The foundation behind the NEAR Protocol, a high-performance blockchain and decentralized app (dApp) development platform, today announced a new partnership with Google Cloud. The collaboration will involve Google Cloud providing technical support for NEAR grantees as they develop and scale their Web3 projects and dApps.

NEAR is designed to be super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable, with its ecosystem offering multiple funding options to initiatives creating, decentralising, and growing on the protocol. There are 20+ million accounts on the NEAR network, more than 800 projects building, and 200 million transactions to date, with the NEAR network being used for 300,000 to 400,000 transactions per day.

Projects building on NEAR will benefit from Google Cloud’s open and developer-friendly cloud infrastructure.

Google Cloud provides the infrastructure for Near’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC) node provider to Pagoda, NEAR’s Web3 startup platform, allowing developers to deploy code quickly, securely and seamlessly. Pagoda helps developers easily and rapidly launch a dApp live on the NEAR blockchain through leveraging a library of pre-audited templates and auto-generated contract user interfaces.

Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, said: “We are thrilled to be collaborating with those who pioneered the Internet as we know it. This partnership marks a new chapter for us as we continue to offer the best support possible for the next generation of visionaries choosing to build on the NEAR protocol.”

Carlos Arena, director, Digital Assets, Google Cloud, said: “We will be supporting NEAR and giving Web3 developers the most secure, reliable, and sustainable cloud infrastructure on which they can build and scale. We continue to support tomorrow’s leaders in creating new products and services on blockchain-based platforms.”

The NEAR ecosystem has offered financial support, advice and networking to cutting-edge Web3 projects from all around the world on its mission to accelerate the world's transition to open technologies by growing and enabling a community of developers and creators.

To date, it has awarded over $540M to various projects, including Aurora.dev, Sweateconomy.com, and ArmoredKingdom.com; as well as the Open Forest Protocol, an open platform to transparently measure, verify and fund forestation projects with blockchain technology and Sankore 2.0, an initiative to educate and support the African continent on blockchain technology developments.