NEAR Certified Developer Program (NCD)

Level 1

There is a need to distinguish between 3 groups: 

  • People who participate in the NEAR Certified Developer (NCD) program and completed all the Steps
  • People who participate AND deliver a demo with their team on Friday
  • People who participate, deliver a demo AND prove they understand the material

For this reason we have identified 3 levels of L1 certification:

  • Participants — this group receives no reward and no recognition for participation
  • L1 certified participants — this group receives rewards and certificates of completion
  • L1v verified developers — this group receives rewards, certificates of verification and more

To earn an L1v, participants who complete NCD with a demo (L1 certified participants ONLY) must immediately schedule a 30-60 minute in-person pairing session with a verification specialist (currently Sherif but will be many more as they are trained)

The verification session will NOT include all of following activities, only some (at the discretion of the verifier):

  • Explaining a working contract
    • Reasoning about the behavior of a contract (core contracts, learn-near examples, etc.)
    • Predicting the effect of a change in the contract
    • Creating a guide to using the contract (NEAR CLI commands, API calls, etc.)
  • Troubleshooting a broken contract
    • Fixing a compilation error
    • Fixing a failing unit test
    • Fixing a failing simulation test
    • Fixing a runtime error (contract logic, interface or other issues)
  • Improving a working contract
    • Refactoring the contract
    • Enhancing an existing feature
    • Adding a new feature
    • Optimizing the contract (size, speed, storage, etc)
  • Creating a new contract
    • Translating an existing contract from AssemblyScript to Rust or vice versa
    • Designing a new contract as an improvement to an existing one
    • Designing an entirely new contract based on requirements (to be provided by verifier)
    • Designing an entirely new contract based an original idea (either their own or the verifier’s idea)

The outcome of a verification session will be one of either:

  • Verified 
  • Unverified

L1 certified participants who do NOT pass verification may reschedule the session 2 times (max 3 attempts) before being waitlisted for 90 days.

L1v verified developers are immediately added to an exclusive group (newsletter, discord, etc) and presented with opportunities to fast-track bounties, grants, etc.

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