Algorand Foundation, an organization focused on engaging, educating, and enabling its community to build a borderless, frictionless economy on public, decentralized blockchain technology, has announced the launch of its 250-Million Algo Tokens (ALGO) Grants Program. This broad, worldwide, multi-year program will provide funding to projects building apps to support infrastructure, end-user application, and research innovation on the Algorand blockchain.
As part of the program, 250 million ALGO (approximately $50 million USD at current rates) will be allocated to qualified developers across four major categories: innovative research, development tools and infrastructure for the Algorand blockchain, use cases for decentralized applications (dApps) to be built on top of the Algorand blockchain, and education and community initiatives. Potential use cases could include DeFi, payments, asset exchanges, social media integration, supply chain, copyright authentication, and asset tokenization.
“We are thrilled to announce the 250M ALGO Grants Program, which is designed to support innovation that helps to grow the Algorand ecosystem,” said Fangfang Chen, Head of Operations at the Algorand Foundation. “We believe that a public, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain with an open-source approach is fundamental to delivering on the vision of a borderless economy. As part of its vision of enabling a broad and active blockchain development community, the Algorand Foundation is committed to supporting that community as they explore the opportunities for innovation that exist within the Algorand blockchain ecosystem.”
Initial recipients of the program include three projects:
- Bloq – a multi-blockchain infrastructure provider, delivering Algorand nodes and APIs alongside other major networks.
- PureStake AlgoSigner – an open-source browser plug-in that enables developers to add Algorand transaction capabilities into their applications while allowing users to keep control of their keys.
- Reach – a development platform designed to remove the complexity of building dApps on the Algorand blockchain and to enable the future creation of DAOs, Decentralised Exchanges and many other DeFi Applications on Algorand.
“Easy and pragmatic developer tools are critical to further expanding the accessibility of the Algorand network,” says Derek Yoo, CEO at PureStake. “We are pleased to have been selected by the Algorand Foundation for a grant that lets us break down barriers between token holders, application developers, and the blockchain network itself.”
“The grant program from the Algorand Foundation is one of the most focused programs out there, and we believe it will be instrumental in accelerating the adoption of Algorand’s platform,” said Chris Swenor, founder of Reach. “We are excited to participate and move forward with our vision for making DApp development seamless.”
One of the key criteria in the selection process is the positive impact projects will have on the wider Algorand community and the ecosystem in general. Other criteria include quality of submission, technical or academic strength of the proposal, opportunity for growth, and commitment of the team submitting the projects.
The Algorand Foundation will conduct the initial evaluation of the projects. In the future, the Algorand Foundation plans to introduce an open grant program, which will allow the broader community to vote on which projects should receive grants.
In support of participants in the grant program, the developer relations portal has been enhanced with new tutorials, solutions, and resources to make building on Algorand more simple and accessible.