Near BOS is a complete framework designed for creating, testing, deploying and distributing decentralized application frontends.
Developers can create Javascript based dApps with the frontend code stored and distributed from a blockchain. It is blockchain agnostic so you can store data on Near and EVM chains.
BOS is a collection of components, blockchains & gateways.
- Components are the individual dApps frontends, built with HTML, JS & CSS code, which are designed to offer a specific service
- Blockchains store the component execute component functions to return the code to render a frontend
- Gateways are servers that render the output of a component. Anyone can deploy their own gateway by forking this code https://github.com/near-examples/bos-gateway
There is a Near BOS Sandbox you can play with at https://near.org/sandbox
const data = "World";
return <div>Hello {data}</div>;
In the example above we are returning a div which web developers will be familiar with. In it we have some static text and an injected variable.
This enables developers to create decentralized frontends and distribute via the Near BOS gateways. There is no need to host the frontend on a centralized website, the code is stored on chain and distributed via BOS.
Near has built this with a focus around reusable components and there is a public library with overf 10,000 code snippets already at: https://near.org/components
There is also a curated list of applications already running on Near BOS at: https://near.org/applications
It’s an interesting concept and something I’ve played with in the past trying to store HTML in a Solidity contract. Near have bundled this together into a nice “Blockchain Operating System” which is user friendly and will appeal to web3 developers.
It is perhaps the most polished version of a vision for an “Open Web” that I have seen to date and it’s a credit to the Near team who put it together. Whether they can gain traction with it to attract users to the dApps that developers are creating remains to be seen.
If there’s any interest in developing on Near BOS, let me know and I’ll create some dev tutorials around the tech and build out some fun web3 frontends.
