Avalanche announces $40m grant program for L1 developers

Avalanche has announced a new grant program that will reward developers who build on its blockchain mainnet.

The Avalanche (AVAX) ecosystem will benefit from this new $40 million grant program through the ‘Retro9000’ initiative introduced by the Avalanche Foundation on September 26.

$40 million grant program

Retro9000 is a retroactive rewards program designed to incentivize developers to contribute to the ecosystem growth of the blockchain platform through layer-1 chains created and deployed on the Avalanche mainnet.

The program is part of the ‘Avalanche9000’ upgrade, which aims to reduce the costs associated with deploying and maintaining layer-1 blockchains on the mainnet. A key feature of the upcoming upgrade is that it makes it economically feasible for projects to be launched within the growing subnet ecosystem.

“L1 validators will no longer be required to stake large amounts of AVAX to get in, giving thousands of projects access to a private, interoperable blockchain built on a battle-tested technology stack at low cost,” said Martin Eckardt, director of developer relations at Ava Labs.

Ava Labs chief operating officer Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo said the grants are an initiative aimed at kick-starting Avalanche’s layer-1 ecosystem. Retro9000 provides early-stage developers with incentives that will further grow their products.

Retro9000 encourages developers to build their projects publicly, allowing them to gain community support. Projects can then test their products before releasing them to earn rewards.

Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem

In recent months, the Avalanche DeFi community has benefited from the BOOST program. Partners bringing these rewards to the community include DeFi protocol Aave (AAVE), others include Benqi Finance, Delta Prime, and GMX.

The Avalanche community is also set to benefit from the launch of SolvBTC on the network. SolvBTC is a yield-generating Bitcoin (BTC) token that is currently available on Ethereum (ETH) and other chains.

Solv Protocol’s SolvBTC integration brings the project’s decentralized Bitcoin reserves to Avalanche. Users in the ecosystem can now earn staking rewards on their Bitcoin holdings.