Goodbye San Francisco | November 1st, 2019
COMMUNITY
November 1, 2019
We had an amazing time at San Francisco Blockchain Week (SFBW), hosting events, attending panels, and meeting so many amazing people! Highlights included a discussion on App Chains vs. dApps with Cosmos, an event on blockchain gaming, and a panel on blockchain adoption with some of our beta program projects. 

Sounds amazing but you could not make it? Don’t freak out, we will release the recordings soon!

Prior to SFBW, we joined StakeZero Ventures at their introductory events of the Future of Blockchain Competition in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. You can find more information about the event here. (Late applications may still be accepted.)

Lastly, we are continuing our lunch series on the NEAR Protocol. Check out the previous videos and let us know what aspects of the protocol you would like to learn more about.

To shard or not to shard that is the question! (Source)
COMMUNITY UPDATE
We have over 250 sign-ups for Stake Wars, NEAR Protocol’s incentivized testnet program. You can still join us and practice your powers. To learn more jump over to our latest announcement.
This month’s ambassador challenge was to record a video stating why they support NEAR and help to grow the community; we received some great content! Check out Buster’s & Cristian’s video for example. 
UPCOMING EVENTS
*Please stand by. This section will be updated soon*

Now for real, events take a lot of time to prepare and organise. While we love to meet everyone, talk to the community (YOU) and have discussions, we are, after all, building a blockchain. We will let you know ASAP about upcoming events.

The Future of Blockchain Competition Introduction Event in London (Source)
WRITING AND CONTENT
If you are thinking about building on NEAR or want to get an extra push to get started, check out the Future of Blockchain Competition, organised by StakeZero Ventures. 
If you are wondering how we get things done, check out unicorn Alex live coding core features of the NEAR Protocol.
We now have two (one, two) Chinese versions of our Economics paper; translated by our ambassadors. Here is the original version.
Unicorn Alex doing his magic
ENGINEERING UPDATES
167 PRs across 26 repos by 20 authors. Featured repos:nearcore,nearlib,near-shell,near-wallet,near-bindgen, near-fiddle-api, NEARStudio, assemblyscript, borsh, create-near-app, stakewars and near-explorer;

Check out Alex live coding core features of the NEAR Protocol
A massive refactoring of Nightshade that significantly reduces the number of messages exchanged and also addresses issues with chunk producers going offline.
Finality gadget routine that computes the last finalized block and implementation of the fork choice rule that respects the finality gadget.
The second part of the whiteboard lunch series is live
Adding genesis tools for stakewars into dockerfile in nearcore
Speeding up / less network for block sync in nearcore
Cleanup and usability improvements in near-bindgen
Seed phrase recovery support in near-wallet
Implemented multinet support in near-explorer
Added a cross-contract call example in nomicon
HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED
Join us: there are new jobs we’re hiring across the board!

If you want to work with one of the most talented teams in the world right now to solve incredibly hard problems, check out our careers page for openings. And tell your friends!

Learn more about NEAR in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, joining the conversation on Discord and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox.

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