By
Kseniia Klichova
May 6th, 2024
The foundation’s director of ecosystem development stated that grants can be made in HBAR and also in fiat or even a combination of both, depending on the needs of the developer.
HBAR Foundation, the developers of the Hedera ecosystem, has disclosed the launch of its $155 million “Crypto Economy Fund” to foster the development of DeFi on the Hedera network in a Tuesday announcement.
Hedera Commits $155M Funds to DeFi Innovation
According to the announcement, the initiated grants will go to yield-generation opportunities developers, fiat onramps through mobile and credit card, as well as other decentralized applications on Hedera.
The grant is sourced from an allocation of Hedera token that was given by HBAR to the foundation to spur third-party developer action on the blockchain as much as possible
Reports reveal that the Hedera accounts for $50 million in total value locked (TVL), yet Hedera is not listed by popular DeFi tracking platform DefiLlama among 83 other chains.
The HBAR foundation is triggered to boost the rankings of the TVL, with the recent inclusion of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and a gaudy incentive program. Thus, following the line of other layer 1s like Near and Fantom.
Furthermore, staking and liquidity are taken in special interest by the foundation, thereby channeling up to $60 million at DEX liquidity rewards for decentralized exchanges. The remaining funds have been allocated to infrastructure-focused grants.
The foundation’s director of ecosystem development, Elaine Song, stated that grants can be made in HBAR and also in fiat or even a combination of both, depending on the needs of the developer. Song further commented on the development saying:
“Hedera has always been focused on enterprise, and even within enterprises focused on a discrete use case, which is efficient distributed ledgers and throughput…there is another exciting part of the industry focused on retail and adoption, however.”
Song further mentioned environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and a major retail-focused staking effort led by Stader Labs, the first recipient of a grant from the program.
It is worth noting that HBAR is committed to launching incentive programs that will enable faster adoption of the Hedera ecosystem. “The Crypto Economy Fund” is one out of four active funds that have been created by the foundation to further Hedera adoption. The other three are; a payment and fintech fund, a consumer engagement fund, and a sustainable impact fund.
The Defi ecosystem has seen similar grants as this. The likes of Avalanche, Terra, Polygon and Fantom have led a similar path over the past year.