Description
NEAR Foundation (NF) is a Swiss non-profit foundation (Stiftung), a legal structure also used by projects like Ethereum and Polkadot, established in 2020 and headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. Its mission is to enable community-driven innovation to benefit people around the world, with a core focus on supporting the NEAR ecosystem — a fully operational, decentralized blockchain platform for building decentralized applications (dApps). Rather than operating or controlling the decentralized NEAR network directly, NF carries out its mission primarily by allocating financial resources and support to other nodes and participants in the ecosystem, aiming to progressively devolve its own functions and minimize its footprint as the ecosystem becomes self-sufficient.
NF's activities center on three areas: allocating financial resources across the ecosystem, supporting ecosystem-wide functions such as communication, coordination, governance infrastructure, and education, and championing continued decentralization. It is governed by the NEAR Foundation Council (NFC), a board-like body providing oversight and control, separate from the executive team that manages day-to-day operations. NF reports having raised $500M in funds and represents participants across 14 countries. Its primary stakeholders are the developers, community members, and organizations that make up the broader NEAR ecosystem, rather than traditional commercial clients.