Alibaba Cloud and NEAR Foundation Empower Web3 Growth in Asia through Strategic Alliance

NEAR Foundation, the non-profit organization responsible for developing the NEAR protocol ecosystem, has partnered with Alibaba Cloud to accelerate Web3 growth in Asia and the Middle East. This collaboration allows NEAR Foundation to access Alibaba Cloud's developer ecosystem, attracting more developers to build on the NEAR protocol. The partnership offers developers the opportunity to launch new NEAR validators using Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure and provides services like remote procedure calls and multi-chain indexing. NEAR's price surged 8% to $1.57 following the announcement, reflecting positive market sentiment.

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:29:00 GMT

The NEAR Foundation, the non-profit behind the ecosystem development of the NEAR protocol, is joining with Alibaba Cloud, the Chinese tech giant’s arm for computing and storage, to accelerate Web3 growth in Asia and the Middle East, the organization said Monday.

The partnership grants the NEAR Foundation access to Alibaba Cloud's developer ecosystem across Asia and the Middle East in a bid to attract more developers to build on the NEAR protocol, said the company in conversation with CoinDesk. Developers that want to launch new NEAR validators will be able to do so with Alibaba Cloud’s "plug-and-play" infrastructure as a service.

The NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud will offer remote procedure calls (RPC) as a service to developers and users in the NEAR ecosystem, a press release said. RPC is a type of computer server that allows users to read data on blockchains and send transactions to different networks. It will also offer multi-chain indexing to provide data-query application programming interface (API) to developers.

Users will also be able to use the NEAR Blockchain Operating System (BOS), a platform it launched earlier in the year that allows developers to build into and interact with other users, while using Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure.

The price of NEAR jumped 8% to $1.57 on Monday after the Alibaba announcement.

This comes as Alibaba recently announced the hiring of its new Chairman, Joseph Tsai, who has been an active Web3 investor and has signed multiple deals with crypto-related entities.

“The NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud partnership is an important one as we continue to support Web3 developers to explore opportunities,” said Raymond Xiao, head of international Web3 solutions at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“It is also significant for developers and validators in the Asian markets, as they can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive infrastructure in Asia.”

UPDATE (June 26, 07:30 UTC): Adds NEAR's price jump in fifth paragraph.

Edited by James Rubin.

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Lyllah Ledesma

Lyllah Ledesma is a CoinDesk Markets reporter currently based in Europe. She holds bitcoin, ether and small amounts of other crypto assets.

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