RSK, the Bitcoin smart contracting platform powered by IOV Labs, has unveiled a $200,000 fund to spearhead application development. The grant program will be made available to dApp developers interested in building upon the smart contract network, whose security is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain. The funds earmarked for enterprising projects will stimulate third party development work as RSK looks to position itself as a leading launchpad for decentralized finance applications.
Operating as a Bitcoin sidechain, RSK provisions an array of tools including data storage and name service, as well as libraries which developers can build upon. The RSK ecosystem is geared around dApps that cover services such as escrow, exchanges, and wallets. In an announcement explaining its new grants program, RSK invited “developers from all around the world to participate and submit their ideas.”
Blockchain Projects Roll Out Developer Incentivization Programs
While the crypto market has receded through the latter half of 2019, blockchain projects have ramped up their building work, with several introducing grants programs and other initiatives to spur third party development. This week, dApp scaling project LiquidApps completed a $50,000 hackathon in which prizes were awarded to the most innovative teams proposing solutions to be built upon its DAPP Network. The network provisions EOS resources such as vRAM, as well as providing tools for dApp developers to connect blockchains and introduce price feeds into their applications using oracles. In all, 44 teams took part in the hackathon, with participants from 40 countries.
Square, founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, has emulated RSK in championing Bitcoin as the most robust ecosystem for building upon. In September, it allocated $100,000 to open source Bitcoin payment processor BTCPay. Dorsey has spoken of his desire to bring Bitcoin to Africa’s 1.2 billion people; the Square founder has just completed a tour of the African continent, and pledged to spend 3-6 months there next year. During his time in Africa, Dorsey attended Bitcoin meetups and is adamant that Africa “will define” the future of Bitcoin.
RSK Invites Developer Submissions
To qualify for an RSK grant, a portal has been created where developers can submit their proposals. The RSK team will review all submissions, provide feedback, and then work with the projects they approve for funding to help iterate their ideas. In particular, the Bitcoin sidechain company is interested in supporting dApps that use RSK Infrastructure Framework Open Standard (RIF OS), its suite of open and decentralized infrastructure protocols that support dApp scaling.
Prior to introducing its $200,000 grants program, RSK had already provided funding to a number of projects that are supporting its ecosystem. These include digital accelerator Neoris, charities BitGive and Circles of Angels, and decentralized projects 88i and dexFreight, the latter a logistics startup. Applicants have 12 months in which to submit proposals in a bid to receive a tranche of RSK’s $200k fund.
