I’ve recently shifted my NEAR strategy from looping stNEAR (see my previous blog post) to staking with two of the infrastructure projects I believe are the leaders on the NEAR protocol at present: Burrow and Meta Pool 
https://twitter.com/NEAR_daily/status/1664595334662881281?s=20

https://twitter.com/NEAR_daily/status/1656984946425339904?s=20

Meta Pool: $META staking

I’d had some interaction with Meta Pool via their staking token, $stNEAR, and was aware they had a protocol token, $META, but it didn’t seem to have a lot of utility.
That’s all changed with the recent update.

Now you can lock it for votes and rewards. https://www.metapool.app/vote/dashboard


And those rewards could end up being very significant.
https://medium.com/meta-pool/meta-pool-dao-the-first-platform-to-allocate-protocol-fees-to-token-holders-1cbc6877c677

You can also vote on projects via their innovative Metayield platform https://metayield.app/#vote

Even just staking $NEAR through Meta Pool ($stNEAR) offers a range of extra utility on Meta Pool along with the yield farming opportunities in the wider NEAR defi ecosystem.  

Meta Pool could end up being what Lido is to liquid staking on Ethereum, for the NEAR protocol. In the case of NEAR, because of it being an inflationary token model, https://near.org/blog/near-protocol-economics/, liquid staking takes on much more important part as users are highly incentivised to stake their $NEAR to maintain its’ value and the staking option that has the highest utility is a LST (liquid staked token) like $stNEAR  

Check out my longer post about Meta Pool on BULB here https://www.bulbapp.io/p/3188ce94-b465-4e8f-a6e8-15b234699504/meta-pool-more-than-a-staking-protocol?s_id=2a5da2cf-86a0-4edc-adc6-3a839b1c21fd

Burrow: Staking $BRRR

I was already using Burrow to loop my $stNEAR. As a part of that I’d ended up with a small amount of their protocol token, $BRRR, which I’d max staked (12 months) and largely ignored.

However they too have been busy building up significant liquidity and recently announced an integration with the number one DEX on NEAR, Ref Finance
https://twitter.com/burrowcash/status/1661285199320154115?s=20 and 
https://app.ref.finance/burrow



You can stake $BRRR  for $xBRRR at https://app.burrow.cash/staking/. 


It uses the well worn model of increasing your $xBRRR based on the time lock you enable https://docs.burrow.cash/product-docs/tokenomics/brrr-staking 
You can use your $xBRRR to vote in the Burrow DAO as well to boost your lending and borrowing rewards https://docs.burrow.cash/product-docs/using-burrow/apy#liquidity-mining-rewards-booster

At some stage in the future you’ll be able to borrow against it (you can only supply it at present)  which will increase the utility of the token plus the expansion of Burrow into more of the NEAR defi ecosystem should significantly increase the protocol revenue. 


The rewards are low at present (compared to most of defi) but it’s key to note how early lending is in NEAR as compared to other defi. 
Burrow could be what Aave is to Ethereum or Synthetix is to Optimism, only for the NEAR protocol. 

Lending is such an important part of crypto that often gets overlooked when talking about broadening the user base as the initial use case on all defi is always leveraged trading, which appeals to a tiny percentage of people.

Lending enables a range of widely applicable use cases. It enables low risk single sided staking options for holders across many different tokens. It also enables commonplace credit functions people are very familiar with from tradfi. Retail products like credit cards and risk management for investment funds are used by nearly everyone and both required lending infrastructure to function.   

Other NEAR infrastructure providers to watch

Ref Finance

I was originally staking $REF ($xREF) from Ref Finance
https://app.ref.finance/xref 


And staking in their $REF/$NEAR farm before I moved to looping my staked NEAR via Burrow & Meta Pool.
Ref Finance Farms


I had originally thought, via the docs, that the boosted farms feature was active. https://guide.ref.finance/products/boosted-farming via the $REF/$NEAR LP token lock https://guide.ref.finance/products/voting but unfortunately that feature is not available despite still being the documentation and being on the website at the time.

