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Layer-1 Ecosystem Funding
Osgur Murphy O Kane
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Introduction

Over the past 18 months, an explosion of on-chain activity and a significant increase in Ethereum gas fees triggered the meteoric rise of a number of layer-1 ecosystems and Ethereum layer-2 networks. These ecosystems have launched enormous incentive programs and growth funds as they compete to attract projects and users in order to achieve the necessary network effects to succeed.

The following table has been created to help understand which ecosystems are investing heavily in growth, and therefore, indicate which ecosystems could flourish over the next couple of years.

Fantom

Allocation: 370m FTM Launched: Aug 30 2021 Notes: Funds are distributed exclusively to builders. This is because the Fantom Foundation believes that builders allocate resources most effectively.

Teams deploying on Fantom will receive rewards in accordance with their TVL. Minimum TVL is $5m. These teams can allocate their FTM grants how they see fit.

Further details Application form

Near

Allocation: $800m total

$450m specifically allocated

Launched: Oct 25 2021 Notes: $250m allocated to ecosystem grants helping existing projects further develop and scale.

$100m allocated to Startup Grant Pools. 20+ startups will be identified and given $5m each in funding to redistribute to key stakeholders. The ecosystem decides who gets funding.

$100m will be allocated to Regional Funds: money allocated to foster the development of NEAR’s largest community regions in Asia, Europe, and the US.

Accelerator - Pre-seed & seed startups: Here

Further details

Terra

Allocation: $150m Launched: Jul 16 2021 Notes: Ecosystem Fund is a capital foundation for builders of applications, protocols, and tooling on Terra

Requirements: Projects must build a protocol or application directly on the Terra blockchain.

Projects must use Terra assets (e.g. UST, mAssets, ANC, MIR, etc.) in a meaningful way.

Further details

Also grants between $1k-30k are offered to projects that are developing within the Terra Ecosystem that have a new concept they are attempting to work on. Follow on funding between $30-100k for successful grant recipients.

Further details

Harmony

Allocation: $300m Launched: Sept 9 2021 Notes: Wide-spanning grants programme.

Three primary categories:

  1. Teams with a functioning pre-existing product
  2. Teams spanning from ideation stage startups to established businesses moving to blockchain.
  3. [People who want to contribute to the ecosystem]

Further details and application forms here.

Avalanche

Allocation: $200m Launched: Nov 1 2021 Notes: $200m fund ‘Blizzard’ to accelerate development, growth, and innovation across Avalanche.

4 key areas of growth:

  1. DeFi
  2. Enterprise applications
  3. NFTs and
  4. Culture applications

Seeking to support use cases such as STOs, liquidity providers and self-sovereign identity.

Support for projects includes equity investments, token purchases, and various tech, BD and ecosystem integration support.

“Projects… expanding to Avalanche or building the next big thing… should contact Blizzard@avalabs.org ”

Further details

Celo

Allocation: $100m Launched: Aug 30 2021 Notes: $100m allocated towards grants, incentives and educational initiatives. The majority of program participants will jointly contribute half the funds for incentive programs.

Celo Accelerator (startups) Celo Grants (projects with working product) Community Fund (on/off ramps, research, community tools, educational initiatives).

Solana

Allocation: $314m (Last funding round) Launched: Jun 9 2021 Notes: No specific announcement re ecosystem funding. However, the $314m raise in June 2021 was stated to go towards:

  1. Incubation Studio
  2. Venture investing arm
  3. {trading desk}

This means there is certainly funding available for high potential projects. Further details Grants program

Serum Ecosystem Fund - $100m (Not complete. 2022 planned launch)

Funding will go toward supporting growth of DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse and DAO tooling on Serum.

Further details

Algorand

Allocation: 150m ALGO Launched: Sept 10 2021 Notes:

  1. 50m ALGO allocated to support the development of DeFi infrastructure and applications. Within this, 10m ALGO in DeFi "SupaGrants" have been designed to support the creation of critical DeFi infrastructure such as cross-chain bridges and price oracles. The balance of this fund will support further application development.

  2. 100m ALGO to support and provide liquidity incentives to the Algorand DeFi ecosystem.

Further details

BSC

Allocation: $1b Launched: Oct 12 2021 Notes: $1b Growth Fund by Binance will focus on four main categories:

  1. Talent development ($100m),
  2. Liquidity incentive program ($100m),
  3. Builder program ($300m) and
  4. Investment & incubation program ($500m).

See details of the four programmes here.

Oasis

Allocation: $160m Launched: Nov 17 2021 Notes: Oasis is a privacy-enabled platform focused on DeFi and the data economy.

The Ecosystem Fund will focus on building out the Oasis ecosystem.

The fund will primarily focus on:

  1. DeFi
  2. NFTs,
  3. Metaverse and
  4. Data tokenization

Further details

Polygon

Allocation: Up to $150m DeFi, $100m gaming / NFTs Launched: Apr 28 2021 (DeFi), Jul 20 2021 (NFTs) Notes: DeFi Adoption Fund Aims to support the top DeFi protocols on Ethereum and help them scale and grow with Polygon e.g. Aave and Curve.

Further details

Gaming Fund Polygon Studios was set up to focus on gaming projects so that developers can fuse Web 2.0 games with Web 3.0 decentralized technology. Seeking to make Polygon the leading crypto gaming hub.

Further details

Ecosystem Allocation Launched Notes

Metis

Allocation: $100m Launched: Nov 9 2021 Notes: $100m fund (called Genesi) will be allocated all major crypto verticals including:

  • DeFi
  • Gaming and
  • DAOs

A committee consisting of Metis and its investors (incl Digital Finance Group and Master Ventures) will be in charge of allocating the $100m.

Exclusive announcement here

[No clear links to apply on the website].

The Metis Ecosystem Development Program also provides assistance to projects launched on Metis.

Further details

Kava

Allocation: $185m Launched: Sept 22 2021 Notes: $185m ‘Ignition Fund’ is targeted at “best-in-class protocols to be rapidly onboarded” to the Kava Platform.

Ignition Fund is aimed at bridging the gap between early DeFi adopters and the untapped mainstream.

Further details

Cardano

Allocation: $100m Launched: Sept 27 2021 Notes: EMURGO is the investment vehicle for Cardano, split between EMURGO Africa and EMURGO Ventures.

EMURGO Africa aims to support about 300 startups in the region through seed funding and incubation.

EMURGO Ventures will focus on other developed markets to facilitate the building of solutions and services on Cardano. This will include seed investments into companies building DeFi services, non-fungible token (NFT) projects and blockchain developer education tools.

Announcement here

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