NEAR will hire artificial intelligence (AI) engineers as part of its AI roadmap, and NEAR will begin its AI plan in the next 3-6 months.

NEAR Foundation launched the Infrastructure Committee, a new initiative aimed at strengthening NEAR's critical infrastructure. The program allocates $4 million to support infrastructure projects, with the goal of supporting the success of NEAR's ecosystem projects in an open and transparent manner, and allocating funds and finding projects. It is reported that critical infrastructure includes RPC nodes, relays, indexers, bridging, wallets, load balancers, and oracles. In addition, NEAR should be correctly listed on all available DEX tools; it needs to be able to easily report and fix incidents and interruptions. The committee is composed of ecological leaders and partners from the core NEAR organization. Its goal is to decentralize decision-making, enhance critical infrastructure, simplify work to improve clarity and decentralization.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near, stated in an interview with "Block" magazine at the BUIDL Asia Conference in Seoul, South Korea that chain abstraction can promote the next transformation of the cryptocurrency field and Web3, which is necessary for mainstream applications. Chain abstraction refers to application developers fragmenting the complex technical layer of Web3 to improve the end-user experience. This concept abstracts blockchain from the user experience. For example, in blockchain networks like Near, users create and recover accounts using their email address instead of writing down complex seed phrases.

Upbit announced that due to the upgrade of the Near network, NEAR deposits and withdrawals will be suspended at 18:00 on March 20th (Korean time). Once the Near network upgrade is completed and confirmed to be stable, the deposit and withdrawal services will be resumed as soon as possible.

The market shows that NEAR has broken through $6.25 in a short period of time and is now trading at $6.24, with a daily increase of 16.6%, reaching a new high since May 31, 2022. The market is volatile, so please be prepared for risk control.

Due to the upgrade of the NEAR network, Upbit will temporarily suspend NEAR deposits and withdrawals at 18:00 on March 11th, Korean time. Once the network stability is confirmed, Upbit will resume NEAR deposit and withdrawal services.

Modular blockchains are currently a leading narrative in the web3 space, with numerous high-profile launches, announcements, and airdrops taking place. This modular future is not solely embraced by new projects though; Near Protocol has embarked on its own journey in the modular blockchain space, aiming to be more than just another alternative L1.

NEAR Foundation and D3 are partnering to apply for the ".near" top-level domain (TLD) to integrate D3's digital identity into the NEAR ecosystem. This move aims to expand the functionality of NEAR accounts, allowing users to use a single domain name for websites, email, or wallet addresses, and provide verification credentials. The partnership aims to promote mainstream adoption of open networks, emphasizing the importance of interoperability.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is the Blockchain Operating System (BOS), a fully crypto-native stack that unifies the Web3 space into a single interface and a common layer for building, browsing, and discovering experiences on any blockchain. It provides users the opportunity to connect with various communities and applications while maintaining their data's privacy, all without the requirement of owning crypto. The BOS provides a cohesive platform addressing Web3 complexities and Web2 centralization limitations.

According to official sources, NEAR is now compatible with the Web3 wallet MetaMask. Thanks to NEAR Snap, MetaMask users will be able to create NEAR accounts within the MetaMask wallet, sign NEAR protocol transactions directly, and use many other features.