Stephanie Douse 
Near Protocol raised $350 million in a funding round led by hedge fund Tiger Global on Wednesday in order to “accelerate the decentralization of the NEAR ecosystem.”
The company disclosed a $150 million funding round less than three months ago, and this round comes less than three months later.
The price of the NEAR token began to rise in response to the announcement, and it is currently trading at $15.82 as of press time.
Republic Capital, FTX Ventures, Hashed, and Dragonfly Capital were among the fresh round’s crypto-native investors.
Tiger Global, based in New York, has a growing footprint in crypto investments, having funded funding rounds for blockchain infrastructure platform Blockdaemon, crypto exchange FTX, payment processor Moonpay, and blockchain intelligence provider TRM Labs, among others.
The company has worked on providing a user-friendly environment for developers of decentralized applications since its mainnet launch in October 2020. (dapps). The lightning-fast proof-of-stake blockchain is intended to be a replacement for Ethereum, which suffers from scalability concerns that can cause transaction fees to skyrocket.
The Near ecosystem, which is becoming increasingly cash-rich, has helped blockchain-based companies. The company’s Aurora funded $12 million last October in order to offer Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility to the network.