🆕 New Series Launch: Rust Smart Contracts Introduction on NEAR 🦀

Kickstarting a brand-new playlist focused on the Rust basics you need before diving into smart contract development on NEAR! 👨‍💻

✏️ What you’ll get in this lesson:
🔴 How NEAR contract templates work
🔴 What #[near(contract_state)] does
🔴 Key Rust data types: String, bool, u8–u128
🔴 How to choose the right type for efficient storage

💯 Perfect for Rust & Web3 developers getting started!
📺 Watch the lesson here

🔖 Follow the series to build a solid Rust foundation before you start writing smart contracts on NEAR.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

New RPC Support for NEAR Builders 👨‍💻

The FastNear RPC sponsorship is now open — with full support from the NEAR Foundation and Infra Committee. Goal: Supporting Builders 🫰

Apply to get premium RPC access for free:
➕ Dev Plan ($69/mo): 10M requests/month
➕ Pro Plan ($199/mo): 36M requests/month
➕ Business Plan ($499/mo): 100M requests/month
➕ Archival + live RPC on Mainnet & Testnet
➕ Powered by Neardata.xyz (full historical data)
➕ Unlimited RPS, low latency, 100% uptime
🔣 More information about services here

Who can apply?
🟢 Pre-launch or newly launched projects
🟢 Small, innovative builder teams
🟢 Not previously funded by NEAR or Infra Committee
⏳ Support Duration: Up to 6 months

Build faster with FastNear RPC — production-grade access, now free for eligible teams ⚡️

🔣 Deadline: ~60 days left
🔣 Submit Now

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Rust Smart Contracts Introduction on NEAR — Lesson 2 🦀

Read-Only Functions & Public vs Private

Time to dive into smart contract logic! In this episode, we explore how functions work in NEAR contracts — including how to make them read-only, and when to use public vs private visibility 👀

✏️ What you’ll learn:
🔴 What functions do in NEAR smart contracts
🔴 How to write read-only (view) functions
🔴 The difference between pub and private functions
🔴 When and why to limit access to internal logic
🔴 Live demo: calling functions on a deployed contract

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Stay tuned — next up: writing mutable functions that modify contract state!

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

✉️ NEAR Dev News #73 is out!

📌 THIS WEEK’S FOCUS: RHEA Finance
DeFi 2.0 is here — airdrops, swaps, lending, cross-chain bridging, and AI-powered storage. All in one app. Built on NEAR.

🖥 Also inside:
⚪️ Cosmos Relayer goes live — IBC-style bridge from NEAR
⚪️ $886K+ earned via NEARN — 11 freelance bounties open
⚪️ Fork That Bootcamp returns Aug 18 — launch your own chain
⚪️ New Rust tutorials: data types, macros, functions
⚪️ Infra report: $570M+ in volume via Chain Signatures & Intents
⚪️ 320 $NEAR bounty — write beginner tutorials from code examples

🔥 NEAR DeFi isn’t dying. It’s scaling.

🔗 Read + subscribe: http://dev.near.org/newsletter
🔖 Available freelancing opportunities here

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🌟 NEAR Town Hall: August Edition

Join us for the next NEAR Town Hall featuring:
• Illia Polosukhin
• Everclear
• Rhea Finance
• ASIMOV Protocol
• NEAR DevHub

📌 Get foundation updates, ecosystem intel, and live demos from the builders shaping NEAR.

🗓 August 7 | 3 PM UTC

➡️ Set Reminder on YouTube | RSVP on Luma

House of Stake Alpha is LIVE on NEAR Mainnet! 🪙

The first version of House of Stake is here — giving the community hands-on access to governance mechanics and proposal workflows.
🟢 Lock your NEAR, stNEAR, or liNEAR for veNEAR
🟢 Delegate your voting power
🟢 Create and vote on proposals

The Agora team is gathering feedback, fixing bugs, and inviting endorsed delegates to publish their statements 💬
🔗 Try it out
✍️ Share feedback

⚠️ Note: During Alpha, proposals can't pass — it's a testing phase. Full launch planned for August 14 ⚠️

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

How to Run Localnet/Devnet on NEAR Protocol 🦀

Want to test smart contracts without touching mainnet? This step-by-step guide shows you how to set up your own localnet/devnet for NEAR — fast, private, and 100% free.

✏️ What you'll learn:
🔴 How NEAR localnet/devnet works
🔴 Tools & dependencies
🔴 How to run a local NEAR node
🔴 Useful commands & troubleshooting tips

💯 Perfect for smart contract + dApp developers.
📺 Watch the lesson here

🔖 Start testing locally today!

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Onboard users to NEAR in seconds 🚀

Forget seed phrases and browser extensions — with NEAR + Privy your users (or AI agents) can sign up via GitHub, Google, Discord & more ✨

AI devs, here’s the edge:
➕ Instant wallets for each user or agent
➕ Linked to familiar logins
➕ Platform credits → USDC

🔖 Special offer: NEAR Foundation & Infra Committee will cover up to 500K accounts (max 50K per project).

