NEAR Foundation, the management arm of the NEAR Protocol, has recently announced a strategic alignment plan that includes a 40% reduction in its team. This decision was made following a thorough review of the foundation’s activities in collaboration with the NEAR Foundation Council (NFC). As part of this downsizing effort, approximately 35 staff members across the marketing, business development, and community teams will be impacted.
Feedback received during the review process indicated that the foundation was not meeting expectations, often experiencing challenges in terms of speed and attempting to handle an excessive number of tasks concurrently. To address these concerns, the foundation has chosen to consolidate its core team, enabling a more focused approach toward key and high-impact activities.
It is worth noting that the NEAR Protocol Engineering Team at Pagoda will continue its operations unaffected by these changes, ensuring the ongoing development and progress of the protocol.
While this realignment may bring about changes for some individuals, the NEAR Foundation has emphasized that affected staff members will receive support in their search for new opportunities. This commitment highlights the foundation’s dedication to the well-being and professional growth of its team members during this transition.
Further, the foundation said its treasury “remains strong and well-managed, with over $285m fiat, 305m NEAR (worth over $1B), and $70m of investments and loans.”
For the Near ecosystem, its focus for 2024 includes expanding into AI and new products, as well as tightening its build efforts on chain abstraction.
“The NEAR ecosystem has been building for chain abstraction since the very beginning with sharding and the account model, and more recently the B.O.S., FastAuth, and ETH alignment solutions.”
Alongside FastAuth, the Near ecosystem shared that Pagoda will launch chain signatures and intent relayers in line with its chain abstraction goals in Q1 2024.
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