Share this article
Near Protocol Offers $800M in Grants in Bid for DeFi Mindshare
Amid a spree of mammoth layer 1 incentive programs, Near has raised the bar in sheer size.
Updated May 11, 2023, 3:38 p.m. Published Oct 25, 2021, 9:45 p.m.
While the Fantom, Harmony, Avalanche and Celo blockchains have all launched nine-figure ecosystem development funds, Near may be setting a new high-water mark with the launch of a mammoth $800 million grants fund.
The high-speed and self-styled “climate neutral” chain announced Monday that it has established the fund with major tranches earmarked for specific purposes, including:
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
- $250 million in ecosystem grants that will be distributed over four years
- A regional fund of $100 million
- $100 million specifically for startups
Additionally, decentralized finance (DeFi) is a major focus of the program, with a devoted $350 million fund from Proximity Labs. A newly formed “DeFi DAO” will govern how those funds are spent, and protocols will be able to apply for liquidity mining programs via the DAO. Proximity is a group of early Near contributors that spun out of the parent company as an independent entity with funding from the Near Foundation.
Near readies for prime time
In an interview with CoinDesk, Near co-founder Illia Polosukhin said the program has already distributed $45 million in funds this year, with a particular focus on early stage ecosystem building blocks.
“A lot of the projects so far have been infrastructure,” Polosukhin said. “Croncat allows the ability to send transactions at different times, Cartosis is testing smart contracts – so supporting new programming languages, supporting storage, so a lot of it was, ‘What are the building blocks we need to unlock exponential composability?’”
📣 Early #NEARCON Announcement! 💥
— NEAR Protocol (@NEARProtocol) October 25, 2021
Learn more about @NEARProtocol's $800M Global Ecosystem Fund. 🔽https://t.co/00UaiA3jC1
Earlier in October, ecosystem project Aurora raised $12 million to enable Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contracts on the Near blockchain, in what may be the first step towards a full DeFi ecosystem.
Read more: NEAR’s Aurora Raises $12M to Expand Ethereum Layer 2 Network
“Before there was the feeling that you had to pull the ecosystem, but now the ecosystem is pulling you,” Polosukhin said. “Now it’s time for the DeFi money legos spawn.”
Near launched in April 2020 following token sales from high-profile backers including Andreessen Horowitz and Pantera Capital.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Solana’s Drift Launches v3, With 10x Faster Trades
With v3, the team says that about 85% of market orders will fill in under half a second, and liquidity will deepen enough to bring slippage on larger trades down to around 0.02%.
What to know:
- Drift, one of the largest perpetuals trading platforms on Solana, has launched Drift v3, a major upgrade meant to make on-chain trading feel as fast and smooth as using a centralized exchange.
- The new version will deliver 10-times faster trade execution thanks to a rebuilt backend, marking the largest performance jump the project has made so far.
Top Stories
