# Proposal: Hack Contract Standards
###### tags: `near-contract-standards`

## Summary

We want to discuss how to better drive the innovation and new standards for the NEAR ecosystem.

## Problems

Ethereum has a huge community and very often innovation starts there and is copied to other networks.
We observed that many proposed standards are just copy of the EIPs. Sometimes it's good, because it was validated by a large community and live projects.
However, often such standards should be better researched: a validated EIP doesn't mean that it is without issues. ERC-20 is a perfect example. Many "fixes" were proposed, but none get through because it was too late (network effect, tools compatibility etc...).
With NEAR we have a more powerful account model and more powerful runtime. Wasm runtime is less limited than EVM.

To summarize, we need:

+ More engagements for drafting innovation.
+ Each proposal requires market validation

## Hackathons

So far, NEAR was focused to offer hackathon bounties related to ongoing producs (BOS ...).

However, Hackathon is a perfect place to test new approaches, hack new designs and VALIDATE them. In summary, on site hackathon:
+ Opportunity to discuss architecture details, collect ideas and solve problems in a matter of day compared to a month online.
+ Brainstorming.
+ Gives you a chance to approach problems you might not normally encounter on your current project. For instance, an infrastructure engineer might work on a product idea- and bring with him/her a fresh perspective.
+ Discuss integrations, which are essential to design new standards.
+ Fosters a sense of community. People get to know each other, they cross-pollenate more than usual.

This is exactly what we need to have **first validation**!

## Long Standing Open NEPs

+ Multitoken Standard -> https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/SklByGMgp