Swiss-based NEAR Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting the NEAR protocol, has announced the launch of Nuffle Labs, an independent entity backed by €12.1 million ($13 million) in funding. This new venture is supported by a strategic grant of $7 million from the NEAR Foundation and an investment led by Electric Capital.
Additional funding came from a range of investors, including Canonical Crypto, Fabric Ventures, Robot Ventures, Caladan, Lyrik Ventures, and several angel investors such as Jordi Alexander from Selini, Bowen Wang from NEAR, Sreeram Kannan from EigenLayer, Sam Kazemian from Frax, and Sandeep Nailwal from Polygon.
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Focus on NEAR’s Modular Product Suite
Nuffle Labs aims to enhance NEAR’s modular product offerings, with a particular emphasis on the NEAR Data Availability Layer (NEAR DA) and the NEAR Fast Finality Layer (NFFL).
- NEAR Data Availability (DA): This layer provides cost-effective and reliable data storage solutions. For instance, RSS3, a NEAR DA user, reduced its costs from $1,000 to $10 daily by utilizing the platform. NEAR DA boasts a throughput of 24MB/s, outperforming competitors like Celestia, and supports various rollup types, offering cost efficiency, easy validation, and user-friendly interaction.
- NEAR Fast Finality Layer (NFFL): This service accelerates and secures block finality across different protocols. It integrates additional public layers into the blockchain stack, facilitating innovative cross-chain applications.
About NEAR Foundation
The NEAR Foundation has developed the NEAR protocol, a high-performance, carbon-neutral blockchain designed for speed, security, and scalability. With 18 million accounts and 550,000 members, the NEAR community supports a robust ecosystem of innovators, developers, and contributors. NEAR is backed by leading venture capital firms, including A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.
With this substantial funding, the swiss lab is set to drive significant advancements in NEAR’s blockchain capabilities, enhancing both data availability and finality layers, and contributing to the broader blockchain ecosystem.
