✉️ NEAR Dev News #80 — The Last Weekly

80 issues in, and this is our last weekly drop. From here, we’re moving to a monthly format 📆

🗯 THIS WEEK’S FOCUS: NEAR DevHub
Builders first. Tooling, standards, examples, news — the backbone of NEAR’s developer stack.

🖥 Also inside:
🟢 Open Call for Proposals: Public Goods for NEAR Protocol
🟢 NEARN — $2.5M+ earned, 17 gigs open
🟢 NEAR for Backend Devs
🟢 NEAR Treasury goes multichain
🟢 NEAR Time Machine
🟢 Templar mainnet
🟢 Intents = the end of complicated UX

🗯 Thank you for riding along every week. Next stop: monthly, sharper, stronger.

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

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

NEAR Keeps Growing: 500 Validators

The Mainnet 2.8.0 expanded validator participation from 300 to 500 chunk validator seats 🪑

As Bowen Wang noted:
“This change dramatically increases decentralization and supports the large number of people eager to become validators. Thanks to sharding, we can scale without sacrificing simplicity or security.”

🔗 Want to join? Learn how to run a NEAR validator using Node Studio with the Learn NEAR Club guide here.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🚨 Reminder: Kotlin & Swift RPC Bounties

We’re looking for builders to fill the missing pieces of mobile development on NEAR:
🟢 Automate Generation of Kotlin RPC Client for NEAR Protocol
🟢 Automate Generation of Swift RPC Client for NEAR Protocol

Only 7 days left, each Kotlin & Swift RPC bounty comes with a 6,000 USDC reward, don’t miss your chance! 🏆

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

One site. One journey.

We’ve consolidated developer resources:
⚪️ BOS components → NEAR Social
⚪️ Docs and guides → docs.near.org

🔥 No more split references. Just one clean path for developers building on NEAR.

Many possibilities. Check it out 😁

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

🌟 NEAR Town Hall: October Edition

Join us for the next NEAR Town Hall featuring:
• Illia Polosukhin
• Calyx
• Templar Protocol
• Allora Labs
• Near Intents

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

🗓 October 2 | 3 PM UTC

➡️ Set Reminder on YouTube | RSVP on Luma

Free infra credits? Yes, that’s real 💸

Infra Credit Programs Q4 = easy mode for builders:
🟢 1-week approval
🟢 RPC, APIs, nodes subsidized
🟢 Less invoices, more shipping
👉 Details & Submission

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Build it, or watch someone else claim it

If you can build an FT Claiming Service that handles 100 transfers per second, there’s 1,000 $NEAR waiting for you 🚀

What do you need?
⚪️ Build an API (Rust or TypeScript)
⚪️ Hit 100 transfers/sec for 10 minutes
⚪️ Benchmark, document, and open-source it
⚪️ Read the moderator's comments

⏳ 7 days left. Make it fly 🚀
👉 Don’t close this tab. Go submit your build.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Rust Smart Contracts on NEAR — NEAR SDK 2 🦀

Welcome to Part 2 (Payable, Private, PanicOnDefault) of the NEAR SDK series for Rust smart contracts! ☕️

💥 What you’ll learn:
🔴 #[payable] allows your functions to safely accept NEAR payments
🔴 #[private] restricts access to contract-only calls
🔴 #[derive(PanicOnDefault)] prevents uninitialized contract disasters

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to initialize contracts safely, handle deposits correctly, and build proper access control for production-ready NEAR contracts 💯

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Second episode in the NEAR SDK series. More coming soon.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Swift RPC Client built for NEAR

One of the contenders for the 6,000 USDC bounty on NEARN has submitted their work: near-jsonrpc-client-swift

This release could help iOS and macOS applications connect to NEAR directly, without middleware. The winner of this bounty has not yet been announced, this post is for informational purposes only 🔎

Also, if you’d like to share feedback or suggest improvements to NEAR infrastructure, visit the Infrastructure Ecosystem Feedback Page 📝

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Payments Rule Everything Around Me — by Illia Polosukhin

Why new payment-focused blockchains miss the point and why the real future lies in Intents + Agentic Payments 💵

In this new newsletter, Illia explains how NEAR Intents and AI agents can redefine payments:
🟢 Why blockchains failed to reinvent payments
🟢 How intents can connect crypto, fiat, and real-world assets
🟢 Why stablecoins become fully interchangeable with intents
🟢 How AI agents enable instant, low-fee, autonomous payments

The next generation of payments is not on new chains. It’s powered by intents and agents that work across all of them 👍

🔖Read the full piece & subscribe

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

The slime couldn’t resist adding one more layer to the cake

Intear Wallet just got sweeter. You can now create and deploy tokens directly ✔️

🗯 Supported launchpads:
🟢 meme.cooking (mainnet)
🟢 aidols.bot (mainnet)
🟢 Global Contracts feature (mainnet / testnet / localnet sandbox)

Same cake, better taste. Wanna try? 🍰

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Rust Smart Contracts on NEAR — NEAR SDK 3 🦀

