Marieke Flament Steps Down as Near Foundation CEO

Marieke Flament, the founder of the layer-1 protocol with the same name and CEO of the Near Foundation, has resigned. Chris Donovan, the Near Foundation’s general counsel, will replace Flament as CEO, according to an announcement made on September 21.

Flament did not explain her departure. Speaking on her tenure, Flament said:

“Two years ago, I had never heard of NEAR. Upon doing a bit of research and after several conversations it became clear that NEAR had a tremendous potential – fantastic tech, a diverse and vibrant community and a world of open possibilities, and so I joined.”

She stated that from 2021 to 2023, the daily active user count of Near Protocol expanded from 50,000 to 3 million and its Twitter followers grew from 200,000 to over 2 million, citing more than 2,000 pieces of press coverage.

During this time period, Near Fosigned agreements were signed with SWEAT, Playember, Circle, Ledger, Alibaba, Amazon, Google, KPMG, Cosmose AI, SailGP, The Littles, PipeFlare, Shemaroo, Kakao Games, Inven/Vortex, and Netmarble/Marblex in Korea. In addition, Near Fosigned partnerships were signed with Playember, Circle, and Ledger.

In addition, she shared the information that the Near Foundation’s current treasury balance is 330 million NEAR, which is equivalent to around $350 million.

Flament wrote, as a summary of her leadership strategy, that NEAR is presently the 40th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with an estimated $1.04 billion.

“My strategy has been one of driving mainstream adoption, enabling and empowering grassroot communities and continuing our journey to decentralization. Bringing onboard large web2 players, while nurturing web3 innovators has also been key to our growth.”

In June, the Czech automaker Koda Auto introduced a platform for nonfungible tokens based on the Near Protocol.