Although I lack the data to back this up, I’m confident, mostly through interactions in the ecosystem and on social media, that the biggest hurdle to creating a NEAR Wallet and onboarding into the NEAR and Aurora ecosystem is the requirement to have 0.1N to claim your human-readable name.
As an existing Web3 user, I find it difficult to open a NEAR wallet because it requires 0.1N and there are too many hoops to jump through
Proposed Solution
If a user bridges > $100 of any ERC20 token to NEAR via Rainbow Bridge, the Bridge will automatically facilitate the deposit of 0.1N into the wallet they’ve bridged to.
Goals
Onboard existing Web3 users from the Ethereum ecosystem into Aurora and NEAR
Mitigate the most significant hurdle in NEAR wallet onboarding; the requirement to top up your account with 0.1N in order to receive a human-readable name
Approximate Cost
10k NEAR - so ~ $85k atm
Considerations
Would this require development time?
Is it exploitable?
IMO no. There’s no profit to be made, it does enable individuals to create NEAR accounts with a human-readable name for 0 cost. Perhaps we open ourselves up to account squatting?
That said, if we only enable this for Ethereum <> NEAR transfers then the gas fees on the Ethereum side would widely outweigh the benefits
Hey Elm–will the ability to create a NEAR wallet for free through Sender be a temporary campaign? If so, do you know how long it will run for? I think this is a great idea and nice to see Sender lowering barriers for Web3 users coming to NEAR mainnet from EVM land.
Maybe add a similar feature as an additional option for Rainbow Bridge, so that you can pay with ETH to create a wallet on NEAR, so that users can transfer assets to NEAR as well.
It seems to me that such a feature would be more in demand. And it would help people who have ETH and user experience with it, but who don’t have a NEAR wallet.
The proposed solution above is aimed at the same user base. The difference is that the onus for paying the 0.1N isn’t on the user, it would be funded by AuroraDAO and facilitated by Rainbow Bridge
I liked it too, and within it I proposed an option, because users in the community have a need for it.
If it will be free - maybe it will be better for all ecosystem.
Your idea is not a bad Plan B if there’s no appetite from AuroraDAO or NF to subsidize new wallet creation. Thanks for sharing.
However, I think the proposed solution is a better long-term strategy because the 0.1 $NEAR spent on each wallet will be potentially offset by the $100 (or more) of new assets that will now be available to circulate in the NEAR mainnet economy.
I envision the airdrop engine can also be utilized by ecosystem projects (DeFi, gaming, NFTs, whatever) to airdrop nominal amounts of their tokens as another vector for marketing and PR. Perhaps you could even meme-ify bridging (welcome bridgoors) with a meme token / community?
This mechanic could be really powerful at growing the community if we do it right.
for ETH web3 users (by end of May).