https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/near-protocol-raises-21-6m-from-a16z-and-launches-its-mainnet-beating-ethereum-2-0/

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515m. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable blockchains will begin rolling out in the near future.”

The firm obviously had something in mind when that was published, it’s emerged that it’s leading a $21.6M funding round for the NEAR Protocol project (a round which just closed in the middle of US COVID-19 lockdowns). Other investors remain unnamed at this point. Not only that but NEAR launches its “MainNet” (as in, ‘production-ready’) network today. The move is a black-eye for the much-vaunted Ethereum 2.0 release, which has yet to appear.