Keyko, a world class Web3 services organisation has partnered with NEAR to create Chikai, a new joint venture to help solve key challenges in Web3.
The partnership is designed to help scale the NEAR blockchain by onboarding developers hoping to take advantage of the platform’s fast transaction speeds and low costs. In doing so, Chikai is looking to tackle some of the most interesting and challenging use cases on the NEAR blockchain.
The Keyko-NEAR Foundation partnership will be a vital accelerant in making NEAR a place to reimagine the world. A space where innovations in creativity, business, and sustainability can collide in wondrously new and decentralized ways.
Several Chikai team members worked on the blockchain platform Solana and the Rust programming language, giving the company a wealth of development experience in continuing to make NEAR simple, secure, and scalable.
“The potential of smart contract development on the NEAR Blockchain is incredible. The fundamentals of the network are extremely robust which will definitely lead to amazing new solutions. There is a ton of room for ecosystem growth and we’re looking forward to supporting the many cool projects that NEAR will add to their portfolio,” says Sebastian Gerske, Senior Blockchain Engineer and Lead Architect at Chikai.
A “Solutions Mindset” for Accelerating Growth
Operating with a “solutions mindset”, Chikai sees itself as a company that developers can turn to for support of Web 3.0 applications like tokenomics, ecosystem consulting, smart contract development, wallet deployment, marketplace creation, as well as the rapidly growing world of decentralized finance (DeFi).
As a NEAR-centric services company, Chikai will provide NEAR ecosystem projects, including dApp developers and core engineering, with architecture, development, deployment, and support capacity. Chikai’s intent is two-fold: 1) augment existing engineering teams with more bandwidth and expert engineering capabilities, and 2) act as core engineering for teams that may lack the requisite technical perspective. The former will speed up delivery of critical protocol requirements, while the latter will let more commercially-focused projects to continue doing what they do best while entrusting development to a battle-tested team.
“We are delighted to engage strategically with NEAR Foundation and drive the successful launch and adoption of solutions and applications within the broader NEAR ecosystem. Keyko’s team of Web3 solution architects and engineers is arguably the best in the world at what we do, and will provide a wealth of expertise to those looking for a leg up as they build solutions that test the art of the possible. Our goal is that the Chikai team’s development expertise, in combination with Keyko and Nevermined, will provide a catalyst for mass adoption and rapid scaling,” says Don Gossen, CEO of Keyko.
With Chikai, the Thinking is End-to-End
To deliver solutions for NEAR developers, the team’s collective skills combine for a “full stack thinking” approach. Chikai will work closely with the NEAR ecosystem to accelerate growth and migration, as well as select compelling projects that present the greatest potential for social impact.
Chikai’s work will run the gamut from an engineering and architecture perspective. The company aims to do everything from the lowest level formal verification of protocols and token engineering consulting and design to smart contract development, DevOps, and frontend development.
Ultimately, Chickai offers a one-stop shop to anyone looking for an architecture or engineering solution to their Web3 problem.
“We are very excited to be working closely with Keyko, whose team of experienced practitioners are highly respected in the industry for delivering on promise,” said Erik Trautman, CEO of NEAR Foundation.