The NEAR Blockchain Operating System is Coming to Consensus

Recently, at the NEAR Day event during ETHDenver, NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin made a major announcement: Near is becoming the industry’s first Blockchain Operating System (BOS).

With all of the exciting news coming from NEAR Day, more announcements are expected to come as NEAR heads to Consensus next month. As the world’s largest and longest-running crypto gathering, Consensus brings an environment for devs, VCs, founders, policymakers and other industry participants to share in their community.

NEAR will be at Consensus for three days of talks, panels, demos and side events to present its vision of a multi-chain future through the Blockchain Operating System.

The introduction of a Blockchain Operating System is the next step in NEAR’s mission of onboarding the next billion users to the open web. NEAR started on this journey by developing a straightforward, high powered L1 blockchain with accounts and transactions that were human-readable and designed for end users, not just developers. NEAR’s L1 blockchain was inclusively designed for the entire developer community by creating smart contract compatibility with the widely used programming language JavaScript.

Now, the move to a Blockchain Operating System brings mass adoption one step closer. To bring exposure to projects offering real-world utility, and to create a more streamlined discovery experience for users, NEAR’s move to a Blockchain Operating System puts Web3 user experience at the forefront of its design. In many ways, by creating an easy and accessible entry point for developers and end users alike, NEAR has opened the world of Web3 to mainstream adoption.

The new design will also provide significant benefit to developers. Forkable components provide a streamlined approach for developers to build more efficiently, simple app discovery for end users creates a more accessible Web3, and Web3 social networking lets people reclaim their identities. But the Blockchain Operating System doesn’t stop there. The new opportunities presented by NEAR are virtually unlimited and are primed to onboard the next billion users and builders to a more open and free internet.

For developers, NEAR will be hosting workshops and coding sessions to help get you up to speed on building widgets within the BOS, creating interfaces and forking components. For end users, NEAR experts will host a guided tour of the Blockchain Operating System and its new ways to discover Web3 apps and experiences.

In addition to builders and users, NEAR will also host opportunities for projects and protocols, both on NEAR and within the broader multi-chain universe. For NEAR-based projects, the team will be lifting up apps and experiences through its ecosystem showcase.

For early-stage NEAR projects and projects looking to tap into the Blockchain Operating System, NEAR will be searching for new projects to join the NEAR Web3 Accelerator program. Learn how to apply to W3C Accelerator for resources like funding and other support directly from the team.

Speaker and Side Events:

On the NEAR Blockchain Operating System, anyone can build and create without limits. For more information about the Blockchain Operating System, read the recent announcement blog, or test it out yourself on alpha.near.org.