DeFi Marketplace Ariadne Receives Grant From the NEAR Foundation

Ariadne, a cross-chain DeFi marketplace, has announced it has been selected as a recipient of a grant from the NEAR Foundation. The two will also partner as Ariadne goes to market later this year with its innovative platform that looks to solve the complexity and high fees of farming across multiple blockchains. 

For DeFi users, Ariadne will help centralize all activities while eliminating fees such as gas, slippage, and swap fees cross-chain. For projects, Aurora will allow protocols to retain their user base while having the ability to offer all of the benefits that come with farming cross-chain. These benefits include more combined opportunities, liquidity, and the removal of common complexities. 

NEAR Foundation is best known for being the governing ecosystem body behind NEAR Protocol, a public, sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain that caters to developers by providing a developer-friendly framework. Most recently, NEAR announced a whopping $800 million in grants for DeFi companies. The program will consist of $250 million in ecosystem grants that will be distributed over four years, a regional fund of $100 million, and $100 million specifically for early-stage startups. 

While the amount of the grant received has not been disclosed, it is important to note that despite the large sum the NEAR Foundation has allocated towards grants, the selection process is rigorous and a special focus on long-term mutual compatibility is one of the important criteria. 

Ariadne and NEAR Partnership Details

Ariadne has deployed smart contracts to Aurora (NEAR EVM) and is developing contracts for NEAR to grant access to the “best-incentivized farms from Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, and Solana” without having to leave NEAR. Aurora users will get instant benefits from other chains’ protocols without losing users and without the hassle of having to transact across blockchains. 

NEAR’s L1 offers scalability and speed and has seen significant user adoption in recent months. NEAR will benefit by working with an external network that takes deposits from NEAR to other EVM networks. Ariadne will also receive direct tech support from NEAR core developers, as Ariadne is already working on Aurora and testing for NEAR native. 

Ariadne CEO Eugene Shimalsky adds, “Ariadne’s future services and farming activities rely a lot on DAO-based decisions, and NEAR seems a perfect place for a DAO “home network”, with governance tokens to be exposed everywhere.” 

As one of the first public recipients of a NEAR Foundation grant following NEAR’s recent announcement, Ariadne is well-positioned to be an important part of the NEAR ecosystem and in DeFi in general. Ariadne will be conducting a public sale on November 4, 2021, on multiple launchpads, including Impossible Finance. 

More information can be found on the company’s official Telegram channel.

Image Sourced from LaunchTeam