Solana Launches $5M Development Fund For Southeast Asia

Solana launches $5 million development fund to focus on growth in Southeast Asia and to focus on decentralized finance as well in the region. The fund allows projects that have a physical presence in Southeast Asia to apply for a program that provides $100,000 as well as technical and community support so let’s read more in our latest crypto news.

Solana launches $5 million development fund that focuses on decentralized finance in the Southeast Asian region, and for that matter, it partnered with Vietnam-based investment company Coin98 Ventures so it is able to enable regional startups that build on Solana to provide technical support as well as community support and up to $100K in funding. The fund will run for the next three years with a focus on projects in Web3 and Defi including marketplaces, other dapps, or exchanges. This is one of the very few grants that specify a region of interest as Executive Director Eric Williams noted:

“Our goal is to create the optimal conditions for developers in Southeast Asia to build amazing things on Solana.”

The Solana network has surpassed 10 BILLION transactions 🎊https://t.co/muWjYiZpVk pic.twitter.com/J0IR0X3rWX

— Solana (@solana) January 25, 2021

According to the announcement, the teams could be distributed but will have to be physically present in Southeast Asia. The announcement made it clear that they don’t have a presence there, they will not qualify for the fund. Williams explained that the foundation partnered with Coin98 Ventures because of its community support adding that the key to this fund being successful is the combo of technical and financial support:

 “Sometimes hurdles can be solved with extra money, other times they cannot.”

DeFi gains traction within the Solana ecosystem and is driving the trading volume to a new all-time high earlier this month. Using fund campaigns and treasuries to boost the developer ecosystem in blockchains is common with the programs that were available for a range of blockchain networks like Ethereum, OkCoin, Bitcoin, and Polkadot. Last year in September, Polkadot received one of the biggest fund boosts to date with Digital asset development company RockX investing about $20 million to support the entire ecosystem over the next five years.

Founded by Anatoly Yakovenko and a team of engineers that previously worked at Intel or Dropbox, Solana claims to be a censorship-resistant blockchain that provides the open infrastructure that is needed for global adoption. Some experts think that this project is a direct competitor to Ethereum especially now since FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried supported it and chose it to host his project called Serum.