The layer one (L1) battle is beginning to warmth up once more and a number of protocols have seen their token values rise in latest weeks as merchants enterprise out to see what life is like exterior of the Ethereum (ETH) community.
One L1 protocol that has seen its token worth climb to a brand new all-time excessive this week was NEAR, a community-run cloud computing platform centered on interoperability and lightning fast transaction pace.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView present that, following a pullback that hit a low of $13.10 on Jan. 9, the worth of NEAR climbed greater than 50% to determine a brand new report excessive at $20.36 on Jan. 14.
NEAR/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three causes that contributed to the rising energy of NEAR embody the profitable completion of a $150 million funding spherical, the success of the Aurora cross-chain bridge protocol and an increasing ecosystem of tasks and builders engaged on the NEAR community.
NEAR raises $150 million in funding spherical
The most up-to-date worth spike adopted an announcement that the crew had efficiently closed its newest funding spherical, elevating $150 million from quite a lot of buyers together with Dragonfly Capital, a16z, Alameda and Circle Ventures.
@NEARProtocol raises $150M to spice up ecosystem progress! #NEAR has introduced the shut of a $150 million funding spherical led by @zhusu’s Three Arrow Capital.
Participants included @MechanismCap, @a16z, @dragonfly_cap, #Alameda and plenty of extra.
Learn https://t.co/DjilZpkYPH
— NEAR Blockchain (@NEAR_Blockchain) January 13, 2022
NEAR plans to make use of the funds raised to speed up the adoption of Web3 applied sciences by way of ecosystem funding, creating out regional hubs for the NEAR group to assist increase consciousness for the model and by offering assist to the tasks constructing on the protocol.
In addition to the communities established in Asia, Africa and Europe, NEAR can also be seeking to increase its attain to Latin America, Turkey and India.
Aurora cross-chain bridge
A second issue behind the rise of NEAR over the previous month was the profitable launch of Aurora protocol. This platform is constructed on NEAR and it helps customers and the decentralized purposes that function on the Ethereum community bridge to NEAR protocol.
Aurora makes use of the Rainbow Bridge to facilitate the migration of property between supported networks and has shortly change into a well-liked protocol for cross-chain transfers with greater than $732 million in whole worth locked, in accordance with knowledge from Defi Llama.
As a results of the elevated exercise introduced by the elevated adoption of tasks on NEAR and the migration of tokens from Ethereum, the day by day transaction depend on the NEAR community established a brand new report excessive of 721,061 transactions on Jan. 11.
Daily variety of transactions on NEAR. Source: NEAR
Related: Which layer-one protocols will outperform in 2022?
Ecosystem growth
A 3rd growth serving to to spice up the worth of the NEAR ecosystem has been the expansion of its developer group. There has been a rise within the variety of tasks launched or bridged to the NEAR community over the previous two months.
Developers on #NEAR get 30% of the txns charges spent on their contract!! – possibly certainly one of many the explanation why MAD on @NEARProtocol is rising quickly and has proven 4x+ progress in 1 yr!
Top 3 in fastest-growing dev ecosystem pic.twitter.com/UCe9jYVRcG
— THE NEARWEEK Ⓝ (@NEARWEEK) January 11, 2022
As seen within the tweet above, NEAR now has the third-fastest rising developer group throughout the entire of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, thanks partly to the truth that builders on NEAR get 30% of the transaction charges spent on their contract. This offers an revenue for builders in a discipline the place compensation will not be at all times assured.
The increasing developer group, mixed with the discharge of a cross-chain bridge, has led to an growth of the NEAR ecosystem which continues to develop and entice new tasks.
Projects within the NEAR ecosystem. Source: NEAR Mates
VORTECS™ knowledge from Cointelegraph Markets Pro started to detect a bullish outlook for NEAR on Jan. 9, previous to the latest worth rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, unique to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparability of historic and present market circumstances derived from a mixture of information factors together with market sentiment, buying and selling quantity, latest worth actions and Twitter exercise.
VORTECS™ Score (inexperienced) vs. NEAR worth. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen within the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for NEAR climbed into the inexperienced zone on Jan. 9 and hit a excessive of 75 round one hour earlier than the worth started to extend by 52% over the subsequent 4 days.
The views and opinions expressed listed here are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every funding and buying and selling transfer entails danger, it is best to conduct your individual analysis when making a call.
