Chris: Hi! Can you tell us more about yourself and the role you're playing in that blooming project?
Antonio: My name is Antonio Morales, although in the blockchain industry I go by the alias of GoneMultichain. I am the Head of Ecosystem Growth at NEARStarter. I have been active on the NEAR ecosystem since late 2021, and I am the co-founder of NEAR Malaysia Guild.
Chris: Antonio, Before we dive deeper into the NEARStarter ecosystem, it would be great if you can establish some general knowledge about the project and explain to our audience what NEARStarter is.
Antonio: NEARStarter is an incubator and launchpad. This means it focuses on incubation, acceleration, and funding system for projects deployed on the NEAR Protocol and Aurora.
NEARstarter will provide its users with access to the latest and greatest projects launched on the NEAR Protocol. All projects launching with us are subject to comprehensive due diligence — this maximizes the chances of success during its early stages, and aids our users by filtering out the dozens of poor quality projects launching every day.
In this manner, NEARStarter will act as a gateway for the NEAR community to the most impressive projects launching on the protocol, growing NEAR’s DeFi ecosystem exponentially with quality, high-value projects.
Chris: Could you please explain what is the difference between a launchpad and an incubator?
Antonio: What a launchpad does is to provide initial liquidity to a token that does an IDO, and some marketing around it.
An incubator offers much deeper value-added services: Legal Set-up, Product formulation, Whitepaper and Documentation, Tokenomics, Captable management, Secondary Market and Liquidity Management, Treasury Management, Audit, Listing, Partnerships...
Chris: What are the requirements that'll be met for projects that wants to be launched on Near via the Nearstarter launchpad? Is it open to all?
Antonio: The Incubator looks at:
- Product-market fit
- Strnght & Maturity of the team (including past projects if any)
- Competitive landscape
Those are the 3 main aspects. It doenst matter a project is at a very early stage or already in mainnet and ready to launch. We do have the capability to step in and help at any stage of development.
Chris: Your website is so extraordinary! You are a DAO-Governed Incubator — what does it mean in layman’s terms?
Antonio: Our vision is to have a DAO-of-Guilds that governs the incubator. And since the incubator will be the main source of quality projects in Near and Aurora, in the end the DAO-of-Guilds have the steering wheel over the whole ecosystem's future.
Chris: What are the systems unique features?
Antonio: One unique feature is our NEARIA Pool, a special Basket of curated projects that is collectively owned by the community and grows with every pre-money round funded through NEARStarter and every IDO filled through the NEARStarter Launchpad, and also, from any other project NSDAO selects. And I have to add that NSTART unstaking fee will go to the NEARIA pool which increase its value
So far, we have 5 tokens: JUMP, NSTART, CURL and the recently added, TRI and SHITZU. We expect to have more than 10 tokens added by the end of Q2 2023.
Chris: I can see you have a very nice community. Tell us about it please.
Antonio: Yes, absolutely, we have an amazing community here in NEARStarter, and the main hub is Discord, but we also have a group in telegram. Our community has over 10,000 active members across our social channels with over 5,000 followers in Twitter and another 5,000 in Telegram and Discord.
It is important to mention our DAO-of-Guilds Program, so far, 15 Guids joined from NEAR & Aurora ecosystem. Guild members will have the opportunity to join Guild-only activities such as the Battle of the Great Reef previously. Another thing, the guilds will officially become part of the Synth sector and will be able to exercise governance by voting on which projects will be incubated.
Chris: Can you share your journey so far and your roadmap for the next 3-6 months?
Antonio: We received 70 applications in the first 7 month of life of NEARStarter, and will likely retain at least 10 of them.
The rest, we will leave to the community to decide whether we should incubate, since some projects seems to be specially beneficial for the whole community at large, e.g an academy of developers! Or a Learn 2 Earn game. Several of this projects are pure Aurora projects.
Some projects are truly multichain, with one of them looking to rapidly deploy across 6 EVM compatible chains at the same time, other launching in Solana and NEAR at the same time, … etc.
We have also defined our Vicious Fishes NFT collection, including a great set of utilities based on the different sea animals you’ll capture + their stunning design made by NEAR Skull, a top NEAR NFT artist.
The collection is purposefully kept at 200, very low, to be exclusive. There are only around 15 of them remaining to be sold, and they can be acquired in Paras NFT marketplace. Although at this time is much better to buy NSTART in the open market at Trisolaris, the leading DEX of Aurora.
Our immediate goals are to launch IDOs and to keep adding projects to NEARIA, so both NSTART and NEARIA keeps accruing value to token holders!
Chris: Thanks! Any last word? Where can we follow you?
Antonio: You can stay tuned to our socials for up-to-date information on NEARStarter!
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