In a bid to drive the rapid growth of web3 technology in Asia, the NEAR Foundation – the driving force behind the community-run cloud computing platform NEAR Protocol – has formed a strategic alliance with Alibaba Cloud.
CoinDesk reports that the NEAR Foundation disclosed in a conversation that their partnership with Alibaba Cloud grants them access to the developer ecosystem spanning across Asia and the Middle East. They aim to leverage this access to attract a larger number of developers to build on the NEAR protocol. Additionally, the collaboration will enable developers to easily launch new NEAR validators by utilising Alibaba Cloud’s convenient “plug-and-play” infrastructure as a service.
As part of the partnership, both parties announced the provision of remote procedure calls (RPC) as a service to developers and users within the NEAR ecosystem. The service will enable them to access blockchain data and send transactions across various networks. Users will also leverage the newly announced NEAR Blockchain Operating System (BOS) to build applications using infrastructure provided by Alibaba Cloud.
Head of International Web3 Solutions at Alibaba Cloud, Raymond Xiao highlighted the significance of the partnership in terms of supporting Web3 developers.
“The NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud partnership is an important one as we continue to support Web3 developers to explore opportunities. It is also significant for developers and validators in the Asian markets, as they can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive infrastructure in Asia,” he said.
NEAR surges by 7%
The recent news of the collaboration has sparked a positive response in the market, reflected in the NEAR token’s significant growth of 8.94% in the last 24 hours. As a result, the token is currently trading at $1.57. The market activity surrounding NEAR has been particularly impressive, with the total trading volume exceeding $157 million, almost twice the volume recorded on the previous day.
NEAR Protocol expanding in Asia
NEAR Protocol’s partnership with Alibaba Cloud is a further indication of its desire to expand its coast to the Asian market. It comes on the back of a collaboration with Vertex Gaming, a Web3 subsidiary of Korea’s largest gaming community INVEN.
Their joint efforts will focus on supporting the expansion of Vortex Gaming, strengthening the NEAR game ecosystem, organising offline hackathons and events to cultivate developer talent. The partnership will also see Vortex Gaming leverage the global layer 1 protocol provided by NEAR and harness the capabilities of its Blockchain Operating System (BOS).
Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation was delighted with the collaboration.
“Following the leading companies in the gaming industry such as Kakao Games, Wemade, Netmarble’s Marblex, we expect our sustainable game ecosystem to be further enhanced through this partnership with INVEN,” she said
