The Starknet Foundation has revealed a fresh initiative called the $5 million Seed Grants Program, which will provide emerging projects on the network with $5 million worth of USDC. The program’s objective is to support at least 200 promising teams by awarding each recipient $25,000 in USD Coin (USDC). This financial boost aims to assist final-stage projects in launching on Starknet, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that utilizes zero-knowledge rollup technology.
Diego Oliva, the CEO of Starknet Foundation, stated that the $5 million grants program was designed to address the main challenges faced by current Starknet developers. Oliva emphasized the foundation’s goal of promoting more blockchain innovation through this initiative.
Starknet has experienced a significant increase in developer interest. The number of monthly developers reached over 22,400 in December 2023, marking a growth of more than 113% over the past three years from the 10,500 recorded in December 2020, according to Electric Capital’s 2023 Developer Report.
When questioned about the most exciting projects and protocol categories being developed on Starknet, Oliva highlighted blockchain gaming as a prominent use case. He revealed that blockchain gaming accounted for 35% of total decentralized application activity, with more than 2.2 million daily unique active wallets, as reported by DappRadar data.
In related news, the SEC has issued a Wells notice to Robinhood’s crypto business, and analysts suggest that the “danger zone” for Bitcoin distribution has passed.