$5M grants program introduced by the Starknet Foundation

The Starknet Foundation has unveiled a fresh grant program, offering $5 million in USDC to support emerging projects on the network. The Seed Grants Program aims to assist at least 200 promising teams by providing $25,000 in USDC per recipient, serving as a final boost to help launch final-stage projects on Starknet. Starknet is an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that utilizes zero-knowledge rollup technology. The CEO of Starknet Foundation, Diego Oliva, explained that the grants program was created in response to the main challenges faced by current Starknet developers. The program specifically targets projects related to Starknet that have already developed a minimum viable product (MVP) or proof-of-concept. The primary objective is to foster more innovation in the blockchain space. Starknet has seen a significant increase in developers joining its ecosystem, with the number of monthly developers surpassing 22,400 in December 2023, a growth of over 113% in the past three years from December 2020, according to Electric Capital’s 2023 Developer Report. When asked about the most exciting projects and protocol categories being built on Starknet, Oliva highlighted blockchain gaming as a top use case. According to DappRadar data, blockchain gaming accounted for 35% of total decentralized application activity, with over 2.2 million daily unique active wallets.