The xREF program was okay https://guide.ref.finance/products/staking, just not the kind of boost program you see from other defi. 

Ref Finance is a great product, the tools offered to the user are as good as the best anywhere else I’ve seen in defi and are better than most protocols holding 10-100x their TVL.
Ultimately I just didn’t see the volume or expansion of token pairs to justify a longer term investment here. Not yet at least. But that could change. And it could change soon.
The Burrow integration (as mentioned above) is very promising. That opens the door to leveraged farms and  even mild leverage can really impact your yields. 
As is the very recent order book integration with Orderly Network to enable perpetuals trading (a large part of all transaction fees across the entire crypto ecosystem) 
https://app.ref.finance/orderbook
Both of these will significantly expand the protocols ability to attract users and earn fees. 

Ref Finance continues to be an important project on NEAR and I am definitely not ruling out getting exposure again to $xREF and their Farms in the near (get it?!) future.

Phoenix Bonds

Another recent entrant, with a novel twist on staking is Phoenix Bonds 
https://phoenixbonds.org/


It’s staked $NEAR, like with Meta Pool’s #stNEAR, with but locked in a bonding mechanism ($pNEAR) which sees your staking rewards distributed on a yield curve rather than all at once. 

What’s the point of this? It encourages longer staking periods. If you unstake earlier than the point at which full staking rewards are allocated, the portion of staking rewards you gave up (not the principle $NEAR, that’s protected) goes into the pool to reward all bond holders. Simple but effective. 
Phoenix Bonds - LiNEAR Protocol


It’s actually not a new idea. This is, in essence, what PLSAs (prize linked savings accounts) are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize-linked_savings_account 

There’s a couple of ways you can acquire pNEAR, which are explained in this thread https://twitter.com/LinearProtocol/status/1663872917195886592  

This gives you some further flexibility as to how you enter which allows you to take advantage of any price discounts which may exist.

pNEAR on Ref Finance

You can use your pNEAR in LPs (liquidity pools) on Ref Finance.
Rates will vary over time as will rewards but it's often a good way to earn more yield from your held assets.

It is important to note that LPs expose you to the very real risk of IL (impermanent loss) which is usually a higher risk than the smart contract risk and slashing risk liquid staking represents so bear that in mind when deciding on your asset allocations.

https://app.ref.finance/v2farms



It’ll be interesting to see how Phoenix will expand the utility of these bonds in the future. I could imagine there are a number of projects who would want to see a mechanism like this help them secure longer term investments from users to lessen the effects of the “mercenary capital” (aka opportunistic yield farming) we see throughout defi but without requiring long lock ups (like Meta Pool and Burrow have opted for).

NB: After doing the research on Phoenix bonds whilst writing this post I ended up putting some capital into some $pNEAR. I decided to directly bond $NEAR as opposed to buying $pNEAR on the market as that seemed to be the cheapest option given the market price at the time and the time horizon in mind I normally invest with (6-12 months).

However, just to give myself a little more flexibility, I split my investment across 3 bonds. It’s cheap to do transactions on NEAR so if you’re considering $pNEAR via the bonding route I’d encourage you to do the same.

Bullish on NEAR

It is still very early days but what I like about the NEAR ecosystem is how active the NEAR Foundation is in supporting builders.

It’s a cheap and fast blockchain built with developers in mind and they are rolling out important innovations at a steady pace.
https://pages.near.org/blog/near-blockchain-operating-system-is-now-live-on-near-org/ 


In case of core functions: staking and lending, these have to present for pretty much all products in crypto (in one way, shape or form) so are akin to betting on infrastructure. 
In Burrow (lending) and Meta Pool (staking) you have two providers who have taken an early lead. Consistently we’ve seen those who are early leaders often benefit the most when we see high growth happen in an ecosystem.