🔣 Read the docs
🔣 Apply for credits

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Migrate examples → tutorials ✍️

🏆 Prizes: 8 × 40 $NEAR (total 320 $NEAR)
⏳ Deadline: Aug 31, 2025, 00:00 UTC

How to join:
🟢 Pick an example (donation / coin-flip / factory / near-drop / advanced-xcc / upgrade & migrate / frontend + multiple / relayer)
🟢 Click "Edit this page" → turn it into a focused tutorial (1–2 pages: concept, trade-offs, tests)
🟢 Make a PR and share the link via the submission form

Useful links ➡️ Docs / Repo / Help
🔗 Details & Submission

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

DevRel tip: everything starts with the SDKs in the docs → Tap here! 😁

Rust Smart Contracts Introduction on NEAR — Lesson 3 🦀

Mutable Functions

Time to modify your smart contract state! In this episode, we break down what mutability means in Rust and how to use it effectively in NEAR contracts. You’ll learn the difference between read-only and mutable functions — and how to safely update your contract data 💥

✏️ What you’ll learn:
🔴 What mutability means in Rust
🔴 How to use mut and &mut self in NEAR contracts
🔴 Read-only vs mutable functions
🔴 Best practices for safely modifying state

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Stay tuned — more Rust smart contract tips and NEAR development best practices coming soon!

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

✉️ NEAR Dev News #74 is live!

📌 THIS WEEK’S FOCUS: Strawberry Computer
AI-powered, open-source tools for building personal devices & apps. Real-world demo: Near Ukraine Guild dashboard built in minutes via Berrry.app.

🖥 Also inside:
🔴 Freelance bounty — compare NEAR with another chain
🔴 $906K earned on NEARN — 18 open listings waiting
🔴 rpc .intea .rs — short, fast, free RPC endpoint (beta)
🔴 Rust tutorials — mutable functions + running localnet/devnet
🔴 The State of AI on NEAR — DCML, Agent Hub, Shade Agents & more
🔴 NEAR + Privy — instant wallets, no seed phrases (500K accounts covered)
🔴 House of Stake Alpha live — full launch Aug 14
🔴 Rotate NEAR wallet seed instantly in INTEAR

💥 NEAR is the blockchain for AI — from personal devices to autonomous agents.

🔗 Read + subscribe: http://dev.near.org/newsletter
🔖 Available freelancing opportunities here

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Rust Smart Contracts Introduction on NEAR — Lesson 4 🦀

Default & Initialization

When you deploy a NEAR smart contract, it starts empty — and if it’s not initialized, it can crash. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to set it up correctly from day one 💥

✏️ What you’ll learn:
🔴 Why smart contracts need initialization
🔴 Using impl Default for simple starting values
🔴 Creating custom initialization with #[init]
🔴 When to choose Default vs #[init]

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Stay tuned — more lessons on efficient and secure NEAR smart contract development are on the way.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🆕 Introducing “Attention” — by Illia Polosukhin

Why we need user-owned, verifiably private AI — and how blockchains can help us get there 💬

In this new newsletter, Illia shares high-level insights at the intersection of AI and Web3:
🔷 Risks of corporate-owned AI & centralization
🔷 Why open, decentralized AI matters for our future
🔷 How crypto can provide identity, governance, and payments for AI
🔷 Building a state-of-the-art, user-owned AI ecosystem

We’re at a fork in the road: AI can either serve corporate profit & control — or empower users & communities. Read more in "Attention" 👇

🔖 Subscribe & read

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🚨 New NDNA (#3) is live

1⃣ This week’s issue looks at how economic breakdowns can quietly kill blockchains — without a single hack or bug. Using Monero’s current “profitability attack” as a case study, we explore how misaligned incentives push out good actors, centralize control, and drain life from a network.

2⃣ From privacy coins to DeFi airdrops, the pattern is the same: when the people who take the biggest risks aren’t rewarded, trust erodes. And when trust erodes, ecosystems can fade into “zombie chains” — alive in code, dead in practice.

⏳ NDNA blog now drops on Mondays — with the Podcast & YouTube versions released on Tuesdays.

NDNA is an opinionated weekly newsletter and podcast looking at the news in and around the NEAR developer ecosystem.

🔈 Podcast | 📺 YouTube | 📰 Substack

New API Support for NEAR Builders 👨‍💻

The NearBlocks API sponsorship is now open — with support from the NEAR Foundation & Infrastructure Committee 🫰

Plans & limits:
🟢 Startup ($79/mo): 400K calls/month · 150 calls/min
🟢 Standard ($299/mo): 3M calls/month · 400 calls/min
🟢 Professional ($899/mo): 9M calls/month · 900 calls/min

What you get:
🟢 Commercial use allowed
🟢 Comprehensive NEAR blockchain data via REST APIs
🟢 Same source that powers the NearBlocks Explorer
🟢 Professionally maintained, high-performance infra (GET via HTTP/cURL)

➕ More information about NearBlocks

🔣 Deadline: ~45 days left
🔣 Submit Now

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🚨 New NDNA (#4) is live

🗯 Bridge hacks have drained billions — but the real killer might be baked into how bridges work. This week, we look at how NEAR Intents flips the script, making cross-chain swaps seamless… and possibly ending the hacker’s favorite payday.

🗯 One shift could link every major chain — and change how we think about moving value forever.

After this, you might never look at “bridging” the same way again 👀

NDNA is an opinionated weekly newsletter and podcast looking at the news in and around the NEAR developer ecosystem.

🔖 Step onto the other side of the bridge and see what’s waiting:
🔈 Podcast | 📺 YouTube | 📰 Substack