, we want to take a moment to look back at NEAR 2019 Highlights. 

Content

• We launched our Whiteboard Series, which features a collection of over 30 deep-dives into various blockchain protocols.
• With finalising NEAR’s design, we started our Lunch & Learn Series on YouTube, providing a deep dive into the underlying mechanisms of NEAR protocol. 
• Alex was live coding core features of the NEAR Protocol in October.

Research

• Nightshade: Near Protocol Sharding Design
• Near Protocol Randomness Beacon
• Fast Finality and Resilience to Long Range Attacks with Proof of Space-Time and Casper-like Finality Gadget
• Doomslug: block confirmation with single round of communication, and a finality gadget with guaranteed liveness

Events

Throughout 2019, we attended, spoke at and hosted over 50 meetups and discussions. Locations included: Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, London, San Francisco, San Jose, San Mateo, Oakland, Beijing, Shanghai, Boston, and Sydney.

• ETH New York: we hosted two great panels and participated in more. Access some of the recordings here. 
• Alex spoke at Web3 about the challenges of sharding.
• We hosted several events during and after DevCon. 
• Check-out our events at San Francisco Blockchain Week!

Community

We launched three unique community programs to support mission-aligned engagement, research, projects, and development. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who got involved!

• Stakewars: Our incentivised testnet program; access overview and updates.
• The Ambassador Program: Formalising community-driven contributions.
• The Beta Program: Providing projects that are building on NEAR with engineering and fundraising support.

Join our mailing list to hear about important developments and to learn when we’re going to be in a city near you. [caption id="attachment_2817" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Our year in a gif -- Goku going super Saiyan.[/caption]

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Join us: there are new jobs we’re hiring for across the board! If you want to work with one of the most talented teams in the world right now to solve incredibly hard problems, check out our careers page for openings. And tell your friends! Learn more about NEAR in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, joining the conversation on Discord and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox. https://upscri.be/633436/