Near Protocol releases 'entry point to web3' project Discovery in public beta

Near Protocol has always been about making crypto user friendly and easily accessible. Its latest project is doubling down on that goal, in what it hopes will increase activity on its network by an order of magnitude.

The project is called Discovery, and it has been released as an open beta, following months of development and a closed beta. The grand idea is to provide a single, decentralized way to access applications across multiple blockchains, in what Near terms a “blockchain operating system.” If it meets wider adoption — and manages to unite typically fragmented crypto communities — Discovery could change the way the majority interact with blockchains.

“This is a centerpiece, we’re driving everything into this,” Near co-founder Illia Polosukhin said in an interview. He added that partnerships will be focused on this product, with the potential to expand across many blockchains.

Abstracting blockchain away

So what’s the core product? Right now each blockchain has its own set of applications with their own set of front end websites that allow access to them — although some do have multi-chain support on their sites. Discovery is like a unified front end to all of these applications. The idea is that developers will create front ends for protocols that already exist, and that all of these front ends will be within a single experience. 

How it works is someone could go to the interface, select all lending applications and be presented with front ends for lending protocols across many blockchains. Since they’ll be signed in with a wallet that supports multiple blockchains, they won’t even necessarily have to select what chain they want to use. Plus, tokens might get swapped between chains behind the scenes.

“If you log in with MetaMask, same with Near, what we want to do is create an account on all chains that allows you to interact with any chain natively and the bridging will happen underneath,” Polosukhin said.

Near’s ultimate goal is to abstract the blockchain elements away, enabling a crypto newbie to use decentralized applications as though they were scrolling Facebook.

“The idea here is how can we defragment this into one experience that has all this functionality, that has all these apps in it but is one user journey,” he said. “It’s to unite all this under one umbrella and create an entry point to web3.”

One side effect of Discovery is that it would reduce the distinction between blockchains. Once users interact with applications with all of the blockchain stuff hidden under the hood, it may lead to competition between blockchains based less on allegiances and more on features. Users might trend toward faster blockchains with lower fees regardless of whether they are less decentralized or less secure.

Polosukhin put it more bluntly. “The users will not even care what chain they’re on.”

That said, he recognized that liquidity might be a big factor for certain traders. While fees might be cheaper on Near, slippage might be much lower on Ethereum, for example, for large trades — and this could make blockchains like Ethereum more suitable in those circumstances. “Ethereum will still win big checks but small checks, for example, it will be Near,” he said.

‘Driving everything into this’

While Discovery has only been in development for six months — in collaboration with technical partner Pagoda — Polosukhin said it’s being layered on everything the company has been building for the last four years. 

Prior to today’s launch, it has been in a closed beta with about 2,000 developers testing it out and building applications on it. Currently it has about 1,500 programs — known as components — ranging from small bits of code to full apps.

Developers are able to build their own interfaces for popular applications, or copy the front end source code used by such applications and modify them to make them suitable for Discovery. Beyond that, they can also code their own protocols designed for it.

All of the code for these applications and front end interfaces is stored on the Near blockchain, which is a high-performance proof-of-stake chain. Polosukhin said a lot of the concealed activity will be on the Near chain, even though many applications may use other blockchains. He added that this is a big part of Near’s goal to increase activity on its network.

“Our general plan is to 10X the current activity this year. We 10X’d last year so we’re gonna 10X this year,” he said, adding that partnerships are going to be focused on this product going forward. “This is a centerpiece, we’re driving everything into this.”

Getting Near to its vision

Since Discovery is a decentralized protocol running on the Near blockchain, its core essence is made up of all these front ends for applications — and other components — but it can be implemented in different ways. For example, anyone can set up their own implementation of Discovery, featuring perhaps selected applications or their own designs. 

Right now there are two implementations. Alpha.near.org is an alpha version of Near's implementation, which will include a variety of applications including social media and gaming. Near's DeFi hub Proximity has created an alternative version focused on Ethereum applications at bos.gg.

To use Near's version, you need a Near wallet. However, Pagoda is releasing a technology called FastAuth, which uses biometric authentication to create a Near and Ethereum wallet, enabling new users to set up multi-chain wallets while keeping that largely hidden on the backend too. As for bos.gg, you need a MetaMask wallet. In the future, it will let users access Near apps by creating a Near account on the backend — but they will still only interact through MetaMask.

One potential issue with Discovery is that applications can’t be deleted because they’re stored on the Near blockchain. So its implementations will need to deal with this in terms of preventing scams. Polosukhin said that some might use governance features or have the ability to flag malicious applications, where other users will be able to see the warnings.

Near is designed with two features that will support Discovery. By default, wallets are created as blockchain names, essentially giving people blockchain usernames, and the network has its own social graph. This can be used for creating social media applications. Both of these mean that implementations of Discovery can bring in social elements too, creating a wider experience.

“It’s not just front ends. There is a lot of stuff underneath, a whole set of middleware, a whole stack of identity management, biometric creation of keys, email recovery, social recovery — all of those features create these pillars that hold this whole experience,” Polosukhin said.