RootstockLabs has announced the second wave of the $2.5 million grant program designed to transform Bitcoin from a simple store of value to a fully decentralised financial system. The ‘Rootstock Strategic Grants Program’ is currently funding up to 100 projects over the next year that are on Rootstock, the world’s first Bitcoin sidechain which has become a growing hub of DeFi activity on the Bitcoin network since its launch in 2018.
The company’s grant program has been designed to help the next generation of fintech founders and developers to build next generation financial services and products on top of Bitcoin. This is achieved with Rootstock, the world’s first Bitcoin sidechain. The exciting sidechain, which is secured by Bitcoin, allows users to build the financial products of tomorrow, today. With Rootstock, developers get access to all the programmability of Ethereum combined with the security and decentralisation of Bitcoin.
Given Rootstock’s compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Developers experienced in building on Ethereum can easily start building decentralised applications (dApps) and integrations on the network. Developers can use the same Solidity tools and libraries they are accustomed to when building on Ethereum, including Hardhat, Truffle, web3.js, and ethers.js.
Through the grant, RootstockLabs is interested in assisting the creation of solutions that provide real utility in the real world. To ensure those involved in the program are receiving the most insightful and expert feedback possible, RootstockLabs has put together a judging panel of nine industry leaders, including:
- Daniel Fogg – CEO of RootstockLabs
- Pei Chen – CGO of RootstockLabs
- Adrien Eidelman – co-founder of Rootstock
- Sergio Lerner – co-founder of Rootstock
- John Light – Product at Sovryn
- Sean Kiernan – CEO of Greengage
- Mauricio Tovar – co-founder of Tropykus
- Jameson Lopp – co-founder and CTO of Casa
Speaking on the grants program, Daniel Fogg, CEO of RootstockLabs commented: “We’re calling on founders and builders to submit their applications to tap in to $2.5m of funding for projects that align with our vision of a safe and equitable global financial system that enables everyone to participate and prosper.”
Wave I of the Grants Program is now closed, with submissions being reviewed, while Wave II of the ‘Rootstock Strategic Grants Program’ is now open to established businesses and advanced projects. Established products and protocols can apply directly for the $2.5 million scheme can do so via the Rootstock website, provided their project benefits the broader ecosystem. Startups and developers can access the program by competing in the Bitcoin Olympics Hackathon, which will be happening throughout the rest of 2023. The next hackathon is being run in partnership with the Bitcoin Startup Lab launches this week, where entrants will have the chance to win a share of over $100k in prizes. Entries are being accepted until September 17, 2023.
The grant announcement reaffirms RootstockLabs’ commitment to supporting professionals building on Rootstock. Over the years, the company has played an active and integral role in supporting this community. To this end, RootstockLabs recently announced the winners of its ‘Rootstock: Scaling Bitcoin Hackathon’. The competition, which attracted more than 850 registrations and 200 completed projects helped developers catalyse Bitcoin innovation using the Rootstock blockchain.
Once again, the event was split into two phases: an ideathon and a hackathon. The ideathon stage of the competition closed in June, with the hackathon ending the following month.
During this period,a panel of expert judges from across the Bitcoin ecosystem whittled down the participants to a list of 35 finalists. Following consideration from the panel, ten participants were awarded with cash prizes, with a further three recognized for their efforts during the hackathon.
Alongside RootstockLabs and the expert judging panel, the hackathon and ideathon event was supported by HackerEarth, a global community of over 4 million developers. The companies recognised through the ‘Rootstock: Scaling Bitcoin Hackathon’ now qualify for the ‘Rootstock Strategic Grants’ program. The winners from the event were as follows:
Phase I – Ideathon:
- First Place ($3,000): Tuk
- Second Place ($2,000): Sousta
- Third Place ($1,000): Doiim
- Fourth Place ($650): TickIt
- Fifth Place ($500): Rooted
- Sixth Place ($450): NFT Pawn
- Seventh Place ($400): Ordinal Dao
Phase II – Hackathon:
- First Place ($10,000): RSK-NFT
- Second Place ($4,000): Nostr Ads – Asami
- Third Place ($1,000): Wooy
Christian Nubis Bruno, Director General at Asami (Formerly Nostr Ads) shared “Participating in the ‘Rootstock: Scaling Bitcoin Hackathon’ was a huge step for us. Recognition in an event of this calibre will help the Asami team in its mission to build an honest and genuine ads network run by content creators and their audiences, backed by the Rootstock blockchain.”
Adding his thoughts on the competition, Daniel Fogg commented: “We have been blown away by the quality of submissions for the Scaling Bitcoin Hackathon. It will go down in history as one of the largest Bitcoin focused hackathons to date with over 850 registrations. We can’t wait to share what has been built and announce our worthy winners.“
For more information about the ‘Rootstock Strategic Grants Program’, please visit: https://rootstock.io/grants/
About RootstockLabs
This initiative helps to futureproof Bitcoin by enhancing its long-term value proposition and promoting sidechains for complex transactions, thereby addressing the ongoing congestion issue on the leading network.
The Rootstock network is one of the more secure smart contract platforms in the world, designed to leverage Bitcoin’s unparalleled hash power while extending its capabilities.
Rootstock Infrastructure Framework (RIF) is a suite of open and decentralised infrastructure protocols that enable faster, easier and scalable development of distributed applications (dApps) within a unified environment.
About Rootstock
Rootstock is the world’s most secure, permissionless and censorship-resistant Bitcoin sidechain. It provides EVM-compatible smart contract functionality using Bitcoin as the native asset. Rootstock takes Bitcoin from a simple store of value and turns it into the foundations of a fully-fledged decentralised financial system.
Rootstock’s native token RBTC is known as “Smart Bitcoin” and lets users use their BTC to interact with a range of services on the Rootstock Bitcoin layer 2. RBTC is an exact 1:1 peg with BTC. (1 RBTC = 1 BTC) When you transfer bitcoin into Rootstock, your bitcoin is locked and the equivalent amount is released as RBTC.
Rootstock is a Bitcoin sidechain that provides EVM-compatible smart contract functionality using Bitcoin as the native asset. Rootstock is the most permissionless and censorship-resistant Bitcoin sidechain. People around the world use Rootstock every day to interact with a range of DeFi protocols such as Sovryn, Tropykus and stablecoin Money on Chain.
Rootstock is permissionless, and its consensus mechanism is merge-mined proof of work (PoW) with over 50% of Bitcoin’s hash power currently mining Rootstock. This means that Rootstock is mined with more hash power than any other chain.