Welcome to Part 3 (Accounts) of the NEAR SDK series for Rust smart contracts! ☕️

💥 What you’ll learn:
🔴 AccountId is a safe and strict type for representing NEAR accounts
🔴 env::current_account_id() shows how your contract identifies itself
🔴 env::predecessor_account_id() helps detect who called your function

By the end of this lesson you will clearly understand how NEAR accounts work inside contracts, how to separate contract identity from caller identity, and how to build access control for secure multi party dApps 💯

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Third episode in the NEAR SDK series. More coming soon.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Last week everything was red 🚨

That’s how markets remind us what really matters.
Things that don’t break when the price does ↗️

The NEAR Infrastructure Committee is funding a TEE-secured Price Oracle (more relevant than ever) 🗯

❌ It’s not just another bounty.
✔️ It’s your chance to earn while building something that keeps others safe next time the market turns.

If you can build trust into code, this one’s for you 👈

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Break the Calyx, get paid 🪙

Targets: direct theft, fund freezing, governance manipulation, unbounded gas, griefing, or launchpad logic flaws like re-entrancy or wrong token accounting. Anything that can drain funds or break the launchpad counts 🗯

⚪️ Rewards up to $100,000
⚪️ Test only on private testnets
⚪️ Report via HackenProof within 24h of discovery
⚪️ KYC and POC required for payouts
⚪️ Rewards may be paid in AURORA tokens (with vesting)

🔗 Details & submission

Good hunting 👨‍💻

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

NEAR Foundation enters its next growth phase

Over 5 years NEAR shipped everything it promised.
Sharding. Chain abstraction. NEAR Intents with over $2B in transaction volume. Now it’s using that tech to build AI that’s private, open, and user-owned ✨

NEAR Foundation just announced a new stage of growth with new leaders from Bloomberg, DCG, Flipside, and dYdX joining the mission.

🔥 New team:
⚪️ Matt Kummell – Chief Commercial Officer
⚪️ Alycia Tooill – Head of People
⚪️ Chris Briseno – Chief Marketing Officer
⚪️ George Zeng – Chief Product Officer & GM of NEAR AI
⚪️ Bowen Wang – CTO of NEAR & Founder of NEAR One

“NEAR’s vision of open infrastructure powering user-owned and privacy-first AI at global scale is now supercharged with commercial focus.” — Illia Polosukhin 💬

Infra was just the beginning.
Now comes the AI phase of NEAR 😁

🔗 Full announcement

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

STARTING SOON

In an hour, 3pm UTC, we will be live and want YOU to bring questions for "Mutual Trust, No Secrets: RODiT and the Future of API Authentication"

Join us as we talk with Discernible IO about RODiT (Rich Online Digital Tokens), a new approach to API authentication with verifiable on-chain identities built on NEAR Protocol.

🎤 Watch our deep dive and ask questions, live on Twitter and YouTube

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Rust Smart Contracts on NEAR — NEAR SDK 4 🦀

Welcome to the final part (Gas, PublicKey, CryptoHash) of the NEAR SDK series for Rust smart contracts ☕️

💥 What you’ll learn:
🔴 env::prepaid_gas() to measure and optimize gas usage
🔴 env::signer_account_pk() to verify the caller’s public key
🔴 env::keccak256() to check data integrity and authenticity

By the end of this lesson you will know how to monitor gas consumption, use public keys for identity verification, and apply cryptographic hashing inside your smart contracts 💯

📺 Watch the lesson here
👨‍💻 Code examples

🔖 Fourth and final episode in the NEAR SDK series.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

NEAR Protocol Update (September 2025)

Why should you watch this? Because it’s not just another update. It’s a real shift in scalability *this is not clickbait*.

In short:
🟡 7–9 shards live, 10th on the way
🟡 200K TPS benchmark (aiming for 1M)
🟡 Block time at 600 ms, targeting 200 ms with “Spice”
🟡 Contracts that scale themselves

But the video breaks down the details behind these changes and shows why “infinite scalability” with NEAR ceases to be a slogan and becomes an engineering fact.

That's actually why you should watch the NEAR September Update.
📺 Click here

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Around SF next week?

There will be an interesting ASIMOV Session on AI, technology and the next stage of human evolution 📈

🔷 Presented by NEAR
🔷 Hosted by EXO x ASIMOV

📍 San Francisco, California
🗯 Don’t just read about it, join it

Free your evening on October 22 and see how intelligence evolves when it belongs to everyone 🧠

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree

Quick reminder: free RPC/API sponsorships are closing soon ⏳

🗯 The zipper’s almost shut, get your free RPC while it’s still open.
🟢 NearBlocks API — 9d left (Oct 30)
🟢 Pikespeak API — 9d left (Oct 30)
🟢 FastNear RPC — 10d left (Oct 31)
🟢 Lava RPC — 10d left (Oct 31)

Also new Intear RPC are live. Paid, but developer-ready and reliable.

🔖 Pick your side: sponsored or paid, but don’t stay offline.

🟦 Channel | Chat | LinkTree