Expert Review

Review and Rating

NEAR Protocol Execution Review and SVET Rating
SVET Execution (Solution – Validity – Equity – Team)

Solution: Firstly, what is NEAR Protocol? Let’s start getting acquainted with NEAR Protocol from the project website. The first thing that we learn opening the project website is a brief definition of the project mission. In a nutshell “Reimagine your world”. On the website you can find all necessary information about the project for developers, founders, creators and for just interested people. It is clearly fast to find any information on the website. It is worth highlighting the detailed description of how NEAR Protocol works and how to start building on NEAR. You can get acquainted with all this information in the section “NEAR DOCS”. In addition, NEAR has own blog where you can find the latest news about the project.
So, what is NEAR and how does it work, and how will it develop and grow? Briefly, the following statement can describe the essence of the project “NEAR is a collective, a foundation, and a development platform built on a new layer-one blockchain”-[1], or NEAR Protocol is a dapp that focuses on usability among developers and users. NEAR was created as a competitor of Etherium, Near Protocol is a proof-of-stake blockchain and smart-contract capable. According to devolopers of NEAR Protocol, the project roadmap is: Developer friendly (ability to write contracts using common languages such as Rust or AssemblyScript); Get Paid (developers receive 30% of the fees their contracts generate); Limitless Scalability (NEAR’s sharded infrastructure scales infinitely with low, stable gas fees); Built-in Bridges (Move assets, contracts, and data seamlessly between Ethereum or Polkadot); Go green (certified climate-neutral blockchain); Super-Fast (transfer tokens instantly between NEAR accounts). The roadmap is been already realized. NEAR holders have access to staking with an average yield of 10% per years with capitalization. The main flow of income comes from commission for transactions.
Solution rating – b+

Validity: Determining the corporate existence of NEAR, there were no problems with finding necessary information. Relevant information is posted on The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website and on Crunchbase website.
According to The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the launch date – 1 July 2018, the legal name is Near Inc., place of incorporation is state DELAWARE, Date of registration is 2019-07-10, headquarters address is 181 2nd street San Francisco, company type – for profit, operating status - active. In addition, the company is also registered in Switzerland and in Panama. Founders of the company – Alexander Skidanov, Illia Polushkin. [2]
Validity rating – a

Equity: Native token of Near Protocol is NEAR. The supply of NEAR is 1 billion tokens. Overall allocation of NEAR tokens: 17.2% - Community Grants, Programs; 11.4% - Operating Grants; 10.0% - Founation Endowment; 11.7% - Early ecosystem; 14.0% - Core Contribution; 17.6% - Backers; 6.1% - Small Backers; 12.0% - Community sale. [3] Currently, Total Value Locked (TVL) is $426.24M or 29,78 million NEAR. [4]
Near Protocol had 8 funding rounds, as a result of which the company received funding from 36 investors a total funding amount over 8 rounds is $533.7M. [5] The latest funding was raised on April 7, 2022. First two rounds (Pre Seed round and Venture round) were not success, the company did not receive funding; the 3rd and the 4th rounds (Series A round and venture round) allowed to the company raised in total $33.2M funding; the 5th round (venture round) was failed, the company did not manage to receive any funding; the 6th round (ICO) allowed to raise $150M; the 7th round (Secondary Market) was unsuccessful, there was no raised funding; the latest round (Funding round) allowed to the company to get $350M. There is no sense to list all investors as the list is long there must be mentioned key investors, whose share is the most significant in total amount funding. Tiger Global Management is an investment firm that deploys capital globally in both public and private markets. FTX is cryptocurrency derivatives Exchange Company. Hashed is one of the most influential groups in blockchain coming from Korea. In addition, Near Protocol announced funding initiatives to accelerate growth, amount of funding is $800M of which $100M will be allocated to Startup grants pool, some $250M will be allocated to helping existing projects, the remaining $100 millions will be allocated to community regions.[6]
Equity rating – a

Team: There are 143 people in the Near Protocol team. As it was mentioned earlier, founders of Near Protocol are Ilya Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov. Both had recommended yourself as great developers in past. Alexander Skidanov is a former Microsoft software developer and former CTO of Memphis specializing in distributed databases, furthermore Alexander won a gold medal at the ICPC in 2008. Ilya is a former technical director of Google's renowned research division, he was also an ICPC finalist in 2008. The core team of the company consists of 12 people including Alexander and Ilya, there are five more people who took part in ICPC, in particular Evgeny Kuzyakov – ICPC gold medal 2008, Alexander Kouprin – ICPC Bronze Medal (2014), Evgeny Kapun – ICPC worls champion (2009, 2012). The team is balanced and well organized with qualified specialists from various countries. [7]
Among other things, every member of the core team has accounts on Linkedin and on Twitter. This fact says about the communicative skills that is extremely useful in communication with investors. The official account of the company on Linkedin has more than 5 487 followers and on Twitter, the number of followers is more than 382,6 thousand. Moreover, the project has its own YouTube channel where 12,1 thousand followers, YouTube channel is very informative and active. The most prominent person is Illia Polosukhin, he always takes part in interviews and has an impressive number of followers on Twitter 38,3 thousand followers. Also, you can find interview with Alexander Skidanov but now he focused on developing NEAR. To summarize, the team actively appears on social networks, in particular, you can find information about them on Twitter and Linkedin (although not all of them).
Team rating – b+

References:
1. Near Protocol website https://near.org/
2. NEAR DOCS https://docs.near.org/docs/develop/basics/getting-started
3. YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/NEARProtocol/videos
4. Crunchbase https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/near-0565
5. Dealroom https://app.dealroom.co/companies/near_protocol/portfolio
6. SEC https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1778561
7. SEC NEAR Inc https://sec.report/CIK/0001778561
8. SEC Near Foundation https://sec.report/CIK/0001798896
9. Near Protocol Foundation https://sec.report/CIK/0001785955
10. Near Linkdein https://www.linkedin.com/company/near-protocol-project/about/
11. NEAR Protocol twitter https://twitter.com/nearprotocol
12. DeFi Llama https://defillama.com/chain/Near


Quotes:
[1] NEAR Protocol Website https://near.org/
[2] SEC US https://sec.report/CIK/0001778561
[3] NearDocs https://docs.near.org/docs/develop/basics/getting-started
[4] DeFi Llama https://defillama.com/chain/Near
[5] Crunchbase https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/near-0565
[6] NEAR Protocol Website https://near.org/
[7] NEAR Protocol Website https://near.org/