Owen Hassall is a software engineer and developer relations specialist associated with the NEAR Protocol. His professional experience includes roles in both government and the blockchain industry, contributing to projects at the UK Ministry of Defence and holding several developer-focused positions within the NEAR ecosystem. ^[3]

Education

Hassall attended the University of Leeds, graduating in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Theoretical Physics. During his time at university, he was actively involved in the blockchain community. From September 2023 to August 2024, he served as President of the Leeds University Union Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Society, where he was responsible for overseeing blockchain education and programming initiatives for students. ^[1]​

Career

Hassall's professional career began in 2023 with a position as a Software Engineer intern at the UK Ministry of Defence. In this role, he worked within a team to develop software and contributed to technical projects. In August 2023, Hassall transitioned into the blockchain sector, joining NEAR Protocol as a Developer Relations Engineer for DevHub. This remote, contract-based position involved working on developer-focused initiatives within the NEAR ecosystem. Following this, from March 2024 to April 2025, he was the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of betVEX, a venture he later described as a "failed startup."

Since April 2025, Hassall has held the role of DevX (Developer Experience) and Developer Relations Engineer at NEAR Protocol, working with the affiliated entity Proximity. This remote position focuses on improving the developer experience on the platform and supporting initiatives throughout the NEAR ecosystem. ^{[1] [4]}

Presentations

Building on NEAR

At Unite DeFi 2025 in July, Hassall delivered a presentation titled “Building DeFi on NEAR,” introducing developers to building decentralized finance applications on NEAR and outlining two hackathon bounties focused on expanding 1inch’s Fusion Plus cross-chain swapping and creating a decentralized solver using Proximity’s Shade Agent framework. He walked through core technical requirements, including implementing hashlocks and timelocks, structuring smart contracts in Rust, managing timestamps, handling fungible token transfers, and distinguishing between view and change methods, while also demonstrating how to interact with deployed contracts using Wallet Selector, NEAR API JS, and the NEAR CLI. Hassall further discussed the design and requirements of decentralized solvers, including considerations around chain signatures for secure transaction signing and maintaining liquidity access, and concluded by sharing documentation resources and answering participant questions about solver architecture, hackathon scope, and development support channels. ^[5]​