NEAR Infrastructure Committee: First Year Recap & 2025 Priorities

From decentralized RPC infrastructure, to onchain funding processes, the Infrastructure Committee has been busy preparing for user owned AI.

The NEAR Infrastructure Committee (IC), established in April 2024, has played a pivotal role in enhancing the NEAR environment through a transparent and sustainable approach. The committee has effectively guided technical resources, funding, and attention toward addressing critical issues and fostering innovation within the NEAR ecosystem.

As the demands of the ecosystem evolve, especially in artificial intelligence and chain abstraction, the IC is preparing to actively fund developments in infrastructure innovation. Reflecting on a transformative 2024, the IC is laying a solid technological foundation for NEAR’s future.

Throughout its first eight months, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee has emerged as the most frequently used open grant source in the ecosystem. Embodied by the community slogan, “infra not infra-ing,” this initiative emerged in response to pressing concerns within the network’s infrastructure.

Comprising technical leads such as Bowen Wang of NEAR One, Alex Shevchenko of Aurora, Eric Winer of Pagoda, Vlad Frolov of NEAR DevHub, and Evgeny Kuzyakov of FastNEAR, the committee operates with administrative support from the NEAR Foundation and DevHub contributors.

Having reviewed 99 proposals in 2024, the committee approved 24, thus profoundly influencing the evolution of the ecosystem. Among the notable achievements were the advancement of wallet infrastructure, the transition of RPC services to decentralized providers, the onboarding of analytics companies, and the funding of innovative initiatives.

The committee extended support to key wallets, including NEAR Mobile Wallet, HERE Wallet, Nightly Wallet, and Meteor Wallet, thereby enabling innovations such as the HOT Wallet from HERE Wallet and the Harvest Moon release from Meteor Wallet.

Moreover, decentralized RPC services were shifted to companies like Lava, FastNEAR, and BlockPi, ultimately improving the network’s reliability and response times.

In addition to contributing to the Pagoda Sunset transition, which saw critical services being moved to community-driven alternatives, further contributions included funding analytics tools such as NEARBlocks, Token Terminal, and Chainspect.

Other innovative projects supported by the IC were a Mastercard under the NEAR brand and a self-service treasury app developed by DevHub in collaboration with Mercuryo. Utilizing the DevHub portal product, the committee has established an on-chain fundraising mechanism for submissions.

Looking ahead to 2025, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee will prioritize proactive ecosystem creation and ongoing enhancement. It will continue supporting infrastructure developments initiated in 2024, such as analytics tools and wallet enhancements.

To inspire proactive innovation, the committee will establish working groups to handle accounts, evaluate ideas, and create RFPs. This adjustment aims to ensure that development aligns with the emerging needs of the ecosystem.

Improving wallet infrastructure to facilitate seamless interactions between NEAR and other blockchain ecosystems, including Solana, is a top priority for 2025. This involves supporting single sign-on solutions, on-ramps, and off-ramps.

The committee will also fund tools for chain abstraction like multichain explorers, oracles, and support for Omnitoken and Omnibalance. Recognizing the potential of decentralized artificial intelligence, the IC is prioritizing basic infrastructure to enable use cases in this domain.

This proactive strategy complements NEAR’s broader aim of fostering scalability and innovation. Notably, external partnerships like NEAR Protocol’s one with Zero1 Labs help to augment the committee’s work.

As reported earlier by CNF, Zero1 Labs collaborates with NEAR to support builders and grassroots teams in decentralized artificial intelligence through hackathons and community projects.

By equipping developers with scalable blockchain infrastructure and strong community assistance, this alliance furthers NEAR’s dedication to decentralized innovation.

Meanwhile, the NEAR token is trading at around $5.16 at the time of writing, indicating a 2.66% correction over the last 24 hours and a 25.67% drop over the last 30 days.