NEAR Community Choice Awards
Best of NEAR this past YEAR
We’re celebrating one year of NEAR Protocol on Mainnet and we’re looking to our entire NEAR Community to be involved!
The NEARCON event will have incredible programming both physically in Lisbon, Portugal and out in the Metaverse, but we want to acknowledge the whole year’s worth of activity and the community members, dApps, DAOs, and Guilds who make the NEARverse the vibrant and exciting place it is.
Read on to learn how you can be part of this online activation and celebration starting on October 26 during NEARCON!
Awards & Categories:
How do we begin to capture the “favorites” of the community?
To not overwhelm community members we did have to narrow down the award categories to 12 - 8 categories for individual awards, 4 categories for group awards - to start our first ever Community Choice Awards.
And the categories are:
Categories For Individuals:
- Favourite Meme
- Favourite Tweet about NEAR
- Favourite 2D NFT
- Favourite 3D NFT
- Favourite Audio NFT
- Favourite Single Edition NFT
- Favourite Tkn or Token
- Biggest Community Contributor
Categories For Groups:
- Favourite Guild
- Favourite DAO
- Favourite Grantee (from NEAR Grants)*
- Favourite dApp
*even if the grantee is represented by an individual, this category has the potential for being awarded to a group, so for ease of nominating, the award qualifies for the group award category.
Prizes:
What are awards without a prize attached to showcase our appreciation for the contributors these different winners have made to the community?
We are delighted to further celebrate the incredible NEAR community projects by announcing the prizes for the Community Choice Awards:
Individual Winners - voted by the community as the Community Choice for the Category - will each receive a NEAR Misfits: First Fleet NFT avatar! The first of their kind and launching at NEARCON through this activation, the NEAR Misfits represent the 1st Fleet of the Metaverse from all over the world and all walks of life. “Armed with tech tools and their imagination, NEAR MISFITS are building a place where they can feel like they belong, build and compete freely” - just like our NEAR Community members!
Group Winners - chosen by the Community in each category - will each receive their own limited edition NEARCON swag from the Swagger DAO! Pick your favourite NEARCON t-shirt and it will be shipped to you wherever you are courtesy of the official merch designers and organizers of NEARCON. Designed and produced by star community members for the community projects and groups who are powering the ecosystem. You only get to have inaugural NEARCON swag once!
How To Participate
First: Join Community Group on the Astro DAO Platform
To participate in the Community Choice Awards, you can join the “Community” group of this NEAR Community DAO on the Astro platform: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/community.sputnik-dao.near/groups/Community
Join by clicking “Add member to this group” to get a vote in all the interactive polls. Currently, 49 percent of votes by any group is enough to approve all types of proposals. During NEARCON, we will keep our “Council” group small to facilitate community onboarding, while discussing and exploring new governance structures and processes for this Community DAO.
Second: Submit Your Entry
To submit your favourite choice in any category, we ask everyone to use the polling feature of Astro.
IMPORTANT ~ when creating your choice as a poll, be sure to include the category in the proposed “QUESTION OR STATEMENT TO VOTE ON.”
Example: nominating NEARchan as your favorite meme.
Write “individual ~ favorite meme” in the beginning of your proposed choice (see below).
Third: Vote for your Favourites in the Polls
Navigate to the “Polls” feature under “Tasks” in the sidebar. There you will find tabs with active, approved, and failed (rejected or expired) proposals. Notice the categories in each poll, stating their choice / option for a specific award, e.g. favorite meme.
Here is the tricky part… We need to set different voting policies for each group, so polls aren’t closed when half the Community group votes one way or another. For that reason, we are initially focused on getting participants to join and contribute via community.astrodao.com.
Fourth: Get Your Votes In
Start nominating and voting on your favourites through the “Community” group of this NEAR Community DAO on Astro now!
Voting for the Community Choice Awards will close on November 26 @ 11:59pm PST. Winners will be announced on November 27.
Feel free to encourage others to participate in the Community Choice Awards using #NEARCON and tagging @NEARProtocol and @AstroDao on Twitter.
See you at the polls!
Explore Astro DAOs
https://app.astrodao.com/all/daos
Create Your Own DAO
Start a NEAR Guild → Your Guide to DAOs on NEAR
Explore this new Astro DAO platform with polls, groups (roles), tokens, and more 
Join the community on Telegram and follow @AstroDAO on Twitter!
This post was co-written with @jlwaugh with invaluable assistance from @kitbuti and @starpause. I wanted to especially highlight and thank them for their efforts because in celebrating the NEAR Community, we also celebrate the behind-the-scenes support of the NEAR Core members who are passionate about community. And this is a time of celebration for each and every one of us whatever our role in the community may be!
