Proximity
Proximity is a research & development team that supports web3 projects with grants, advisory services, and developer support on the NEAR blockchain.
What we worked on
I joined Proximity in 2022, designing the brand as well as their website. I've since contributed with product design to various R&D initiatives supporting projects such as Burrow, Polygon zkEVM and dydx. More recently, I've contributed UI/UX for NEAR's chain abstraction initiative, spearheaded by their "Chain Signatures" protocol.
As you might know, there are a whole bunch of fragmented chains out there. What Chain Signatures does is basically connect them. An easy way to visualize the current state of things is this: Imagine you had Gmail and your friend had Outlook, and you couldn't email each other… Not great. Chain Signatures is a protocol that helps solve for just that problem in web3: cross-chain interoperability by way of a decentralized MPC (multi-party computation) signer network on NEAR.
Chain Signatures improves web3 UX by orders of magnitude, making sure all the complexity is abstracted away from the user, leaving them to focus on their use case. "One account, any chain" is the idea. In fact, the goal is that the user shouldn't even have to think about blockchains to begin with. This should all happen in the background, serving the actual use case up front.
Some examples of what's being made possible by Chain Signatures are detailed by Proximity in these articles:
• Bitcoin's new horizon (thedefiant.io)
• NEAR's Chain Signatures: Enhancing Blockchain Interoperability (medium.com)
• Unlocking Multichain Web3 with NEAR Chain Signatures (medium.com)
• A First Look at Chain Signatures: Cross-Chain Without Bridges (medium.com)
Takeaways
During my time with Proximity, I've learned a whole lot about the web3 space and its challenges. Being a new and highly technical field, the UX patterns have been largely uncharted. This has made for very fun and challenging work.
Proximity is a research & development team that supports web3 projects with grants, advisory services, and developer support on the NEAR blockchain.
What we worked on
I joined Proximity in 2022, designing the brand as well as their website. I've since contributed with product design to various R&D initiatives supporting projects such as Burrow, Polygon zkEVM and dydx. More recently, I've contributed UI/UX for NEAR's chain abstraction initiative, spearheaded by their "Chain Signatures" protocol.
As you might know, there are a whole bunch of fragmented chains out there. What Chain Signatures does is basically connect them. An easy way to visualize the current state of things is this: Imagine you had Gmail and your friend had Outlook, and you couldn't email each other… Not great. Chain Signatures is a protocol that helps solve for just that problem in web3: cross-chain interoperability by way of a decentralized MPC (multi-party computation) signer network on NEAR.
Chain Signatures improves web3 UX by orders of magnitude, making sure all the complexity is abstracted away from the user, leaving them to focus on their use case. "One account, any chain" is the idea. In fact, the goal is that the user shouldn't even have to think about blockchains to begin with. This should all happen in the background, serving the actual use case up front.
Some examples of what's being made possible by Chain Signatures are detailed by Proximity in these articles:
• Bitcoin's new horizon (thedefiant.io)
• NEAR's Chain Signatures: Enhancing Blockchain Interoperability (medium.com)
• Unlocking Multichain Web3 with NEAR Chain Signatures (medium.com)
• A First Look at Chain Signatures: Cross-Chain Without Bridges (medium.com)
Takeaways
During my time with Proximity, I've learned a whole lot about the web3 space and its challenges. Being a new and highly technical field, the UX patterns have been largely uncharted. This has made for very fun and challenging work.