Banter Systems

About Banter Systems

Pagoda, which originated as NEAR Inc., operates as the primary development force behind the NEAR Protocol, a carbon-neutral, proof-of-stake blockchain. The company was established in 2017 by co-founders Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin. Skidanov started his career at Microsoft before becoming an architect and director of engineering at memSQL, while Polosukhin was also an engineer with significant experience in developing AI systems and served as a research manager at Google Research. Their combined expertise in engineering and distributed systems laid the groundwork for the NEAR Protocol.

The initial mandate for NEAR Inc., beginning in 2018, was to construct the NEAR Protocol and launch its MainNet, a milestone achieved in October 2020. Following the successful launch and the initial phase of sharding in late 2021, the entity evolved. In February 2022, the company announced its rebranding to Pagoda, positioning itself as a Web3 startup platform designed to provide a comprehensive toolset for developers building on the NEAR blockchain. This strategic shift was driven by the realization that a more seamless experience was necessary for developers and entrepreneurs to launch their Web3 businesses on the protocol.

Pagoda functions as a product engineering company that creates and maintains tools to simplify development on the NEAR Protocol. Its business is to build, launch, and operate blockchain-based products and services. The company provides developers with a software development kit that includes audited contract templates, tutorials, and turnkey applications. The core product is the Pagoda Developer Console, which integrates various open-source projects into a cohesive development experience, offering interactive tutorials, scalable infrastructure, and operational analytics native to Web3. The platform aims to facilitate the entire lifecycle of a Web3 startup, from building and maintaining to measuring and marketing products effectively. Pagoda serves the community of Web3 developers and entrepreneurs, operating within the competitive blockchain infrastructure market. A notable partnership includes a collaboration with Google Cloud, which provides technical support and infrastructure to Pagoda, enabling developers on NEAR to build and scale their applications more easily.