Near Foundation CEO Marieke Flament Steps Down

Marieke Flament, the CEO of Near Foundation, the non-profit behind the development of the popular community-driven layer-one protocol, NEAR, has stepped down from her role.

According to the September 21 post, the foundation’s general counsel, Chris Donovan, will succeed Flament as the new CEO following Flament’s resignation.

Flament did not give any specific reason for her departure but she reflected on her days as the foundation’s CEO, recalling how she had no knowledge of Near before joining the protocol. According to her, studying and conversations with others helped her to see Near tremendous potential as a fantastic tech, a diverse and vibrant community and a world of open possibilities.

Speaking about the protocol’s achievement from 2021 to 2023, Flament mentioned its daily active users grew from 50,000 to 3 million. Its social media presence was also not left behind as followers on X (formerly Twitter) also increased from 200,000 to over 2 million, along with over 2,000 pieces of press coverage.

The period also saw several partnerships with platforms including SWEAT, Playember, Circle, Ledger, Alibaba, Amazon, Google, KPMG, Cosmose AI, SailGP, The Littles, PipeFlare, Shemaroo, Kakao Games, Inven/Vortex and Netmarble/Marblex in Korea. Czech automobile conglomerate, Škoda Auto launched a nonfungible token platform on the Near Protocol in June.

It is worth noting that the protocol made all the above mentioned achievement while protecting it’s treasury from many internal and external crises. Flament revealed that the current treasury balance of Near Foundation is a sizable 330 million NEAR, valued at an estimated $350 million.

Despite stepping down as CEO, Flament said she will continue to be an active and committed NEAR Foundation Council member and an advisor to CEO Chris.

Reflecting on her leadership tenure, she said:

“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”.

Currently, the Near protocol ranks 41th in terms of total value locked (TVL), a measure of the amount of money stashed in a given blockchain ecosystem, according to data from Coinstats.