Kadena, founded by JP Morgan blockchain alumni Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, has announced a $100 million grant program for Web3 developers to build projects on its blockchain.

While Martino worked as JP Morgan’s lead engineer for its open-source blockchain product, Juno, Popejoy was JP Morgan’s executive director of new products. They left JP Morgan in 2016 to start Kadena together.

In a statement, Popejoy said he wants projects built on Kadena to “transform the world.”

“We’re doubling down on our promise to make that happen by actively and responsibly deploying our treasury resources to ensure long-term sustainability of our ecosystem,” he added.

The grant program is a part of KadenaEco, a larger development initiative that offers project acceleration, incubation, venture capital, and grants. Previously, Kadena (not KadenaEco) has offered developers up to $50,000 each for technical grants. This new grant program through KadenaEco will offer financial and strategic support for early gaming, metaverse, DAO, DeFi, and NFT projects. 

Virtually nothing in Web3 is off limits, as long as it’s built on Kadena’s proof-of-work blockchain.

That said, successful grant applications submitted through KadenaEco’s website will need to prove technical know-how, be extremely detailed, outline a qualified team, and explain why that project is useful and important for the Kadena ecosystem. Mentors will oversee each project, while the mentees will publicly document their builds.

When it comes to blockchain-specific grants, Kadena is joining the likes of Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, Chainlink, and Polygon, which all have multi-million-dollar grant programs.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.