NEAR Rallies After $350 Million Fundraise and USN Stablecoin Announcement

NEAR Rallies

Welcome back to the Tribe! In this post we dive into the recent NEAR Rallies!

Nothing should be considered investment or financial advice. Enjoy the ride!

NEAR Rallies

Layer one blockchain solution Near rallied over the past few weeks following two hefty fundraisers in January and April. The token’s price is approaching an all-time high region for the first time since January 2022.

Near’s price surge could also be connected to news about a native stablecoin expected to go live this April. The stablecoin dubbed $USN will arrive with incentives like high APY’s, similar to Terra’s UST on the Anchor protocol.

Layer One Sharding Blockchain Pumps After $350 Million Raise

Bloomberg reported that layer one blockchain network Near recently closed a funding round worth a hefty $350 million. According to the report published on Thursday (April 6, 2022), the round was led by crypto-focused venture capitalist outfit Tiger Global.

Following the raise, Near’s market price skyrocketed to around $19 dollars. The token’s all-time high sits at $20.60, per data from popular analytics tool TradingView. However, Near experienced a retrace going into the weekend after Bitcoin dipped back to $42,300.

Near is an L1 decentralized network that supposedly delivers improved scalability, optimized throughput, and a developer-friendly ecosystem by leveraging cloud computing resources. Also, the blockchain solution uses an in-house custom-built consensus mechanism dubbed Doomslug.

In addition, Near purportedly achieves better throughput compared to other layer one blockchains by deploying a technology known as Nightshade. Nightshade allows shards in Near’s network to production fractions of blocks, instead of the whole block. This way, a group of validators can verify multiple transactions in parallel using sharded networks.

At the helm, the protocol has a plethora of experienced team leads including Wall Street veteran Erik Trautman, ex-Google engineer Illia Poluskin, and former Microsoft computer scientist Alexander Skidanov.

Near’s latest $350 million fundraise comes a few months after another bumper cash injection earlier in the year. Back in January, the protocol raise a staggering $150 million from investors within the crypto space

The significant fundraisers are supposedly geared towards expanding Near’s ecosystem, providing an improved suite of tools for decentralized application (Dapp) development, and also building support for non fungible tokens (NFTs).

Furthermore, the fresh cash injection comes on the heels of news regarding a native stablecoin dubbed USN.

Near’s Algorithmic Stablecoin USN Goes Live On April 20th

Indeed, Near plans to launch its own native stablecoin before the end of April, as confirmed by Zorax Capital founder Zoran Kole via a Substack article. An excerpt from the post reads:

“…on April 20th, Near will announce the launch of their own native algorithmic stablecoin $USN in partnership with other well-capitalized stablecoins. They will offer an extremely attractive ~20% APR, which will ignite DeFi capital rotation into the Near ecosystem, siphoning the total value locked from other alternative layer-one protocols.”

Kole also highlighted that Near’s USN plans are reminiscent of UST, the native stablecoin of Terra’s ecosystem. Considering the exponential growth Terra experienced after launching UST, Kole opined that Near could also benefit from a similar process and possibly double in terms of market capitalization before the year runs out.

Other News – UK FCA Press Release

An announcement by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) shows that the body has launched a three-year strategy to enhance outcomes for consumers. This measure includes an aggressive clampdown on firms that fail to meet the authority’s standards.