Near Protocol Starts ‘Blockchain Operating System’ to Focus on User Experience

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/03/02/near-protocol-starts-blockchain-operating-system-to-focus-on-user-experience/

Layer 1 blockchain network Near Protocol has launched a product-first operating system that developers can build into and users can interact on as a single platform, Illia Polosukhin, Near’s co-founder, announced at the ETHDenver industry conference.

The platform is intended to act as a common layer for browsing and discovering Web 3 products including crypto exchanges, non-fungible token (NFT) galleries and social networks, according to Polosukhin. The framework will be compatible with all blockchains (currently supporting Near Protocol and Ethereum Virtual Machine chains) and Near will act as the common entry point, said Polusukhin, in an interview with CoinDesk.

For developers, decentralized and composable front ends offer a way to build and launch better apps and faster forking of existing pieces and components, while leveraging built-ins such as profiles, payments and notifications as well as searching, without the need to host anything themselves, according to the press release.

“The composable decentralized front ends as a framework can work with any Web2 or Web3 back end and any wallet,” Polusukhin said. “In the future we will be offering [use of] wallets from one chain to interact with another via seamless bridging,” he added.

The Near protocol currently ranks as the 35th largest blockchain in terms of market capitalization, according to data from Messari. The layer 1’s market cap was around $1.96 billion and its NEAR token was trading at around $2.28, at the time of writing.

The platform is dubbed a “blockchain operating system (BOS),” according to the press release. “We are moving away from our layer 1 focus, it’s now about the user and the experience they have. We are looking at this as the frontend for blockchains in general,” said Polosukhin, in an interview with CoinDesk.

Polosukhin added the platform is hoping to tackle some of the user experience issues in the Web3 space. “As a user at the moment it’s hard to find a single place to look at Web3 apps, there’s no search mechanism or way to navigate between them,” said Polosukhin. “The BOS creates a single point of entry.”