NEAR Infrastructure Committee Plans Proactive 2025 Funding for AI and Chain Abstraction Innovations

NEAR Infrastructure Committee emphasizes decentralized infrastructure growth, focusing on wallets, chain abstraction, and AI applications for 2025.

Since its inception in April 2024, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee (IC) has been at the forefront of improving the NEAR environment through transparency and sustainability. The committee has guided resources, funding, and attention to tackle important problems and encourage innovation.

The IC is gearing up to fund developments in infrastructure innovation as ecosystem demands evolve, particularly in AI and chain abstraction. Reflecting on a transforming 2024, the IC aims to create a solid technological foundation for NEAR’s future.

> NEAR Infrastructure Committee: First Year Recap & 2025 Priorities
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> From decentralized RPC infrastructure to onchain funding processes, the Infrastructure Committee has been busy preparing for user-owned AI.
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NEAR Infrastructure Committee: Leading Ecosystem Evolution with Strategic Support

In its first eight months, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee became the most used open grant source in the ecosystem. Captured by the community slogan, “infra not infra-ing,” this initiative responded to urgent network infrastructure needs.

Comprising technical leaders including Bowen Wang (NEAR One), Alex Shevchenko (Aurora), Eric Winer (Pagoda), Vlad Frolov (NEAR DevHub), and Evgeny Kuzyakov (FastNEAR), the committee operates with support from the NEAR Foundation and DevHub contributors.

After reviewing 99 suggestions in 2024, the committee approved 24, significantly influencing ecosystem evolution. Key successes included improving wallet infrastructure, migrating RPC services to decentralized providers, and funding innovative initiatives.

The committee supported essential wallets like NEAR Mobile Wallet, HERE Wallet, Nightly Wallet, and Meteor Wallet, enabling innovations such as HOT Wallet from HERE Wallet and the Harvest Moon release from Meteor Wallet.

Decentralized RPC services transitioned to companies like Lava, FastNEAR, and BlockPi, enhancing network reliability and response times.

Proactive Ecosystem Development and Innovation for 2025

In addition to assisting the Pagoda Sunset transition to community-driven alternatives, other contributions included funding analytics tools like NEARBlocks, Token Terminal, and Chainspect.

Creative projects backed by the IC include a Mastercard under the NEAR brand and a self-service treasury app developed by DevHub in collaboration with Mercuryo. The committee established an on-chain fundraising mechanism for submissions using DevHub’s portal product.

Looking ahead to 2025, the NEAR Infrastructure Committee prioritizes proactive ecosystem creation and continuous enhancement. It plans to support ongoing infrastructure developments started in 2024, like analytics tools and wallet improvements.

To inspire proactive innovation, the committee will form working groups to handle accounts, assess ideas, and create RFPs, ensuring that development aligns with the changing ecosystem needs.

Strengthening wallet infrastructure for smoother interactions between NEAR and other blockchains, such as Solana, is a top priority for 2025. This includes creating single sign-on solutions and improving on-ramps and off-ramps.

The committee will also fund tools for chain abstraction like multichain explorers, oracles, and support for Omnitoken and Omnibalance. Recognizing the potential of decentralized AI, the IC will prioritize foundational infrastructure for such uses.

This proactive strategy supports NEAR’s broader goal of fostering scalability and innovation. Collaborations, such as NEAR Protocol’s partnership with Zero1 Labs, enhance the committee’s efforts, promoting decentralized AI builders and grassroots teams through hackathons and community initiatives.

By providing developers with scalable blockchain infrastructure and robust community support, this partnership furthers NEAR’s commitment to decentralized innovation.

As of now, the NEAR token trades at approximately $5.17, reflecting a 2.66% correction over the past 24 hours and a 25.67% decrease over the last 30 days.